Complaint
This was the last in a five-part series billed as telling the “4.5-billion-year story of our home - from its dramatic creation to the arrival of human life”. A viewer complained about the presenter’s statement that “today the climate is changing at a faster rate than at any time in the last 66 million years”, citing evidence from ice core data which appeared to show temperatures rising more steeply at the end of the Younger Dryas 12,000 years ago. The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the BBC’s editorial standards of accuracy.
Outcome
Recent scientific work indicates that the ice core data reflected local conditions which were not replicated globally, and there appears to be agreement that the rate of recent temperature increases has exceeded the rate of those in the most significant period of global temperature increase in the previous 66 million years (the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum). Therefore the ECU did not agree that the presenter’s statement was inaccurate.
Not upheld