ChrisC, the Royal society are the turkeys who assumed that CO2 would only mix in the upper 100m of ocean in their eagerness to scare the kids on ocean acidity. The problem was that thermohaline circulation does exist and some of the eddies from the Gulf Stream are more than a km deep. So to make such an assumption in a projection that extends 500 years into the future is not just silly, but downright incompetent ideology run amok.

On the question of Tuvaluans seeing themselves as climate refugees:

About 1993 I attended a five-day international conference held in Townsville, a response to an earlier UNCED conference (the name of the conference escapes me). It was attended by government ministers from Tuvalu and Kiribis. These ministers formally stated that they were seeking a planned migration of their people from their islands to Australia (and elsewhere) because of sealevel rise and climate change.

Tidal ranges are not fixed but subject to a dozen or more factors including barometric pressure. On islands that have a max altitude of 3m, a small sealevel rise means higher high tides to inundate more garden areas. Climate change means more intense storms and greater erosion of sandy soils. It is not so much a matter of seeing the sea rise above the islands, but of the dramatic adverse impacts of salinisation and storm erosion on the ability of people to subsist there.

"the record for the period 1978 – 1999 does show a sea level rise of .07 mm per year"

"the 0.07 figure when I admit it is possibly meaningless"

The first statement has a meaning. That meaning is wrong. "possibly meaningless" are weasel words. Bolt got it wrong. End of story.

Response to Col Rouge: For parallel universe see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_universe_%28fiction%29. And yes, this is the sense that I took your contribution. My last post has provided sufficient and reasonable response to this issue. Universities investigate misconduct and can take action. They do not need my help.

Response to GrahameY:
The disputed one I found in Pieser's list one was not scientific research but part of the annual report of the American Petroleum Geologists Association, who have a vested interest in downplaying the threat of climate change.

Think you found a disputing article in 1994?

If you are looking at Hulme, Zhao, Jiang, these scientists are saying that increasing temperatures in East Asia cannot be accounted for only by East Asian urbanisation. In other words, they are saying this is not a regional problem.

Perhaps you are looking at Lane, Nichols, Osbone. If so, this paper does not dispute anthropogenic global warming. It found the correlation between sunspot activity and temperature was weak (eg unconnected), but suggest more work to completely rule it out as a factor in determining anthropogenic global warming.

This is an example of scientific scepticism which allows us, as non-scientists, to have confidence in the objectivity of research.

I cannot find any disputing articles from 1994. Of course, this is a guessing game for us. Which article you have found?

And what is there to rely on in Pieser's email? Because he has deliberately misrepresented the abstracts and because he has altered the methodology he was supposed to test, and because of the word games played in his article -- Why expect him to be up-front and transparent in an email to you? He may have admitted errors to avoid scrutiny, but think he could still swindle you.

Did you know if a simple text search is done on "anthropogenic climate change" and "anthropogenic global warming" the computer will match 13 times? Perhaps that's how Pieser did his critique.

How can GrahameY take this sham with any seriousness?

And remember Bolt's change of words from "not one disputed" to "explicitly endorsed" shows he is in on the trick.

Is Poor old Andrew Bolte so far to the right that he may well step off his flat Earth one day?

If you are too far to the right or left you end up in a place labelled loony land.

If you don't believe in global warming and the dangers it has on our kids and grand kids then loony land you belong.

It is inconceivably illogical that people can't relate that the spewing of toxic pollutants into the environment will destroy the planet and that global warming will be a disasterous result of the opinions of balanced thinkers being out yelled by the loons.

We live in an enclosed little world and the more we pollute the more we put our futures at risk. Perhaps the people who don't understand the effects of pollutants on the planet are also those that pee in public pools... I wonder?

For those of you with a religious bent .... If your father gave you a new home and you destroyed it would he be pleased? Well in your beliefs God gave you this planet as home... try to respect his gift in the same way you trumpet you love him. I can't understand why religions aren't fighting the environmental cause on behalf of their God ... the alleged maker of planet Earth.

Chris O’Neill,

John Hunter corroborates Bolt’s claim that the 0.07 figure comes from the Australian National Tidal Facility. Hunter does not dispute the 0.07 figure’s validity, debunking it instead by attacking it via statistical adjustment. Along the way Hunter concludes that all sea level figures for Tuvalu are effectively meaningless owing to insufficient period of observation.

As a layman Bolt cannot be held accountable for dubious figures bandied about by scientists studying sea level at Tuvalu. If you have problem with the 0.07 you should take it up with the NTF.