Victoria’s lone-daily newspaper appears to be getting the message. In a recent editorial , the Times Colonist – sometimes referred to as The Grey Lady for its milquetoast news coverage and commentary – admitted “the climate is changing,” and said “Climate change is something we need to acknowledge and deal with.”

The TC then ticked off the supporting evidence: Storms are getting more violent, polar ice is melting, glaciers are disappearing. “That means sea levels are rising,” The TC said in its December 8 issue. “And the scientific consensus is that greenhouse-gas emissions are a factor.”

As DeSmogBlog did a few days earlier, the TC took issue with the Sierra Club of B.C. for its alarmist projections and scary maps, which showed many Victoria homes disappearing if sea levels rise by six metres. Furthermore, the Sierra Club said, a rise of 25 metres would likely inundate much of Greater Victoria.

The projections go too far, the TC said, but even if the sea level rises one metre this century, as predicted in a study published in Science magazine this year, “the global impact would be enormous.”

“The flood maps don’t really help the cause,” the newspaper said. “When skeptics still abound, extreme predictions, even if they have some basis in truth, don’t help. But that doesn’t mean the threat from global warming is not real.”

Elsewhere in the same issue, a dispatch from London says Prince Charles is putting his money where his environmentalist mouth is by swapping gas-guzzling private planes and helicopters for commercial flights, train journeys and biodiesel cars.

According to the longtime champion of green causes, action is needed now to avoid leaving a ruined planet to the next generation.

“From February, we are going to look at the diary and see what we can do to reduce our carbon footprint,” said a spokeswoman for the prince on condition of anonymity.