Newsnight had the excellent idea of pitting a nutty Extinction Rebellion protester (and former Green Party councillor) up against an actual scientist and author of the IPCC report on Climate Change last night, and although the IPCC;s Myles Allen tried to be polite to XR’s Sarah Lunnon, he calmly shot down her increasingly erratic predictions of “six and a half billion people dying” and calls to overthrow capitalism to reach net zero emissions in a little over five years. Newsnight’s Emma Barnett did a good job exposing their hysteria for what it is, following in the footsteps of Andrew Neil…

The BBC would do well to stop giving loons at Extinction Rebellion airtime, especially when their increasingly baffling and anti-scientific claims are bemusing even IPCC scientists. XR would do well to heed their own banners and leaflets, which say “listen to the scientists” and “tell the truth”…