Did ABC Fabricate Projections of an Underwater Southern Florida? (Updated)

By Marc Sheppard

Yesterday, the White House released an over-the-top climate report, meant to bolster waning public support (through fear-mongering) for the administration’s disastrous carbon taxation scheme. But as overly-alarming as was the document itself, its portrayal by ABC’s crack meteorologist Sam Champion on today’s Good Morning America may have redefined hysterical reporting.

Over a dramatic video of surging seas, raging wildfires and hammering hurricanes, an ominous voice warns that “climate change is happening all over America and if we don’t act now it will drastically affect where and how we live in the future.” And then offers this stark advice: “If you’re thinking of retiring in Florida, think Twice.”

Proclaiming that “sea levels are expected to rise three to five feet by late this century,” the video flashes the cover of the Obama administration’s Global Climate Change Impacts In the United States report [PDF]. Through the magic of animation, the report is seen opening to a page depicting a Section titled “Coastal areas are at an increasing risk from sea-level rise and storm surge.” A graphic of the Sunshine State below claims to represent “Florida with 3-feet of sea-level rise” and warns that “Areas in Red would be underwater with a 3-foot sea-level rise predicted this century.” That same voice-over (Champions?) identifies the sunken regions:

“This 13 agency report shows Southern Florida disappearing, with the Everglades, Florida Keys and parts of Cape Canaveral under water.”

True, the report dismisses even IPCC AR4’s worst-case predictions of 10 to 23 inches SLR by 2100 as faulty and instead claims that “average estimates under higher emissions scenarios are for sea-level rise between 3 and 4 feet by the end of this century.” It even suggests as much as 6.5 feet.

Alarmist nonsense, to be sure. But nowhere in this report can either the page ABC highlighted or any of its claims of Southern Florida and the Keys doing a lost continent of Atlantis impression be found. That page, shown at 0:36, simply does not exist in the report. So then, exactly where did it come from?

Marc Morano of Climate Depot has put together a “Sampling of Scientific Reactions to [the government] report,” which includes Meteorologist Joe D'Aleo’s assessment that “this is not a work of science but an embarrassing episode for the authors and NOAA [primary report contributors, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration].” D’Aleo points out that they’ve “delivered a document even more alarmist than the UN IPCC.”

And yet, not alarming enough, it would appear, for the Waxman-Markey proponents over at ABC.