BBC: SOD the scientific consensus! Look OUT! MEGA TSUNAMI is coming

Money talks and disasters sell, baby

The Catastrophe Men

The original thesis, entirely based on computer modelling, emerged in a 1999 paper, Cumbre Vieja Volcano – Potential Collapse and Tsunami at La Palma, Canary Islands by Steven Ward of UC Santa Cruz, and Simon Day at University College London.

The paper postulated that Cumbre Vieja Volcano could create a slide block with devastating effects thousands of miles away.

"For a 500km3 slide block running westward 60km down the offshore slope at 100m/s, our computer models predict that tsunami waves 10-25m high will be felt at transoceanic distances spanning azimuths that target most of the Atlantic basin."

“The programme had the deliberate look and feel of a 'disaster movie'”

- Colin Treagar, Complaints Director, BBC

But the story really took on a life of its own when a third figure took an interest. Bill McGuire's personal website describes him as a "much called-upon TV and radio pundit" and a pop science writer.

McGuire was a Higher Education geology lecturer before getting his big break thanks to the insurance industry. He became the Professor of Geohazards and Director at the AON Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre. The insurance business is keen to understand risks better, while critics add that it has a vested interest in exaggerating threats.

McGuire's pop science writing reveals a singular interest. The titles are: A Guide to the End of the World – Everything You Never Wanted to Know (2003), Seven Years to Save the Planet: The Questions and Answers (2008) and Waking the Giant – How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Volcanoes (2012). He presented The End of the World Reports for Channel 5, and the BBC Radio 4 series Disasters in Waiting, and the "Doomwatch" column for the BBC's own Focus magazine. He's also written for insurance trade titles and The Guardian, which warned that a tsunami could "swamp Britain".

McGuire had been studying volcanic landslides for over a decade, but only as his media career took off did he begin to promote the mega tsunami hypothesis.

The BBC had been drawn to the theory as soon as Ward and Day published their 1999 paper. In 2000, a Horizon devoted a film to the catastrophe hypothesis, featuring Day and McGuire.

"Most of the energy of the wave would head straight out across the Atlantic towards the United States, Bahamas and the Caribbean" predicted the programme.

The wave would be "almost inconceivably destructive, far bigger than anything ever witnessed in modern times. It will surge across the entire Atlantic in a matter of hours, engulfing the whole US east coast, sweeping away everything in its path up to 20km inland. Boston would be hit first, followed by New York, then all the way down the coast to Miami and the Caribbean".

A couple of years later, the US Discovery Channel followed up with an even more lurid "special". The BBC's 2013 film was a co-production with he Discovery Channel. It was largely a retread, albeit with a bigger special effects budget. Yet there were two significant differences. In 2013, the film-makers could now draw on a decade of literature debunking the theory. They didn't, a fact illustrated by the film's highly suggestive trailer:

"Now, using the very latest science, powerful computer models and the terrible evidence of all-too-recent events, this is the story of how some experts believe the greatest natural disaster in human history might one day unfold – the biggest wave ever seen – threatening cataclysmic destruction of some of the world’s greatest cities ..."

The producer hired for the Mega Tsunami job, Martin Pupp, had previously produced factual pieces for the Seconds from Disaster series and the Italian Cruise Ship Disaster. Do you see a pattern, here?