Case study in alarmist reporting

ABC's "commercial arm", Fairfax provided an interesting headline this morning:

Revealed: 80cm sea rise warningThe report included these paragraphs:

The world is on track to become up to five degrees hotter, and sea levels could rise more than 80 centimetres this century, according to a leaked draft of a landmark climate change report prepared for the UN.

There is now a 95 per cent likelihood human greenhouse gas emissions are driving changes being observed globally, which in recent weeks have included extraordinary heatwaves in Asia and Alaska.

That degree of certainty has been revised up from 90 per cent in the last report in 2007, 66 per cent in 2001, and just over 50 in 1995. A sea level rise of up to 82 centimetres, which would have serious impacts on coastal cities everywhere, is now ''unequivocal'', Reuters reported.

We sent the following Letter:
It seems that SMH reporters have misrepresented IPCC report findings (Revealed: 80cm sea rise warning, 20/8). The draft IPCC report provides a wide range of figures for various climate indices. For sea level rise the IPCC draft report indicates a potential rise between 29 to 80cm. Such a modest rise is well within society's capacity to adapt and does not constitute an end to world as we know it.

SMH's defensive letters editor Julie Lewis provided the following reply (some how I don't think they will publish my call for integrity in reporting):

Dear Marc,

The report says 80cm is much more probable than 29cm, and also that not all ice melt is factored into the models, so the reality could be considerably higher than 80cm this century. Within that context, saying it "could" rise "up to 80cm" is accurate, and reasonably conservative.

to which we responded:

Thanks Julie,

Your reporters appear to have based their story on a secondary source quoting Reuters, not the actual draft report. Did they actually base the report on the original source or did they just quote a secondary source?

Here is the relevant text from the IPCC AR5 draft released last year. In contrast to your claim there is no weighting between the different scenarios. Unless your reporters can quote the relevant section from the actual document it seems my criticism stands. 

IPCC draft from http://www.stopgreensuicide.com/Ch13_sea-level_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch13_All_Final.pdf

Global Mean Sea Level Rise Projections

It is very likely that the rate of global mean sea level rise during the 21st century will exceed the rate observed during 1971–2010 for all RCP scenarios. For the period 2081 to 2100, compared to 1986 to 2005, global mean sea level rise is likely to be in the range 0.29–0.55 m for RCP2.6, 0.36–0.63 m for RCP4.5, 0.37–0.64 m for RCP6.0, and 0.48–0.82 m (0.56–0.96 m by 2100 with a rate of rise 8–15 mm yr–1 over the last decade of the 21st century) for RCP8.5. Unlike in the AR4, these projections include a contribution from changes in ice-sheet outflow, for which the central projection is 0.11 m. There is only medium confidence in these ranges of projected global mean sea level rise, because there is only medium confidence in the likely range of projected contributions from models of ice sheet dynamics, and because there is no consensus about the reliability of semi-empirical models, which give higher projections than process-based models. Larger values cannot be excluded, but current scientific understanding is insufficient for evaluating their probability. [13.5.1, Table 13.5, Figures 13.8 and 13.9]

For a blog post at ABC NEWS Watch can you please confirm your reporters did not see the draft report referred to, instead basing their story on a rehash of the Reuters article. 

"Journalist" Julie goes on to defend use of secondary sources over primary:

Our reporters have based their report on a number of sources. We stand by our story.

Our riposte:
A number of sources but not the primary source! 

And this passes for journalism at SMH!

Sad that activist reporters at Fairfax like their ABC counterparts only provide half the story. ignoring the other side because it does not agree with a fixed world view. Little wonder that Fairfax is increasingly irrelevant when its reporters are not up to basic journalism.


UPDATE:
ABC take a predictable alarmist line with their report on the leaked draft:
UN climate change draft report finds it is 95 per cent likely that global warming is caused by humans

It's always sensationalism over rational reporting at the ABC.

UPDATE 2. Letters page of the 21/8 replete with one sided commentary including this outright misrepresentation: "An 80-centimetre rise in sea levels could, among other things, reduce the width of all beaches by 80 metres. Goodbye, Bondi!" 
What a joke!!
In days long since past letters editors favoured a variety of view points. It seems the Herald with its one eyed reporters heads buried deep in the sand no longer tolerate discussion and debate.

SMH The Age Asbestos Error

SMH and The Age have an inforgraphic about Asbestos on their website today, not sure if it made the printed version. The relevant bit is reproduced below:

In fact Asbestos was mined in Australia from at least 1880 through to 1983. It seems SMH forgot about the small asbestos mines like the Jones Creek Mine near Gundagai that produced 72t of tremolite asbestos between 1880 and 1921. It also seems to have omitted the largest asbestos mine in Australia, the white asbestos (chrysotile) mine at Barraba in northern NSW. This was the Woodsreef mine that produced 550,000t of asbestos between between 1972 and 1983. Australia's second largest asbestos mine was at Wittenoom in Western Australia which produced 152,466t of blue asbestos between 1937 and 1966.

