The question of press bias about global warming is in the news again.

Writing in the Japan Times, Christopher Lingle asks "What's up with the journalists in the mainstream media?", adding that "reporting on issues relating to global warming has become strikingly one-sided".

Things have in fact come to such a pass that Newsweek recently equated global warming sceptics (itself a derogatory term for climate rationalist scientists who give priority to factual evidence over speculative computer models) with Holocaust deniers (yes, again), and accused them of being in the pay of Big Oil or Big Coal (yes, again). The unoriginality and ad hominem nature of such silly accusations, which are fuelled by trashy websites like Exxon's Secrets, DeSmogBlog and SourceWatch, have become tiresome.

As US sceptic Frank Miele has pungently, though accurately commented – those who are vocal in their support for global warming doomsterism are "less interested in free expression of ideas than in total compliance with their ideas, less interested in critical thinking than in being critical, and less interested in the truth than in their truth". These attributes will of course be on abundant display in this, the week of the Sydney APEC.

Meanwhile, at that guardian of public news sanctity, the BBC, plans were being laid for the broadcast next year of a new, splashy "consciousness raising" event on climate change– titled Planet Relief and involving public celebrities such as Ricky Gervais. 

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