Attacking the media for raising questions about global warning only exemplifies how green orthodoxy is stifling legitimate discussion

The media likes clear distinctions — good news or bad news, sunny or rainy — but not the vast grey chasm in between. This is arguably why it failed to spot the scale of the financial crisis. Because until things went horribly wrong there wasn’t a story.

But the other reason journalists didn’t alert their readers before last year’s economic crash is because it’s not the job of the media to take a view that no one else is taking. In other words: if politicians, bankers and economists did not see it coming, then why should the media?

A similar thing is happening with global warming. The political and media drumbeat is incessant. According to Gordon Brown humanity now has about 30 days to save itself, which is clearly a ridiculous claim.

And there are far more important health problems facing the world than climate change. However, this kind of apocalyptic language is now standard, but when it is challenged the proponents of emission reduction point to science for their answers.

Their ranks have been swelled by an increasing number of organisations, both public and private, with a vested interest in the science pointing in one direction only. Interestingly, one of those firms, Grimshaw, has just landed the job of masterplanning the highly controversial expansion of Heathrow airport, putting it in the front line for environmental protesters.

But despite the outcry of, among others, the Green Building Council (see letter on bdonline.co.uk) the science is far from settled, and reliable forecasts of future climate are proving elusive.

It may well be that human CO2 activity is a significant factor in global warming, but there are also other reasons, like population growth and a huge number of other independent factors that are making the earth warmer, although these are rarely given much credence — and the scientists involved in genuine research in this field have been refused platforms because they dare question the climate change orthodoxy.

It may be too that the sensible approach is to take action now, because the risks of doing nothing outstrip the risks of doing something — although again what that “something” should be is debatable.

Is the best course of action putting a cap on emissions for countries like China and India, which would jeopardise their economic growth, or should we be adapting to climate change and using our energies and money in better preparing for the impact of events such as flooding and drought? And who is going to pay?

Again, it is hard to have this debate without being labelled a climate change “denier”. The very word, with its implicit reference to the Holocaust, is deliberately offensive, but a free press means that journalists should be allowed to raise these questions and BD has no intention of staying silent just because of the “baying mob of outrage” coming after it.

It’s no surprise that the green lobby insists the debate is over, but it’s not, and the more people try and suppress it, the more difficult it is to have a reasoned and consensual approach, which is surely needed if the right policies are to be agreed now, and in the future.