The Guardian ran a misleading headline on climate scientists' claim

[ProSense]

Climate Scientists Withdraw Journal Claims Of Limit To Rising Sea Levels

Scientists who challenged the possibility of catastrophic sea level rise in coming decades have retracted their argument. Mark Siddall, whose paper claimed sea level rise from global warming could not be more than 82 centimeters (32 inches) by 2100 — despite other estimates of up to 1.9 meters — asked for the conclusions published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience to be retracted, accepting corrections from researchers who had made the higher estimates. The Guardian misleadingly presented the news with the headline, “Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels“:

Study claimed in 2009 that sea levels would rise by up to 82cm by the end of century – but the report’s author now says true estimate is still unknown.

If all one read was the introduction, a reader might get the false impression that sea level rise from global warming is in doubt. The misleading Guardian headline was picked up — as per usual — by the Drudge Report and Marc Morano’s conspiracy site Climate Depot. Right-wing bloggers, unsurprisingly, without any comprehension> of the story:

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[Birthmark]

1. Yeah, the denialists are running the full court press...

...in the UK. Apparently, they labor under the misapprehension that science is decided in the media. Of course, they could just be trying to stall political action for their paymasters in the fossil fuel biz... ;)

[zulchzulu]

2. Yep, I noticed Drudge used the news headline to try to pass it off as... yunno...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x191424

[Igel]

3. And if people read just your post you'd conclude that

Siddall retracted his claims because he thought his estimates were too low. As he said, he doesn't know if the correct estimate is higher or lower than the one he said, he just said he didn't have sufficient grounds for making his claim.

He's and his coauthors are being scientists, not politicians or advocates. Let science work. It doesn't have to be the handmaiden to politics. It goes on just fine without politics. In fact, it goes on much *better* without politics in most cases.

That *other* climate scientists have other claims is beside the point. Oh--I'm sorry, that's the only point you think that the article should properly make. Because not only should science be handmaiden to politics, but so should journalism. Which is the problem. It's been noted that the IPCC always erred in one direction. (Actually, this is possibly a false statement; nobody has an interest in showing where the IPCC erred in not making the strongest claim possible for AGW, and so it's likely that any such errors have been unnoticed. However, the claim is still true enough because scientists aren't immune from confirmation bias, esp. when the science is judged settled.)


The story is that Siddall retracted his claims. The story is that Siddall, whose writings were widely touted as supporting the IPCC and whose findings were widely cited in the media, has no current claims and has recanted his writing without choosing sides. View this as a printed correction.

There may be another story about other scientists, but it's one that's been widely told and therefore not so interesting--it's not news, it's "olds". That people on one side of the AGW war feels it's necessary to ignore one story while the other side feels it's necessary to misinterpret the story, are both stories in their own right. It's just that neither has squat to do with science. And neither is particularly new.