The BBC surprises: Reports that it is "more likel than not" that the Earth is cooling

The Edmontons Sun's columnist Lorne Gunter writes about the BBC's climb-down on global warming:

The BBC has reported it is “more likely than not” that the Earth is entering a period of intense cooling.
Why is this so remarkable? Because as much as any news outlet in the world, the British Broadcasting Corporation has been a cheerleader for global warming alarmism for the past 15 years.
No, that’s the wrong analogy.
Cheerleaders are largely appealing characters. The BBC has been more like an inquisitor, cruelly enforcing the alleged global warming consensus with a sadistic glee.
The Brit equivalent of our own CBC, the Beeb has, if anything, been even more sneering, smug and condescending than Canada’s Mother Corp toward those who dared question the “settled science” about climate change.
The use of the word “deniers” to discredit global-warming skeptics — a word designed to smear doubters as the moral and intellectual equals of Holocaust deniers — appeared early and often at the BBC. --

So it was gobsmacking this week to see the BBC report on the work of scientist Mike Lockwood of Reading University in the U.K.
Lockwood (and dozens of other scientists) believes the sun is about to enter a period of low activity unseen in the past 10,000 years. This could, in turn, lead to a prolonged period of global cooling the likes of which the Earth has not experienced in at least two or three centuries — long, brutal, snowy winters coupled with cool, wet, pathetic summers.
In other words, our climate might be in for a Little Ice Age, according to the BBC.
This isn’t simply straight-up honest reporting. This amounts to a huge climb-down by the BBC which as recently as a year ago wasn’t reporting on alternative theories about climate except to dismiss those theories’ proponents as cranks and crackpots.

There are powerful forces in the BBC who are not yet prepared to give up the alarmist 97% "consensus" on global warming. But let's hope that this is indeed a new beginning for the Beeb.