GREEN MONITOR

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This week's The Record: Europe was unmistakably biased in favour of one particular side of the environment debate -the Green side.

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Presenter-in-boots Shirin Wheeler introduced the opening discussion about the forthcoming Copenhagen conference on climate change with a report full of images of melting icecaps and more alarming stories about the future. She stated firmly"The world needs to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol" and reminded us of those climate scientists who "go on charting rising temperatures around the globe". As a long-term watcher of this programme, I think it's fair to say that Shirin is a devout believer in all this sort of thing.

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The roundtable discussion that followed featured Green leader Caroline Lucas MEP, the head of the European parliament's Environment Committee and German Social Democrat Jo Leinen, and former head of media for the Liberal Democrats Mark Littlewood, who is now a leading figure in Green Monitor, a group that intends to keep a careful eye on the excesses of the Green movement - and a mild AGW sceptic. (He contradicated Shirin's figures, saying that there has been no overall rise in global temperature between 1998-2008.)

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How did they fare at the fair Shirin's lovely hands?
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Time to speak:
Caroline Lucas - 4 minutes 10 seconds
Jo Leinen - 3 minutes 49 seconds
Mark Littlewood - 3 minutes 25 seconds
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Number of interruptions:
Caroline Lucas - 0
Jo Leinen - 0
Mark Littlewood - 3
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Interruption Coefficients:
Caroline Lucas - 0
Jo Leinen - 0
Mark Littlewood - 0.9
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One of Shirin Wheeler's interruptions was simply a cut-off to pass the conversation on to another speaker, but the other two were much more telling of bias.
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When Mark said "I'm not as persuaded by all the science surrounding this...", Shirin interrupted him, saying "What, what do you mean you're not persuaded by all the science?"
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Even more typical of a true believer, she later went on to stop him in mid-flow when he began saying something she really didn't want to hear. He was saying "Caroline talks about the science as if it's so black and white. Climatology is still in its infancy. I'm not trying to dismiss those that..." when Shirin butted in with "Well, let's not go back to the science argument" and then said "Jo", passing the baton back to the pro-Green socialist.
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Still, at least a mild AGW sceptic got a look in here. Later in the programme the focus turned to those wicked multi-national oil companies and their wicked doings in the developing world. Who did Shirin Wheeler discuss this topic with? Nnimmo Bassey of Friends of the Earth International and Claude Turmes, a Luxembourgeois Green MEP. Why interview one Green when you can interview two!!
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