{"id":410473,"date":"2025-10-27T19:55:25","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T18:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=410473"},"modified":"2025-10-27T19:55:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T18:55:27","slug":"is-public-criticism-of-climate-claims-a-criminal-offence-in-todays-britain-and-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=410473","title":{"rendered":"Is Public Criticism of Climate Claims a Criminal Offence in Today\u2019s Britain and Europe?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essay by<\/strong> Eric Worrall<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2026 It is perfectly OK to have different opinions on climate change. What becomes problematic is when a society can no longer agree on facts \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018Enforced veganism\u2019: Ofcom lets GB News flout accuracy rules, say climate campaigners<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exclusive: Regulator has received 1,221 complaints about UK broadcasters since 2020 but found no breaches of its code<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Damian Carrington<\/a> Environment editor
Sat 25 Oct 2025 17.00 AEDT<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ofcom has received 1,221 complaints related to the climate crisis since January 2020, when its searchable database began. None resulted in a ruling that the broadcasting code had been breached. In fact, only two such breaches have been found since 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast, the French regulator Arcom has found four broadcasting code breaches related to the climate crisis in the last two years. In one, the rightwing channel CNews was fined \u20ac20,000<\/a> (\u00a317,000) for a segment in which a speaker said climate change was \u201ca lie, a scam\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The burning of fossil fuels has \u201cunequivocally caused global warming\u201d<\/a>, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ofcom\u2019s broadcasting code<\/a> requires that factual programmes \u201cmust not materially mislead the audience\u201d and that \u201cnews, in whatever form, must be reported with due accuracy and presented with due impartiality\u201d. The code further requires that \u201calternative viewpoints must be adequately represented\u201d when programme presenters express their own views on matters of political controversy or public policy<\/strong>. Guidance notes for the code add that: \u201cAn example of an issue which Ofcom considered to be broadly settled is the scientific principles behind the theory of anthropogenic global warming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eva Morel, at QuotaClimat<\/a>, the French campaign group that filed the climate complaints to Arcom, said: \u201cIt is perfectly OK to have different opinions on climate change. What becomes problematic is when a society can no longer agree on facts, because facts are the foundation of trust, which in turn underpins law, and ultimately, democracy.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She added: \u201cWhen the media blur the line between facts and opinions, it doesn\u2019t lead people to trust in alternative truths; it leads them to trust in nothing at all. Sowing doubt about climate science serves to obstruct climate action and it endangers lives.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026Read more: https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2025\/oct\/25\/enforced-veganism-ofcom-gb-news-flout-accuracy-rules-say-climate-campaigners<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Is Britain planning forced Veganism?<\/strong> I believe it is reasonable to think so. In 2024 the government backed Climate Change Committee claimed in a letter to the government that Britons must switch to a more plant based diet<\/a>. There is plenty of talk about the need to reduce agricultural emissions by reducing meat consumption. Whether that forced veganism is achieved by simply pricing meat out of ordinary people\u2019s reach, or an actual law which bans meat consumption, the result is the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about climate activist Eva Morel\u2019s demand that we all agree a common set of facts?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem with the kind of enforced agreement on the \u201cfacts\u201d climate activist Eva Morel demands is in science, there is no such thing as a fact which cannot be challenged.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nobel Prize winner Barry Marshall<\/a> overturned decades of consensus that peptic ulcers are a metabolic imbalance, by proving peptic ulcers are actually an infection caused by a difficult to culture bacteria, Helicobacter pylori<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Albert Einstein overturned centuries of consensus that space and time are absolute and unchanging, by proving the only way to explain unexplained phenomena such as a the fact the speed of light stays the same, regardless of the velocity of the source, is if different observers can disagree about the flow of time and measured distances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Einstein himself came under challenge \u2013 he spent decades trying to challenge the fundamental weirdness of Quantum Physics, or as Einstein disparagingly described it, \u201cspooky action at a distance\u201d<\/a> \u2013 and failed. The computer I\u2019m using to write this article, the billions of transistors contained in its integrated circuits, were all designed using principles of that Quantum Physics which Einstein struggled to accept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet we know there is something wrong with Quantum Physics \u2013 because even though Quantum Physics grew directly out of Einstein\u2019s research, Quantum Physics and Einstein\u2019s General Relativity fundamentally contradict each other<\/a>. Both theories appear to pass every test which has been thrown at them \u2013 but they can\u2019t both be right. Some of the more terrifying experiments with large particle accelerators are conducted by scientists who want to create a small black hole<\/a>, so they can observe the nexus between Quantum Physics and Relativity up close. Let\u2019s hope if they ever succeed, the Quantum Physics prediction the black hole will immediately evaporate in a shower of exotic particles prevails over the General Relativity prediction that the black hole will grow exponentially and consume the entire Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about really fundamental facts about the universe, like the \u201cfact\u201d that we live in a universe with three spatial dimensions and one time dimension? Even this everyday understanding of the nature of reality is constantly being challenged on a number of fronts, ranging from proponents of the Holographic Principle<\/a>, who point out that the universe in important and fundamental ways behaves as if there are only two spatial dimensions, that our three dimensional experience may be an illusion which masks a deeper reality, to higher dimensional string theory proponents, some of whom think the universe might have as many as 26 spatial dimensions<\/a>. It might seem crazy to challenge something as tangible as the number of spatial dimensions in our reality, but the scientists exploring these ideas have serious reasons for doing so. The universe may be a much stranger place than our everyday experience leads us to believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do climate models produce \u201cfacts\u201d which are beyond challenge?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following are the words of the late great Freeman Dyson<\/a> giving his views on climate models;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026 My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.<\/strong>\u00a0\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more:\u00a0https:\/\/www.edge.org\/conversation\/freeman_dyson-heretical-thoughts-about-science-and-society<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Was Dyson right about climate models struggling to describe the real world? We have some corroboration for Dyson\u2019s criticism, from the climate modelling community. Some climate scientists admit their inability to model clouds is a problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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$10 Million AI Grant to Improve Climate Modelling of Clouds<\/a><\/blockquote>