Earlier this week I claimed that scientists should take some responsibility for media misinterpretations of their work. Here is an example where scientists are wrongly blaming the media.

Today Science magazine published a paper on sea level rise by Tad Pfeffer (of the University of Colorado) and colleagues. the paper claims to have ruled out a sea level rise of more than 2 meters by 2100. The guys over at Real Climate have taken issue with the suggestion that 2 meters of sea level rise represents a step back from claims of higher potential increases. They write (emphasis added):

. . .we’ve just seen the initial media coverage where this result is being spun as a downgrading of predictions! (exemplified by this Reuters piece, drawing mainly from the U. Colorado press release). This is completely backwards. We stress that no-one (and we mean no-one) has published an informed estimate of more than 2 meters of sea level rise by 2100. Tellingly, the statement in the paper that suggests otherwise has no reference.

There have certainly been incorrect assertions and headlines implying that 20 ft of sea level by 2100 was expected, but they are mostly based on a confusion of a transient rise with the eventual sea level rise which might take hundreds to thousands of years. And before someone gets up to say Al Gore, we’ll point out preemptively that he made no prediction for 2100 or any other timescale.

Real Climate helpfully points to a paper by Jim Hansen that they claim says nothing about a sea level rise greater than 2 meters:

The nearest thing I can find is Jim Hansen who states that “it [is] almost inconceivable that BAU climate change would not yield a sea level change of the order of meters on the century timescale”. But that is neither a specific prediction for 2100, nor necessarily one that is out of line with the Pfeffer et al’s bounds.

Real Climate concludes with an admonition of those ignorant reporters:

Headlines like that in the Reuters piece (or National Geographic) are therefore doing a fundamental disservice to the public understanding of the problem.

Tsk. Tsk. Bad media.

However, a close look at the Hansen article linked by Real Climate suggests that they aren’t really telling the whole story. Here is what Hansen writes (emphasis added):

As a quantitative example, let us say that the ice sheet contribution is 1 cm for the decade 2005–15 and that it doubles each decade until the West Antarctic ice sheet is largely depleted. That time constant yields a sea level rise of the order of 5 m this century. Of course I cannot prove that my choice of a ten-year doubling time for nonlinear response is accurate, but I am confident that it provides a far better estimate than a linear response for the ice sheet component of sea level rise under BAU forcing.

This paper led Joe Romm to write the following at Grist:

Sea level rise of 5 meters in one century? Even if most scientists will not say so publicly, that catastrophe is a real possibility, according to the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute Of Space Studies.

So at least Joe Romm interpreted Hansen’s paper to mean that sea level could conceivably rise by 5 meters by 2100. Real Climate’s claim that “no-one (and we mean no-one) has published an informed estimate of more than 2 meters of sea level rise by 2100″ is not just incorrect, but extremely misleading.

Not only is the head guy at Real Climate employed by Jim Hansen, one of the most prominent climate scientists around, but Real Climate goes so far as to point in very misleading fashion to the very paper in which Hansen suggests that a prediction of 5 meters by 2100 is far more accurate than predictions of less than about a meter and a half. So while it is indeed frustrating that some in the media get things wrong, the best in the media pretty much always get things right. And on sea level rise, it looks like they’ve gotten things right. One thing members of the media won’t like much is being treated like fools.

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