We realise that ABC rely heavily on the SMH and The Age for information so perhaps our correction will some how reach them before they repeat the error.

For further information on Asbestos occurrences in eastern and South Australia click HERE and HERE.

UPDATE: The following received 20/6/2013  from SMH:

Dear Marc,

Recently you contacted ReaderLink about the graphic, "Still breathing the devil's dust".
At Herald Publications we want to be an accurate and reliable source of information. Unfortunately, errors do occur. Our aim is to reduce the number of errors and publish corrections when appropriate.
The information ReaderLink has in response to your report is as follows:
Thank you for your email and for bringing to our attention the  error in the graphic  with  the asbestos story 'Still breathing the devil's dust' The graphic was created by our colleagues at The Age.
They sourced the information from the Asbestos Diseases Research Institute. They concede they inputted the incorrect end date to the production of asbestos in Australia which they agree was 1983. However, they say the institute's website gives the starting date as 1918 not 1880.  We have removed the graphic from our website.

Regards,
Ben & Peter

Note. We have emailed ADRI with the corrected start date which is 1880 as indicated above. This is available through the following reference: MacNevin AA (1970) Asbestos. Mineral industry of New South

Wales Report No. 4. Sydney Geological Survey of New South Wales.

from page 41 and 42 of MacNevin. click to enlarge.

Ask an expert, the right expert

Tim Blair noted the Sydney Morning Herald thought an alarmist piece by an activist volcanologist, and "evangelical advocate of drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions", was so good they ran it twice. ABC asked the same activist  to provide an expert opinion on links between recent earthquakes and global warming. Seems ABC can't tell their experts from a hole in the floor.

Here's my Letter to the Sydney Morning Herald outlining problems with McGuire's SMH article. They left this one on the cutting room floor.

Dear Editor,
Volcanologist Bill McGuire places undue emphasis on the effect our thin atmosphere has on our even  thinner crust and in the process makes the mistake of linking recent calamitous geological events with anthropogenic global warming (skating on a thin crust,22/3). The inescapable grind of the earth's plates,  the ultimate cause of earthquakes and volcanoes, is driven by large scale processes in the earth's 3000km thick mantle. Changes in the atmosphere play an important minor role.  To blame anthropogenic global warming for recent geological disasters, such as the Japanese tsunami and the eruption of unpronounceable volcanes in Iceland, is like blaming the bird landing on the bonnet of a car perched on a cliff edge for its topple, while ignoring the bulldozer pushing from behind.

Crack Embiggened

Last year ABC covered the discovery by NASA of a crack in the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica with a number of stories; for example "Large Crack appears in Antarctic glacier". NASA provide the image above with a caption that reads as follows:
Pine Island Glacier -Crack in the shelf
A close-up image of the crack spreading across the ice shelf of Pine Island Glacier shows the details of the boulder-like blocks of ice that fell into the rift when it split. For most of the 18-mile stretch of the crack that NASA’s DC-8 flew over on Oct. 26, 2011, it stretched about 240 feet wide, as roughly seen here. The deepest points ranged from about 165 to 190 feet, roughly equal to the top of the ice shelf down to sea level. Scientists expect the crack to propagate and the ice shelf to calve an iceberg of more than 300 square miles in the coming months. This image was captured by the Digital Mapping System (DMS) aboard the DC-8. Credit: NASA/DMS.


Note the highlighted text. 240ft is about 73m.

Perusing the SMH website this evening we came across a report that is essentially a re-hash of last year's news. But what caught our eye was the same NASA photo, but this time the width of the crack is somewhat different. The image below is a screen capture of the SMH home page for March 1 at about 10.30pm. Exactly the same photo, but this time SMH make the same crack 250m across. Talk about a fractured fairy tale. These guys never cease to split my sides.

We thought the title Crack Embiggened a little fairer, hence the change.
 

Chicken littles at the Sydney Morning Herald.

