Having officially left the BBC on Friday
Harrabin was back on Radio4 .. Saturday11:50am FooC
From Our Own Correspondent
The last item of the show is prime cos that is the take away that you remember ..it was basically an alarmist lecture

Kate Adie’s hyperbolic introduction that Harra probably wrote himself

Next, from the floods in Australia to record-breaking heat in Europe, extreme weather events have become all too common in recent years (there is no proper evidence for that)
In August last year the IPCC declared its latest report as a Code Red for humanity
warning that without urgent action billions of lives are at risk
And many changes caused by global warming are irreversible.
Roger Harrabin has been covering stories about the natural World for 35 years,
focusing in particular on the threat caused by human-induced climate change.
He reflects and how reporting this issue has changed over the years

Here's a transcription of Harra's carefully crafted lecture
As ever I think you can go through it line by line and take it apart.
Part 1

I've been nervous for a long time that we humans wouldn't tackle climate change quickly enough
but I felt a visceral jolt of fear, when a heat dome hit Lytton in Canada last year
I'd never heard of a Heat Dome before (probably because it's a made up PR word)
Essentially it's an atmospheric lid trapping hot air
creating the sensation for those who live underneath of living in an oven

Normally temperature records increase in fractions of the degree like 0.1
.. in Lytton the record was broken by fully 5 degrees
(hmm I think I've seen cold records have also been broken by degrees when you get weird weather)

Part 2

Another event that shocked scientists, was the recent 40 degree topping heat here in the UK
Only 2-years ago, climate modellers had foreseen no more than a 1% chance of this happening.
During my 35-year career I have witnessed many growing signs
In India in 2005 I trekked to the glacier that feeds the mighty river Ganges
It was unforgettably frightening trip astride the donkey that insisted on trading the very edge almost sheer drop with certain death if I'd gone over.
We reached the glaciers melt pool and found that by chance we'd arrived on the most auspicious day of the year for bathing in the river.
(yeh sure that was an accident)
Bearded saffron robed holy men stripped naked in front of us,
smeared themselves with ash and plunged into the icy water
Historic photographs show the is glacier retreating sharply year on year as the world warms
and glaciers are vital, because millions of people rely on their meltwater to keep rivers flowing through the dry season

In 2014 I was accompanied by flying fish and dolphins as I sailed through the clear blue waters of Papua New Guinea
An idyllic trip with alarming findings about the effects of growing CO2 levels on the chemistry of water
We dived at some natural undersea carbon dioxide vents
That create the sort of conditions we would expect as CO2 from human activities makes the ocean more acidic.
Corals there were almost non-existent !

Part 3

Given where we are now it's a astonishing to think that when I started as a reporter in the mid 1980s the environment was barely mentioned
At that there was only one environment correspondent in the UK, the Observers Geoffrey Lean.
I followed his lead in reporting issues such as acid rain, the ozone hole and the threat to birds from pesticides
The audience seemed to like it.
I slowly warmed into a de facto environment specialist
Then one day in the late 1980s I made a visit would come to define my future path : I went to meet the climate expert Sir John Houghton to discuss report on local air pollution,
but that story was brushed aside as sir John introduced a little reported topic : global warming
It was admittedly hard to absorb.
It seemed so unlikely that emissions from human kind could possibly be changing the climate of the planet, that I feared being accused of scaremongering.
I offered the story cautiously to the radio audience.
My reports back then were peppered with caveats.
I deploy phrases such as some scientists are warning that emissions from modern society *may be* changing the climate
For all my caution I was ridiculed by some of the older correspondents for focusing on a topic that seemed fundamentally ridiculous.
But I gained some surprising allies : for instance Margaret Thatcher the former British prime minister who in the late 1980s
warned about what she called the insidious danger posed by global warming, during a speech at the United Nations.
Since then I have FOUGHT to keep climate change on the news agenda
.. with mixed results.

Part 4

Over the years I've been inspired by low-carbon technology schemes I've visited in many countries.
In 2017 for instance I marvelled at the world's biggest solar plant on wasteland in India's Tamil Nadu.
I climbed the viewing tower in the middle to see the cleaning panels on three sides stretch right to the Horizon.

Over the years, as evidence has grown on climate change the language of my scripts, has been more and more direct.
Now I say categorically, rather than tentatively is changing, its been driven almost entirely by humankind
and leading scientists are telling us the world is ALREADY in a dangerous phase of warming !
Yet they also tell us that every 10th of a degree of warming is worth fighting for.
After three decades of battling to cover this issue.
often frankly against the current.
Reality amongst the public seems at last to be sinking in
and as I failed file my final report this week I am hoping that is not too late !

"failed" was the word the auto-transcribe tool initially used

Prog page and audio https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0019r94