London, 9 January: The BBC have accepted Lord Lawson’s complaint that they made a serious factual error in claiming that reindeers were in “steep decline” because of climate change.
The alarming claim that reindeer populations across Northern Russia were “in steep decline because of climate change”, was made during the first episode of the recent BBC 2 series: Russia with Simon Reeve.
Writing to the BBC Complaints department, Lord Lawson pointed out that according to a 2016 study, 17 out of 19 sub-populations of Eurasian Reindeer were now either increasing in number, or had a stable population trend.
The BBC have now accepted this evidence, and have published a correction which reads: “This programme suggested that many reindeer populations are in steep decline because of climate change. It would have been more accurate to say that many reindeer populations are threatened by it.”
Indeed it would have been less inaccurate, given that the claim is blatantly false. However, even the claim that they are “threatened” is highly questionable given their growing populations.
The false alarm highlights the BBC’s habitual attempts to exaggerate the consequences of climate change and to ignore scientific evidence that contradicts climate alarmism.