Experts told BBC News that the assertions made by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson on Radio 4’s Today programme were simply untrue.
Lord Lawson had claimed that global temperatures had “slightly declined” over the past 10 years.
However, scientists working in the field said the records showed the complete opposite to be the case.
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme defended its decision to interview Lord Lawson on Thursday morning in a segment on climate change. The BBC argued that it had a duty to inform listeners about all sides of a debate.
During the interview, Lord Lawson said that “official figures” showed that “during this past 10 years, if anything… average world temperature has slightly declined”.
But speaking in a follow-up discussion on Friday morning, Dr Peter Stott from the UK Met Office said the former Chancellor had got the facts wrong.
“We know that 2016 was the warmest on record, over a degree warmer than late 19th Century levels, so this claim that we heard from Nigel Lawson that there’s been cooling is simply not true,” he told the BBC.
His view was echoed by Prof Richard Betts from the University of Exeter.
“The official figures do not show that the global mean temperature ‘has slightly declined’. In fact, they show the opposite – global mean temperature has increased during the past 10 years,” he said in a statement.
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