Sunday, April 14, 2013

The time I was mistaken for a member of the House of Lords - the full story

This is a transcript of text received Wednesday this week on my work mobile, edited to save the blushes of a major media outlet.
Dear Bryony, [redacted] here at [redacted] news. 

We are looking to do a discussion on our programme tonight around climate change, following the unusually cold weather we've been having. We want to ask what this unusual weather means for the climate change debate, if anything? 

Does this mean global warming is not the problem we thought it was? Are we wasting a lot of money trying to fight a problem that's not significant? Or should we still be very worried?

We would like to do the discussion live [...] I understand that you are in Brussels but we have a studio there and would love for you to join us if at all possible.

Thanks very much, [redacted].
I got this text in error because it was intended for ... Bryony Worthington, former Friends of the Earth climate campaigner, now head of Sandbag and Labour life peer in the House of Lords. I can only assume that once upon a time she had my battered old work Nokia and the number is still floating round on someone's database.

Despite the urgings of my Facebook timeline, I couldn't really pretend to be Bryony...


...so I phoned up Ms Redacted and let them know they were barking up the wrong tree and at least half a decade late.

Comedy aside, there's a serious and slightly worrying point that the media jump from 'several months of unseasonably bad weather' to 'OMG maybe climate change isn't happening' in their approach to the issue, which completely disregards what dangerous mavericks like the Met Office are saying about the cold snap. 

Sigh.

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