We don't normally cover Fairfax press but we thought this exchange of letters to the editor might interest, more so for the one at the end that wasn't published...
From SMH Letters page 7/2
As Mike Carlton (column, 5/2) notes it certainly has been a dramatic year for the weather, but before we loose our heads a quick look at the record books indicates things have been as bad or worse in the past.
At the risk of being labelled a heretic, 1918 for instance saw two cyclones kill over a hundred people in North Queenland, both were more intense than recent cyclone Yasi. There were record floods in eastern Australia, including the Great Rockhampton flood that saw the Fitzroy River rise to its highest level on record. There were notable floods also in New Zealand, Germany, England, and Africa. Meanwhile heat waves swept Australia (Sydney, Victoria, Perth, Brisbane), and Pennsylvania; and droughts occurred in Australia, Norway, India, North America, Brazil and Africa. Blizzards affected the eastern United States with the "coldest weather in history". There were also snowstorms in New Zealand, Argentina and in Europe, and tornados destroyed towns in the USA.
To top it off there was also a World War, an influenza pandemic that killed millions, earthquakes rocked the Western USA, Puerto Rico, left over a 100,000 homeless in Guatemala, and a magnitude 6 earthquake damaged buildings in flood affected Rockhampton. Vesuvius erupted in Italy and Katla in Iceland.
Space limits a wider examination, but I think readers will get the point without needing to mention the extraordinary weather events of 1893, 1927 or 1934 (for 1934 see A bad year for weather below-ed). Sadly for some, with no appreciation of history, the sky is always falling in.

A reply from Margaret Morgan from the SMH letters Page 8/2 (It seems Margaret has a spelling problem)
For truth on climate change, listen to the insurers
Mark Hendrickx (Letters, February 7) attempts to characterise those who accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change and increased extreme weather events as Chicken Littles, ignorant of history.
As a scientist (albeit not a climate scientist), Hendrickx should appreciate that there are statistical outliers in any natural system, and that weather events such as those of 1918 do not contradict the overall increase in global temperatures. Nor do they diminish the reality that there has been a substantial and statistically significant increase in the incidence of catastrophic weather events such as this year's flooding, cyclone Yasi and the 2009 Victorian bushfires.
Recently, Swiss Re, the world's largest reinsurer, issued a fact sheet (readily available online), Climate sceptic arguments and their scientific background, which surveys the evidence and research. It concluded that heatwaves, hurricanes, cyclones and heavy rainstorms - all predicted under current climate models - have indeed become more frequent.
Swiss Re is a corporation concerned only with its economic bottom line. As a reinsurer, it bears the brunt of increased claims, and thus its executives are highly motivated to understand the science and employ the most sophisticated statistical analyses to the data.
Accusing them of being hysterics with ''no appreciation of history'' sounds a little hollow.

The unpublished retort...
Dear Editor,
Margaret Morgan (Letters 8/1) quotes a fact sheet from re-insurer Swiss Re to defend the opinions of chicken littles blaming the current spate of inclement weather on anthropogenic climate change. She states that reinsurers "are highly motivated to understand the science and employ the most sophisticated statistical analyses to the data". Margaret should know that a another large re-insurer, Munich Re, recently funded a study that examined trends in global disaster losses. Published in the journal Global Environmental Change this peer reviewed paper concluded "that, based on historical data, there is no evidence so far that climate change has increased the normalized economic loss from natural disasters." It seems that some reinsurers are more sophisticated than others. With the most tenuous of claims hyped and the peer reviewed literature completely ignored it appears the label "No appreciation of history" has been accurately applied.

The Paper: Eric Neumayer and Fabian Barthel, Normalizing economic loss from natural disasters: A global analysis, Global Environmental Change, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 18 November 2010, ISSN 0959-3780, DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.10.004.


See also Roger Pielke Jnr's Posts: 
New Peer-Reviewed Paper on Global Normalized Disaster Losses
"Independently of the method used,we find no significant upward trend in normalized disaster loss.This holds true whether we include all disasters or take out the ones unlikely to be affected by a changing climate. It also holds true if we step away from a global analysis and look at specific regions or step away from pooling all disaster types and look at specific types of disasters instead or combine these two sets of dis-aggregated analysis. Much caution is required in correctly interpreting these findings. What the results tell us is that, based on historical data, there is no evidence so far that climate change has increased the normalized economic loss from natural disasters."
Signals of Anthropogenic Climate Change in Disaster Data
Our 2006 Hohenkammer workshop with Munich Re reached this same conclusion. Our paper makes a pretty convincing and straightforward argument (in my view) and should make it clear why it is just plain wrong to attribute recent disasters (and even recent trends in disasters) to human-caused climate change.
Mixed Messages from Munich Re
Writing last year in the peer reviewed literature, Munich Re successfully replicated work that I have been involved in, reaching exactly the same conclusions that we did about hurricane losses in the Atlantic:

There is no evidence yet of any trend in tropical cyclone losses that can be attributed directly to anthropogenic climate change.

Knowing some of the scientists at Munich Re, and having high respect for their work and integrity, I can only conclude that the marketing department is not talking to the research department. 

Seems the Sydney Morning Herald partakes in misleading its readers as much as the ABC does.