When reporting on climate change, there's no need for hyperbole – it really is as shocking as it sounds

It’s sad but perhaps inevitable that some will only sit up and listen when the waves are lapping at their front doors

I write about climate change a lot. I write about it because there is an awful lot of research being done into it, but also because I think it is an important topic that people need to know about.

The problem is that for a slow-burning problem like climate change, it’s not often an event happens that is dramatic enough to really stand out from the background hum of scientific research and expert warnings. This means that even though this environmental catastrophe is – as I have tweeted – the “biggest news story in the world”, it seldom makes newspaper front pages.

That’s why, when the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was released in October, I was pleased that it got a good showing in The Independent. Though the report itself was written in a typically dispassionate style, within its pages were predictions of a world completely devoid of coral reefs and where millions were forced from their homes by rising tides. Built on the expertise of hundreds of scientists and thousands of studies, this document was definitely worth making a big deal out of.