Sorry, but the media do have a lot to answer for. Right now, the builders at my house are playing Alan Jones on the radio loud and clear, where he's disputing climate science yet again. His arguments are nonsensical but nevertheless he sounds so convinced of his position it is no wonder people are confused. It was the same in the laundromat the other day, with Alan Jones being played so loudly you couldn't talk, let alone think. In addition, the tabloid press is read widely and Andrew Bolt is touted as the most popular columnist in the country. With his taking his anti-science attitude to extremes, again, no wonder the public are turning off the issue. Add to that the press that Tony Abbott gets as he runs around the country spruiking his anti-carbon tax message. Any self-respecting journalist should be giving him short shrift. Any journalist reporting on climate change should have some rudimentary science but unfortunately they're a rare beast. Twenty years ago, it was common for journalists to confuse the hole in the ozone layer with climate change. They're not much better now.
I'm not sure what the significance of these sea-level graphs are but even if they lead to "only" 0.8metre sea-level rise by 2100, then we still have a major problem, not least with our own coastal properties, but with the probable influx of environmental refugees.
Finally, don't dredge up the East Anglia 'Climategate' issue again. The scientists have been exonerated over and over again. Why don't you address the theft of these emails just prior to the Copenhagen conference? There ARE criminals out there but they sure ain't the scientists.

oh great another Journo thinking he can do science by Google and asking a few friends. Can't wait for Mark to tell us how to unify gravity and QED, perhaps then after lunch he can tell us the meaning of life the universe and everything else. That’s just a soon as the talking points are posted on some right wing blog.

Editors of OLO seems to find plently of theese types, seems to me it proves the point very well. If 99% of people who have studied the problem in a scientific way think it's happening then that should be reflented in what Jurnos say but that is not the case. Then again journo's stopped reporting facts in the press a long time ago.

Try as I might, I find it hard to discern Mark’s key message here. He presents two interesting sets of sea level data. The satellite measurements show a rise of 3.1 mm a year over 18 years from 1992. Tidal gauge data over a whole century show a rise averaging around 2 mm a year. Yes, the two sets do seem to disagree. And the tidal set is not on a straight line, clearly shown in the lower ‘rate’ section of the graph (essentially the first differential of the upper graph). What’s more, if sea level continued to rise linearly at these rates it would fall short of the 0.8 metre rise by the end of this century ‘backed’ by the Climate Commission.

Mark says that these facts, while interesting to him and to me, are ignored by or unknown to the media.

And this is evidence for some kind of conspiracy to hide the truth? Give me a break.

As for oversold claims, people do exaggerate. I enjoyed reading Future Babble. It reinforced my innate scepticism. But it hardly proves that every projection must be wrong. Sceptics need to be discriminating. It’s actually not too hard.

First, thanks Mark / Curm for the information (graphs) about sea level rise, reference (Jevrejeyva). This is positive because it contributes to informed debate.

But your sceptic bias comes out loud and clear and contrary to the evidence you have presented. Those graphs alarm me; I dont see them as cause for complacency or scepticism. The 'up and down one' refers for varying rates of SL increase from 0-4 mm over the last 100 years. That's not surprising to me as a scientist; things are never constant in nature as there are so many factors acting. The alarming thing is that it's a net steady increase in SL, accelerating somewhat after about 1920's. And that's without the possible Greenland ice shelf collapse and release of tundra and seabed methane/ clathrates. (which you fail to address).

I think we all have bias; I certainly have as you know towards you so-called 'global warming camp'. Maybe it's becasue I spent some of my formative years pumping fossil fuels into machines that cleared scrub and put in crops at an alarming rate and now barely 30 years later we see the spread of salinity. It's the alarming rate of our (man's) impact that is alarming.

I sincerely hope that as with the millennium bug we are are wrong and the sky wont fall in after all. But for every such comparison I could give contrary one - try onset of WW2 - Chamberlain - 'if at first we dont succeed.....'(let's keep hoping and doing nothing but negotiating) and then the unthinkable happened Poland was invaded....

What makes 'climate/ fossil fuel action' a no brainer is that even if global warming is a complete furphy (which most and I think even you don't believe) then there is still the issue of peak oil / peak coal. Perhaps it comes down to 'do we care about furure generations or don't we?'

PS comment about Jones' rabid scpeticism resonates. This is not reporting or journalism, it's opinion gone mad and unchallenged; unfortuantely much of the mainstream media has this bias.

Mark, it is interesting that you should blame the media for such confusion in the climate debate. Huge amounts of money and reports by tame scientific writers or spin Doctors, on behalf of major industrial polluters, would have to be the biggest contributors to uncertainty. There is no debate, or at least there should not be. The science is quite clear, even in the Critical Decade.

“There is no credible evidence that changes in incoming solar radiation can be the cause of the current warming trend.”

“Neither multi-decadal or century-scale patterns of natural variability, such as the Medieval Warm Period, nor shorter term patterns of variability, such as ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) or the North Atlantic Oscillation, can explain the globally coherent warming trend observed since the middle of the 20th century.”

“There is a very large body of internally consistent observations, experiments, analyses, and physical theory that points to the increasing atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, with carbon dioxide (CO2) the most important, as the ultimate cause for the observed warming.”

Those three quotes come from The Critical Decade and are not in the lease confusing. Of the Human emissions of CO2 debate:

“The Global Financial Crisis led to a drop in 2009 of 1.3% in the global emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion, in sharp contrast to the average annual rise in fossil fuel CO2 emissions of 3.2% for the 2000-2008 period” (Friedlingstein et al. 2010).

The figures I have seen in the IPCC report, the Garnaut Report and the recent Garnaut Review, all agree with The Critical Decade report that Climate change exists, is man made and is now accelerating. The climate’s position on the Hocky Stick Curve is well advanced and the next ten years are critical for our survival. If we in the “climate camp” are wrong we will celebrate. If we are right and governments continue to procrastinate it will be too late to argue.

Mark Lawson here.

Several posters want to refight the climate debate. I really wasn't going to get into it except to point out that the climate commission report added nothing new. A few have tried to claim that because the experts agree (and mostly they do) that there can be no question, and that therefore the media should not report the mavricks. This is the very point the article refutes.

I have been there, done that and the arguement doesn't work. The fact that experts agree is, in itself, completely meaningless. The Dan Gardner book I cite points to long running research in which experts were asked to make forecasts in their own areas. The result: forecasts by experts are no better than those of laymen. Those who research forecasting as a subject in its own right have long known this to be case.

So the question is not what credentials the experts have, but what proven, demonstrable track record does the theory have? Answer: none. However, the point is that the media is not set up to exclude viewpoints but to include them, even if these are viewpoints that "the experts" don't think it is valid. It may exclude mavricks if the theory has an established track record - vaccination or evolution, or quantum dynamics, say - but not otherwise. The media is not set up to adjudicate but to report.

Roses1 mentions sea heights but seems to be anxious to explain away what I wrote. the point is that it is not really possible to tell anything much at all from the figures to date. My very brief review of the literature indicates that the 0.2 mm a year the commission report cites hides big variations. There is research indicating that we are at the top of one such variation. So to just cite the 2mm a year figure and then the 3.1 mm a year figure is clearly misleading. If Roses1 has an explanation for why it shouldn't be called misleading then lets hear it.