This bit of Lamberts response is very revealing.

"5. Sea levels are currently rising at 3mm/year. 11,000 years of that gives 33m of sea level rise, not 6m. And, of course, if Greenland starts melting in a serious way the rate of sea level rise will increase a lot. In any case, Gore did not say how long it would take to get 6m of sea level rise, so what he said was not wrong".

Note his capacity to extrapolate to a moronic extreme without actually bothering to check if there was enough ice to deliver that kind of sea level rise. The facts are that most of current ice melting is ocean ice not land based ice.

This ice will melt faster than land based ice sheets because sea ice gets warmed from above and below from the ocean. It is also much thinner (average depth of Greenland ice is circa 1500m) so there is less critical cold mass. And clearly, only the upper surface of a land based ice sheet is exposed to warmer agents (air) so the 1499m of ice below the surface cannot even begin to melt until the upper layer has melted.

So to extrapolate from existing sea ice melt rates, beyond the point when the sea ice has melted, is either ignorant or misleading. Some have even speculated that the melt rate could speed up when there is only land based ice left but this is highly improbable as the two types of ice have entirely different melting characteristics.

But Lambert's attempt to weasle out by suggesting that Gore did not actually say when this 6m rise would take place betrays a willingness on his part to misinform by omission. Either way it is still dishonest. And both Lambert and Gore have blown their credibility.

Tim, the answer to your question is that not all scientists agree with the "consensus" on this issue, so I'm not claiming this is an area of science where "all the scientists are wrong".

A quick read of the Media Watch site also reveals that Peiser does not admit that he was wrong in any fundamental sense at all. "Despite all claims to the contrary, there is a small community of sceptical researchers that remains extremely active. Hardly a week goes by without a new research paper that questions part or even some basics of climate change theory."

He also points out that from the 928 papers analysed by Oreskes (who is an historian, not a scientist, but I won't hold that against her), only 13 explicitly endorse the "consensus" view.

Your claims can only be characterised as deeply dishonest.

For those who think that it doesn't really matter if the science is wrong, or exaggerated, because phasing out carbon-based energy is a net benefit, I'd say "Think again". Human progress depends on good science. It's one thing for salesmen like politicians to lie or exaggerate, and another for people like scientists who are paid to tell the truth to do the same thing. You are sacrificing the integrity of the whole on the basis that the means justify the ends. Not only is that corrupting of the whole area of science, but it potentially means that things that we ought to worry about are being ignored to pander to your preconceptions.

If, for example, cosmic radiation is a better predictor of rainfall than CO2 climate models, then by concentrating on one when we should be looking at the other we risk the lives and livelihoods of billions to phase out a form of energy that may have limited, or no, net detrimental effects.

Perseus, you said "It is also much thinner (average depth of Greenland ice is circa 1500m) so there is less critical cold mass. And clearly, only the upper surface of a land based ice sheet is exposed to warmer agents (air) so the 1499m of ice below the surface cannot even begin to melt until the upper layer has melted."

Ice sheet dynamics is one area where the computer models have failed spectacularly. Yet, funnily enough, it seems to be a computer model that you give credence to. Nevertheless, you and other sceptics can have fun arguing for a few years yet.

But surely the billions of dollars being wasted on global warming prevention world-wide is of far more concern than a handful of AGW fanatics on OLO? Surely it is this expenditure that will adversely impact on living standards. My point is that there are areas of research that could be of benefit whether catastrophic climate change turns out to be real or a wild prediction, or anything in between. For example, I have read speculation that President Bush is about to announce a considerable increase in renewable fuels support. Such efforts could bring far greater peace and prosperity to the world than the United States Military ever could.

There is a fundamental difference between claims made in peer-reviewed scientific papers and what someone is saying is being said on a global-warming-denialist blog. Gore was referring to peer-reviewed scientific claims. Peiser no longer disputes Oreskes' study and thus Gore is correct to quote it. Peiser can talk about other, fundamentally less significant things, if he wants to but they are not relevant to Gore's statement. Contrary to Bolt's claim that "the debate is real", there is no debate in peer-reviewed scientific papers.

Regarding the original subject of this thread, I think the award is not just for the original posting but also for motivating the comments that it did. There were some very informative comments in that thread (far more informative than this thread).

BBGun,

Bolt claimed that the sea level rise was 0.07 mm/year, which is effectively zero, when it is in fact rising by 4.3 mm/year. He was wrong and you won't admit it. So sea levels are most definitely rising. Have Tuvaluans left the island as a result? I found you examples of Tuvaluans who said that was why they left and all you did was call them liars. Obviously there isn't any way to convince you of anything you don't want to believe since you dismiss all contrary evidence as lies.

Perseus,

You accuse me not bothering to check if there was enough ice to produce 6m of sea level rise. There is, and you can even check the calculations yourself. Take the average depth of the Greenland icesheet, multiply by the area of Greenland and divide by the area of the oceans and tell us what you get.

Then you start talking about melting sea ice. When sea ice melts it doesn't affect sea level. This is because of Archimedes principle, but hey, that just another one of those scientific consensuses so you probably don't believe that either. Why don't you try putting some ice cubes in a glass of water and seeing if the water level changes when they melt.

Gore didn't say when the 6m rise would occur because nobody knows how long it would take. It is typical of you that you would accuse him of dishonesty because, unlike you, he doesn't make things up.

GrahamY,

One of the things Gore mentions is the huge difference between the scientific literature and popular media on the global warming question. Gore reports the results of two studies. One, by Naomi Oreskes, looked at a sample of 928 papers in scientific journals and found that not one disagreed with the scientific consensus: that humans are responsible for most of the warming in the last few decades. The other, by the Boykoffs, looked at a sample of 636 news stories in major US newspapers and found that 53% gave equal weight to the view that climate change is exclusively caused by natural processes. The debate about the existence of AGW is only in the popular media.

Bolt's response to this is to claim that Gore was wrong because Benny Peiser said that it wasn't 0 out of 928 but 34 out of 928. But Peiser has at last admitted that he was wrong: he now says 1 out 928. And he's wrong about the last one, since it wasn't peer reviewed. So Gore was right when he said 0 out of 928, and Bolt was wrong when he said 34 out of 928. And Gore was right when he said that the debate in the popular media does not appear in the scientific literature and Bolt was wrong when he contradicted him.

And after Peiser admitted that he was 97% wrong in counting articles that disputed the consensus you conclude he must be 100% accurate in counting the articles that explicitly accept the consensus. He got that wrong too, you know -- there were many more than 13 and in fact most of the articles accepted the consensus just as Oreskes stated.

Oreskes is a historian, but you "forgot" to mention that she's a historian of science, holds a science degree, and her area of research is the development of scientific consensus. Peiser, on the other hand, is an anthropologist and this topic is not his area of expertise.

Finally, your abuse of me is evidence that you know you've lost this argument.