NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING

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The Record Europe's main topic this week was 'Climate Change', specifically how the EU could speak with a common voice on the issue in the wake of all the acrimony at Copenhagen.
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Shirin Wheeler's introductory report (complete with icebergs, but thankfully no polar bears) featured just one 'talking head' - Sonja Meister of Friends of the Earth Europe. That's par for the course.
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The studio discussion featured five guests, only one of them a sceptic - Roger Helmer.
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Not unlike this post (!), things took a predictable path. Here are the stats:
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Length of time each guest got to speak
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Rebecca Harms (German Green) - 3 minutes 35 seconds
Dan Jorgensen (Danish Social Democrat) - 3 minutes 15 seconds
Sirpa Pletikainen (Finnish Centre Right) - 2 minutes 59 seconds
Chris Davies (British Lib Dem) - 2 minutes 28 seconds
Roger Helmer (British Conservative) - 2 minutes 20 seconds
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Despite that the only uses of the command 'Briefly!' by Shirin were directly at the sceptical Tory (twice)! (That's as it always is on this programme!)
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Interruption Coefficients
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Roger Helmer - 0.9
Sirpa Pletkainen - 0.8
Dan Jorgensen - 0.3
Rebecca Harms - 0.3
Chris Davies - 0
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So the centre-right comes of worse, yet again.
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The only politician to be contradicted by Shirin was Mr Helmer.
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When he argued that "everyone from the Maldives to China sees this as a way of getting money from the West", she interrupted to say "But I mean we've spoken to the prime minister of Tuvalu, who travelled all the way to Brussels to say that his island is drowning. And we've seen pictures of it! He's not making it up!" Her point is perhaps weakened by the fact that Tuvalu is a chain of islands, not a single island. Moreover, the rise in sea level around the nine islands is not, as she assumes, necessarily caused by 'global warming', even according to our old friend Wikipedia: "This concern is compounded by the effects of subsidence which causes the islands naturally to sink into the sea, and non-natural land use (such as farming) which causes soil compaction. And to further complicate matters, it has been difficult to accurately measure to what degree each of these causes is affecting the observed rise in sea level. Global warming may not be the primary cause for the rise in local measurements." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_Tuvalu. Mr Helmer was having none of it anyway, and discussed the case of the Maldives.
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Behind the Green lady was a window and through the window snow-flakes fell.
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