Show Hide image UK 20 August 2014 When climate change denial is promoted in mainstream news Including articles and comments from figures such as Matthew Ridley and Nigel Lawson without balance misleads the British public. Print HTML On 12 August, the Times newspaper published a long article by Matthew Ridley under the headline “The world's gone to Hell, but trust me, it is getting much better”. Ridley argued that a number of indicators showed that the quality of life has been improving across the globe. However, he provided an inaccurate and misleadingly rose-tinted picture of environmental degradation. For instance, Ridley claimed that “forest cover is increasing in many countries”. This gave a false impression of reality. The most recent study of the issue, published last year in the journal Science, found that 0.8m square kilometres of new forest were added between 2000 and 2012, but 2.3m square kilometres, roughly the same size as Portugal, were lost during the same period. Similarly, Ridley's article suggested that “there is no global increase in floods”, and “there has been a decline in the severity of droughts”. Both statements were grossly misleading. Climate change is increasing global average temperature, but its impact on extreme weather differs across the world. Some regions are becoming wetter while others are becoming drier. The most authoritative assessment of the evidence was presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year. It concluded that “there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale”. However, the report also highlighted that it “assesses floods in regional detail accounting for the fact that trends in floods are strongly influenced by changes in river management”. It stated: “Although the most evident flood trends appear to be in northern high latitudes, where observed warming trends have been largest, in some regions no evidence of a trend in extreme flooding has been found”. The assessment also found that “it is likely that the frequency and intensity of drought has increased in the Mediterranean and West Africa and decreased in central North America and north-west Australia since 1950”. I wrote a short letter to the newspaper to correct the mistakes in the article, but it refused to publish anything that indicated Ridley had made errors. It is not the first time The Times has published inaccurate statements by Ridley and censored any attempts to fix them. Although Ridley has no qualifications in climate science (his PhD thesis was on “The Mating System of the Pheasant”), he is a member of the Academic Advisory Council of renowned climate change sceptic and former chancellor Lord Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation. This organisation has been labelled by the Independent as “the UK's most prominent source of climate-change denial”. Earlier this year, the same newspaper featured another article in which he disputed any link between the flooding caused by record rainfall in the UK last winter, again citing a lack of global trend as his justification. I wrote to The Times to point out he had ignored the IPCC's findings about regional increases in flooding, but the newspaper would not agree to publish any letters that drew attention to Ridley’s mistakes. Is it a coincidence that these articles, which clearly dispute the findings of mainstream climate science, began when John Witherow became the newspaper's editor last year? In his previous role as editor of The Sunday Times, he was implicated, as George Monbiot discovered, in a controversy over an article that severely misrepresented the views of a researcher, Dr Simon Lewis, about the impacts of climate change on the Amazon. The senior editorial team of The Sunday Times apparently used a blog by a climate change sceptic to re-write a report by its environment editor, and reportedly introduced a number of errors and distortions. Dr Lewis complained, and the newspaper was eventually forced to print a humiliating apology, although it did not address claims about the role its editors played in the fiasco. Many of the UK's national daily newspapers now seem to be attempting to undermine their readers’ understanding of the scientific evidence on climate change. It should be no surprise then that there are still significant numbers of the public who are being misled by the UK media into wrongly believing that there is no scientific consensus about the causes and consequences of climate change. Bob Ward is a Fellow of the Geological Society and policy and communications director at the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science. › Shy patients are more open about their health when talking to a robot AI, study finds Bob Ward is policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science. More Related articles Diane James quits Ukip seven weeks after quitting the leadership too Theresa May just scrapped her own brilliant pro-business idea Is Francois Fillon Marine Le Pen's dream opponent? Subscription offer 12 issues for £12 + FREE book LEARN MORE Close This week’s magazine
Show Hide image The Staggers 21 November 2016 No, John McDonnell, people earning over £42,000 have not been "hit hard" by the Conservatives The shadow chancellor's decision to support this tax cut is as disappointing as it is innumerate. Print HTML John McDonnell has backed Conservative plans to raise the point at which you start paying the 40p rate (that’s 40p of every pound earned after you hit the threshold) to above £45,000 by April 2017 (part of the Conservative manifesto pledge to raise the 40p rate so that it only covers people earning above £50,000 by 2020). Speaking to the BBC, the shadow chancellor said that those affected “need a tax giveaway at the moment because the mismanagement of the economy by the Conservatives is hitting them hard”. Is he right? Well, let’s crunch some numbers. Let’s say I earn £42,000, my partner doesn’t work and we have two children. That puts our household in the upper 30 per cent of all British earners, and, thanks to changes to tax and benefits, we are 1.6 per cent worse off than an equivalent household in 2010. Have we been “hit hard”? Well, no, actually, in point of fact, we have been the least affected of any household with children of the coalition. The pattern holds for every type of household that will feel the benefit of the 40p rate hike. Those with children have seen smaller decreases (1.0-2.3 per cent) in their living standards that those in the bottom three-quarters of the income distribution. The beneficiaries of this change without children, excluding pensioners, who have done well out of Conservative-led governments but are unaffected by this change, have actually seen increases in their tax-home incomes already under David Cameron. There is no case that they need a bigger one under Theresa May. But, nonetheless, they’re getting one, and it’s the biggest bung to higher earners since Margaret Thatcher was in office. For context: a single parent family earning £42,000 is in the top 15 per cent of earners. A family in which one person is earning above £42,000 and the other is working minimum wage for 16 hours to look after their two children is in the top 13 per cent. A single person earning £42,000 is in the top 6 per cent of earners. That’s before you get into the big winners from this policy, because higher earners tend to marry other higher earners. A couple with one person earning £45,000 and the other earning £35,000 is in the top three per cent of earners. A couple in which both are earning £45,000 with one child are in the top four per cent. (Childless couples earning above average income are, incidentally, the only working age demographic to do better since 2010 than under New Labour.) And these are not cheap tax cuts, either. To meet the Conservative proposal to raise the 40p rate to £50,000 by 2020 will cost £9bn over the course of the parliament, and giving a tax cut to “hard-pressed” earners on £42,000 will cost around £1.7bn. The political argument for giving up on taxing this group is fairly weak, too. Hostilty to tax rises among swing voters extends all the way up to the super-rich, so Labour’s commitment to the top rate of tax has already hurt them among voters. To win support even for that measure, the party is going to have to persuade voters of the merits of tax-and-spend – it makes no sense to eschew the revenue from people in the top five per cent of earners while still taking the political pian. Which isn’t to say that people earning above £42,000 should be tarred and feathered, but it is to say that any claim that this group has been “hit hard” by the government or that they should be the target for further tax relief, rather than clawing back some of the losses to the Exchequer of the threshold raise and the planned hike in the higher rate to £50,000, should be given extremely short shrift. Stephen Bush is special correspondent at the New Statesman. His daily briefing, Morning Call, provides a quick and essential guide to British politics. More Related articles Diane James quits Ukip seven weeks after quitting the leadership too Theresa May just scrapped her own brilliant pro-business idea Is Francois Fillon Marine Le Pen's dream opponent?
