Under a double page headline ‘Dire warning on rising sea levels’, South Australia’s Sunday Mail had what Paul Williams described as an “extraordinary article on climate change”. Here’s his critique:
“On the right hand page are six maps of the Australian continent, showing the coastline as it is today, and as it would look if the sea level rose 100 metres, 200 metres etc up to 500 metres. In small print, at the bottom of the caption next to the first map, is the disclaimer “Readers should note this was done as part of a scientific experiment, not as a prediction”. Nevertheless, the graphic has a powerful visual impact.
On the left hand page headlined in the print version, “Hard decisions needed”, the accompanying article begins “An apocalyptic prophecy of an Australia under water shows Adelaide would be one of the first places to disappear in a catastrophic sea level rise.” So straight away readers are given the impression that the graphic is an actual prediction, despite the disclaimer on the next page.
The “hard decisions” of the headline are explained by Dr Graeme Pearman, who is described as a Climate Institute Australia adviser and former CSIRO head of atmospheric research.
He says we will have to decide between protecting the coast with breakwaters or letting the coastline recede naturally. Dr Pearman states that sea levels have already risen 20 cm “with global warming”, and are expected to rise half a metre more over the next century. But there’s more, “if Greenland goes, it will rise by 7m”, and “if Antarctica went as well it would rise by 80m”.
Dr Pearman concedes it is unlikely that Antarctica will “go” during the next few thousand years, but the article leaves the impression that Greenland is quite likely to “go”.
This article is blatant sensationalism, with a few facts thrown, which do not support the sensational claims, and no balance. Why would the Sunday Mail publish such an article? Does the last paragraph give a clue?
“He (Dr Pearman) called for urgent action to join global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Australia and the US are the two main nations which have refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol to reduce such emissions.”
This looks like part of a process to sway public opinion towards Australia ratifying the Kyoto protocol.
If the article had said that Australia is on track to meet its Kyoto targets anyway, whereas many of the countries that have ratified Kyoto are NOT meeting their targets, I think most people would quite sensibly shrug their shoulders and say, “so why should we sign?” Add to that the fact that Kyoto can have no measurable effect on climate, yet will cost Australia jobs and hurt our economy, and there seems no reason at all to ratify Kyoto.
Of course there is a political aspect to all this. Labor has a policy that it will ratify Kyoto.
Is that why the Sunday Mail and the Advertiser are running a scare campaign, to help boost the prospects of Federal Labor?“
Maybe, or perhaps the newspaper, owned by Rupert Murdoch who is now concerned about global warming, is just really concerned about global warming? But is it good journalism?
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.