New analysis has found that compared with ten years ago, climate science scepticism has almost entirely disappeared from the opinion pages of British newspapers.

The research found that a decade ago in 2013/14, a fifth of all opinion pieces and editorials on climate change featured ‘evidence scepticism’, questioning the science of climate change or claiming that warming is not happening, a number that has dropped to 5 per cent in 2023/4.

Moreover, ‘process scepticism’, usually seen as an attack on scientific models, or methods used to monitor and predict climate change, has seen an even sharper fall in opinion pieces and editorials, dropping from 20 per cent in 2013/14 to 1 per cent in 2023/24.

So newspapers are more accepting of climate change, but as more writers take the concept onboard there is a greater scepticism’ of the policies being used to address climate change, increasing from 23 per cent in 2013/14 to 24 per cent in 2023/24. The nature of this scepticism has also changed; in 2013/14, technologies such as wind farms were frequently criticised, whereas in 2023/24, wider aspects of net-zero policy were attacked.

The analysis, which examined samples of opinion and leading articles in 2013/14 and 2023/24, was carried out by a group of academics including Simon Cocks, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford and Dr James Painter of the Reuters Institute at Oxford University and was commissioned by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).

Former BBC presenter Robin Lustig, who has presented programmes for the BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4, including the World Tonight for over 20 years, said “In the past, as it has admitted, the BBC fell into the trap of seeking to find a ‘false balance’ on the science of climate change. It mustn't do the same now as it reports on proposed solutions. Of course, there is always a need for debate, but it must be informed by the facts, not by opposing science with ideology.”

---