The dramatic effect of climate change has been illustrated by a new atlas, whose compilers say they have had to re-draw and reclassify vast chunks of map because of global warming. The Daily Telegraph has a dramatic list of the changes along with some equally dramatic pictures. It is worth noting though that this atlas is a revision of the last version from four yeas ago, while the pictures and statistics for massive drops in ice caps and huge desertification are mostly over 50 or 100 years.

Still, a lot of papers have run with the story anyway. Metro captions pictures of the retreating Lake Chad from 1972 and 1987 as evidence of the “damaging effects of global warming” – totally ignoring human activity estimated to be responsible for around half the change. The rest of the article though says that the main culprits of the atlas changes are “climate change and ill-conceived irrigation projects”. AFP notes that there were 20,000 updates in the new edition, 3,500 of which were name changes.

All three papers quote the atlas editor-in-chief Mick Ashworth saying: “We can literally see environmental disasters unfolding before our eyes. We have a real fear that in the near future famous geographical features will disappear forever.”

He didn’t say: “We have a real fear that our £150 atlas will be made redundant by Google Earth.” But that was probably an oversight.

Image: The Andes Mountains / NASA