Last year marked a step change in how the media represent climate change science. Or so I thought. Traditionally, any climate change item on TV or radio involved the scientist being put up against some media-savvy climate change denier from an oil industry funded NGO. The interviews were the standard adversarial fare and the viewing public were all too often left with the impression that the scientific community were split down the middle as to whether global warming was real at all.

In 2006 the consensus view among scientists – that human-induced climate change is a reality – began to gain ground in the media and the misrepresentative interviews featuring scientist up against ranting maverick became rare. The debates were still heated, but the questions were on topics such as ‘Is it too expensive to tackle?’ or ‘Who’s responsibility is it?’. This felt a good deal more constructive than having to take part in interviews where the other interviewee pretty much put their hands over their ears and chanted ‘la,la,la.’ whenever you spoke.

Last week, then, was disappointing. The BBC asked me to go on one of their digital TV programmes to be the ‘scientist’ to respond to a climate change denier called Dennis Avery (he’s got a new book out apparently). Now, I’ve got a very sore shoulder (from carrying over-heavy dead wood logs home for our fire). As a consequence, I’m very tetchy at the moment and was ready to give Avery both peer-reviewed barrels on climate change. In the end though, I was hosting a guest speaker at our university during the broadcast and a colleague had to step in. He didn’t enjoy it.

As I feared, the same old adversarial format was rolled out, the skeptic got to make plenty of statements without there being any proper time for response, and viewers could well have gone away assuming that human-induced climate change was still just a theory. I love the BBC, they have done a wonderful job at communicating climate change science to the public over the last few years. However, the air time they give to mavericks like Avery gives oxygen to the dying embers of non-peer-reviewed hyperbole. On February the 2^nd the IPCC will publish its 4^th assessment report on climate change. The consensus - that we are now experiencing human-induced climate change - is there in black and white. Let’s hope the BBC and others give this report the balanced coverage it deserves. If they roll out Avery and his ilk again? Well, my shoulder’s still very sore...