[jbotz]

Well, I've lived on three different continents and during this time always read a wide range of news sources in several different languages, and MY life experience is that what you're saying didn't happen, and I don't believe that the media in any country are all that different. Oh, science reporting is atrocious and the media just love to sensationalize everything, but at the end of the day with respect to global warming what I've seen in the media from all over the world has been consistently downplaying the seriousness of it and including denier opinions "for balance".

I think that you're misremembering, and I'm calling you on it. If you want to insist, then show some evidence. Give us one link to a mainstream news source (from any country) which actually said during the last couple of decades that global sea-levels would rise by "a life-changing amount" by 2021. The Internet archive may help.