Tim. it's not "abuse" to suggest you are being fundamentally dishonest, just a dispassionate assessment from the editor of this journal. If you weren't included in the BB06 collection you wouldn't have got a guernsey for publication in OLO for this essay.

There is a debate in the scientific literature, and there are many scientists who question the magnitude of the effects of CO2 forcing, as well as how significant it is, and what other forcings may be acting. I deliberately raised the issue of cosmic radiation because it would appear from the latest scientific research that it has an effect on cloud and rain formation, which should also have a flow-on effect in terms of warming.

Presumably this research will appear in peer reviewed journals, even if Oreskes didn't get to count it.

Peiser checked Oreskes study on the parameters that she originally supplied. They weren't the ones she actually used, so he adjusted his critique when this was pointed out to him. He still maintains that she has miscounted and misrepresented, so you are wrong to say he admits he is wrong.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of an assessment that in the US the popular press gives skeptics around 50% of the coverage on the issue, but I can vouch for the fact that it is not the case in Australia.

I do know that when Ian Castles wanted to publish on the question of whether purchasing power parity or market exchange rates should be used for calculating CO2 scenarios I was one of the few publishers who would give him space, even though his position was obviously the correct one, and the IPCC now appears to accept his position, even though villifying him in the first instance. That's one reason I got specifically interested in these issues. When a former head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics is being villified by UN bureaucrats for being right, something stinks.

Having now paid a lot of attention to the greenhouse debate, that something is plural!

I find that the greenhouse warming debate is still going through phases of ascertaining the intensity of the problem or if there is a problem at all by which conservative, right wing liberals such as Bolton would have us believe. I just find it astounding that although the evidence is there, there continues to be bickering as to how serious it is.. Global warming is a problem, which we have yet to discover its seriousness, but it is not some whimsical fantasy brought up by "Islamic extremist sympathising, left wing jingoist protagonists" but by actual scientific research.. its dangerous to mix politics with science as certain people stand to loose too much vested interests, due to the fact that if there is a serious problem found it would call for certain levels restructuring and economic shifts within political societies around the globe.

GrahamY you are absolutely right that there is new scientific research on the effects on cloud and rain formation, and i recommend viewing this documentary made by BBC about this newly founded problem called global dimming.
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=1027879546389218797

Only view this documentary as an informative piece, as I don't intend to present it as a scare mongering tactic.. as for one I am not a hardcore environmentalist, just someone thats concerned

BBgun says that:

"Bolt’s claim, which is, by the way, correct: the record for the period 1978 – 1999 does show a sea level rise of .07 mm per year."

Where is this shown to be correct, or do you want to quote something that says it is not correct and look lke an idiot for doing so?

Chris O'Neill writes:"Where is this shown to be correct, or do you want to quote something that says it is not correct and look lke an idiot for doing so?"

The source I linked and quoted above says that the .07 mm figure is correct but also indicates, in the opinion of the author, that it is possibly inappropriate to quote the figure out of context. I acknowledged this earlier. If you want to prove Bolt wrong you need to find the 2002 report he cites -- Lambert cites a 2005 report -- and show that he got it wrong.

Your petty quibbling is meant to distract from the real issues here. Rising seas have not forced Tuvaluans to flee to New Zealand and Gore was incorrect to make this claim.

Again with the idiot jibe. Takes one to know one, so there.

Readers can get Peiser's response to Mediawatch's questions at the program's transcript http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1777013.htm rather than rely on what anyone says on this forum. Quoting from that transcript:

"And when we pressed him to provide the names of the articles, he eventually conceded - there was only one.

(Ad Hoc Committee on Global Climate Issues: Annual report, by Gerhard LC and Hanson BM, AAPG Bulletin 84 (4): 466-471 Apr 2000)

Peiser says he withdrew his criticism in March this year."

This article, published in the Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, was not peer-scientist-reviewed and thus was not on Oreskes' list of peer-scientist-reviewed articles, even though Peiser's list included non-reviewed articles. Thus Peiser no longer validly criticises Oreskes' claim that:

"Remarkably, none of the papers ("..published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003,..") disagreed with the consensus position."

The consensus position being that: "[M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations"

Peiser's response now is that: "Hardly a week goes by without a new research paper that
questions part or even some basics of climate change theory." To support this he cites a denialist-blog article that says:

"The greenhouse effect must play some role. But those who are absolutely certain that the rise in temperatures is due solely to carbon dioxide have no scientific justification."

i.e. a blatant strawman, even if it was made by a person who calls himself a scientist. Newspaper quotes of strawman statements by someone with some involvement in scientific research does not amount to debate in the scientific literature, unless you want to call newspapers scientific journals.

Part 1
Fester:

Point well taken on ice sheet dynamics. I presume that your are refering to the unexpected break up of sections of the Larsen B ice shelf in 1998 and 2002, and accelerated slip of glaciers in Greenland. See the real climate post on this if you're interested:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/06/ice-sheets-and-sea-level-rise-model-failure-is-the-key-issue/

I confess the models have failed to predict this occurence, and may be underestimating the rate of melt. Point well taken, good spotting.

However, I'll take this oppertunity to point out that climate models have accurately predicted the increase in snow falling on the center of both Antartica and Greenland. Wikipedia has a good discussion of this:


Perseus,

"One does not need a model to multiply the area of Greenland ice by it's thickness and then divide by the current melt rate to get the number of years it will take to melt. It is called a calculator. "

You're making the (flawed) assumption that the melting of glaciers will remain constant. Reconstructions of past climate events, models and GRACE observations show that this is not, and has never been the case. Melting accelerates and decelerates. Snow accumulates and glaciers melt, move and calve ice bergs. Honestly, there are a bizzilion sources on this. Just google glacial retreat. The wikipedia site is a good start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850

"Ditto for sea level rise"
Are you including thermal expansion of water, subsidience of land as glacial mass is removed, melt from West Antarctica, melt from patagonia and tropcial glaciers, ...

My point is that climate is complicated. Assuming static or constant parameters can get you into trouble.

"And this bollocks about tipping points which will cause a rapid melt of only 1000 years is nothing more than an excuse for suspending logic. They provide no explanation of what this tipping point may be triggered by..."