Following the good news in a Met Office Study that alarmist sea level rises of 2m – 4m by 2100 is wrong. The Guardian report the Met Office study and choose a headline to highlight a new alarmist message rather than parade this good news, which is buried away in the article.
Guardian: Climate change threat to tropical forests ‘greater than suspected’
At every climate conference is it always to be my thoughts:
some sign – ‘worse than we thought, we must do something, no discussion’
Only for the previous ‘signs’ of impending doom to be quietly dropped when they are proved wrong.
As the projected sea level rises were one of the greatest concerns – celebrated in an ‘ An Inconvenient Truth’ , paraded throughout the media and used to scare the public into action. There is even a special google page to indulge in ‘climate porn’ showing the effect of rising 2m plus sea level rises in graphic detail. Surely a headline would be justified to say – Good News these projections were wrong?
The Guradian does cover this good news:
The worst case – of a four-metre rise in sea level – is now all but ruled out in the next century, but 20cm to 60cm rises are likely. The rise will not be the same everywhere and there is a lack of understanding about the potential regional effects.
The 2 metre sea level rises that were treated almost as gospel – pre Copenhagen have also been dropped as well, not that the Guardian article reports very clearly. Just leaving a worst case scenario of 3 feet, with a more likely scenario of upto 2 feet (within the realms of a natural rate of sea level rises since the last ice age.
The Daily Mail reports the same Met Office Study, in their article the previous worse case was 2 metres (I don’t think anybody outside of the Guardian and alarmist circles gave 4 metres any real credibility):
“Alarming predictions that global warming [man made presumably] could cause sea levels to rise 6ft in the next century are wrong, it has emerged.”
“However, the report says the IPCC was right to warn of a sea level rise of up to 2ft by 2100, and that a 3ft rise could happen”.
At some point will the general public notice that the previous high profile alarmist annoucemnets have been quietly dropped. Or will they keep believing the same ‘climate scientists’ with yet another new doomsday alarmist headline, the previous ones being quietly forgotten about.
I really do not think so anymore.
Unsettled Climate 
Barry
As a fellow Brit, I’m both impressed by, and grateful for, your dedicated campaign to hold the mainstream UK media outlets to account for bias and factual innacuracies regarding AGW and cAGW. Actually I’m a Guardian reader and all-round fan of the BBC, however I am increasingly dismayed by the systematic lack of balance, and failure of genuine investigative reporting emanating from both these institutions with regard to climate-related topics.
My faith in BBC science reporting and dissemination has been shaken by seeing the AGW party line (as exposed by Bishop Hill and Harmless Sky’s detailed letter) being trotted out uncritically across the board by BBC science presenters (even personal heroes like the eminent David Attenborough). Brian Cox’s simplistic (and much discussed in the blogs) lecture, is merely the latest in a very long line of disappointing and dispiriting exercises in preserving the “consensus” mantra, and does not bode well for any hope of BBC balance in the near future.
In the Guardian, of course, the situation is much more partisan. George Monbiot, a journalist I have admired in the past, has now sunk to the level of mere cheerleading propagandist. He seems totally blind to the irony of his own, and his newspaper’s suppression and dismissal of increasingly sophisticated sceptical arguments and peer-reviewed papers. The whole environment section of the paper has bought the “Merchants of Doubt” psychodrama as their overarching guide to dealing with any inconvenient news or views.
It’s a depressing situation, especially for those of us who were once unthinking AGW proponents ourselves, and have a pretty decent idea of the faith mind-set (all those scientists can’t be wrong!) which underlies the otherwise-inexplicably Orwellian editorial policies being pursued by such world-renowned bastions of fair-play and quality reporting.
I am glad there are determined types like yourself out there who seek to hold them to their former esteemed reputations. More power to you sir!
Typical media slant! Like a ratchet that reduces the effect of stories they don’t approve of. There are so many ways to tell a story…
Do you have the link to original Met office announcement? It would be interesting to see their full spin on it.