The global warming alarmists in the liberal media always latch on to events and blame them on climate change. It’s their regular M.O. But recent reports claiming climate change was responsible for drowning five Pacific Islands misrepresented the science.
This irritated Dr. Simon Albert, a researcher at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Queensland, one of the scientists whose paper was “misrepresented by alarmists,” according to Breitbart London.
ABCNews.com claimed on May 9, “Five Solomon Islands Disappear Into the Pacific Ocean as a Result of Climate Change.”
The article claimed that Dr. Albert’s paper meant the five islands were submerged “due to man-made climate change.” That ABC story did not include any opposing view or caveats.
A Reuters story published by The Guardian on May 10 claimed “Five Pacific islands lost to rising seas as climate change hits.” But a later piece from Karl Mathiesen also published by The Guardian admitted “Headlines ‘exaggerated’ climate link to sinking of Pacific islands.”
Mathiesen quoted Albert about the misrepresentation: “All these headlines are certainly pushing things a bit towards the ‘climate change has made islands vanish’ angle. I would prefer slightly more moderate titles that focus on sea-level rise being the driver rather than simply ‘climate change.’”’
Even the left-wing climate alarmist site Grist objected to claims that climate change cause the Solomon Islands to drown. On May 10, Grist published the article “Nobody knows if climate change sunk these islands or not.”
Grist quoted Mathiesen saying, “The major misunderstanding stems from the conflation of sea-level rise with climate change.”
“As a scientifically robust and potentially destructive articulative of climate change, sea-level rise as become almost synonymous with the warning of the planet,” Mathiesen said.
How have people come to that misunderstanding? It might have something to do with the barrage of media stories arguing that sea level rise is because of global warming.
Quartz and Gizmodo also blamed climate change, according to Grist. A Scientific American subhead called it “evidence” of “climate change effects,” even though the article itself admitted some of the higher “local” sea level rise in the Solomon Islands is “the result of natural climate variability.”
