Can we rely on UK journalists and the BBC to grasp even the basics of the threat posed by climate induced sea-level rise ? It seems not.<\/p>\n
Take this exchange on BBC Radio Norfolk, yesterday evening, 13 May. (For UK listeners still at http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/p01y79tt<\/a> from ca 02.41hrs).<\/p>\n The station\u2019s tea-time (drive-time) host Matthew Gudgin interviewed Anne Edwards the editor of the Great Yarmouth Mercury.\u00a0 A very nice lady.\u00a0 The discussion turned to floods and then melting ice in Antarctica and the Norfolk coast.<\/p>\n AE: \u201cthe river [Yare], that\u2019s being sorted out … flood defences … millions …. the coast, I don\u2019t know what the answer is to the coast … I heard on the radio yesterday that there is a glacier that\u2019s melting \u2013 erm\u00a0–\u00a0 in the Arctic, is that in the North ?\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure which is the Arctic and the Antarctic …\u201d<\/p>\n MG \u201cI think this one was the South Pole\u201d<\/p>\n AE: \u201cwas it the South Pole ? … oh\u00a0 it\u2019s not going to get us then [sic] \u2026 but if this glacier melts [half-laughs], it will mean sea level rise by two metres \u2013 well my house is going to be under water then.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s one of these things that\u2019s going to happen; we\u2019ll to have to live with it\u201d<\/p>\n MG: \u201cAnd Yarmouth is classified as an impoverished area …\u201d<\/p>\n The conversation moves on to Great Yarmouth being neglected by the rest of Norfolk … and the need to defend the coastline.<\/p>\n If only the melting Antarctic ice-water really would stay put at the South Pole.<\/p>\n As one friend who used to be a senior communications director for flood defences at the Environment Agency commented to me: \u201cthis is probably repeated on every local radio station up and down the country\u201d.<\/p>\n As revealing it is of both the state of knowledge about climate change and the realities of sea-level rise on behalf of both the presenter and the interviewee \u2013 herself an experienced journalist \u2013 it is all the more depressing because Great Yarmouth has already<\/a> been at the centre of major debates about exactly this subject.\u00a0 For example when agency Natural England managed to accidentally enrage public opinion by releasing a scenario showing it might not be possible to defend \u201cThe Broads\u201d, against sea-level rise.\u00a0 (The Broads are a low-lying freshwater marshland system near Great Yarmouth.\u00a0 The town itself has the sea on one side and the river on the other.)<\/p>\n On top of this, UEA (University of East Anglia), a major climate research centre, is just a few miles away and has had long running \u2018public outreach\u2019 programmes intended to raise awareness of \u2018climate issues\u2019.\u00a0 So this is perhaps the most vulnerable part of the UK facing climate-change-induced threats and ought to be one of the best informed.<\/p>\n If the consequences were not so serious, this case of \u201cAlan Partridge* Meets Cognitive Dissonance\u201d \u00a0would be funny.<\/p>\n *Alan Partridge<\/a> is a fictional TV character (a Norfolk Radio Presenter) invented by actor Steve Coogan.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Can we rely on UK journalists and the BBC to grasp even the basics of the threat posed by climate induced sea-level rise ? It seems not. Take this exchange on BBC Radio Norfolk, yesterday evening, 13 May. (For UK … Continue reading