Kiwiblog

The latest Blunt.

Ian Wishart blogs on how Al Gore recently remarked that we could have a 6 to 7 metre sea level rise within 10 years.

I think politicians like Al Gore actually damage the very cause they purport to support, with their hysterical claims.

This would be an increase of 67 cms a year.

Now the latest IPCC projections deal with six scenarios. The best case scenario has an increase of 18 cm to 38 cm. The worst case scenario is 26 cm to 59 cm. And these are over 110 years.

So the IPCC says the sea level rise will probably range from 0.16 cm/year to 0.54 cm/year. And that is undesirable, hence it is sensible to have in place a price on carbon and incentives to reduce emissions.

But what a difference – 0.16 to 0.54 cm a year, compared to Al Gore’s hysteria of a possible 67 cm a year.

Now some will say that the Gore scenario is not impossible. Of course it isn’t. Few things are impossible. It is possible in the next 24 hours a meteor will hit the Earth also. But is such hysteria a useful contributor to the debate?

UPDATE: The original news story refers to 6-7 metres, not 67 metres. I should check original sources more often, but good thing on the Internet is people pick up errors quickly. I would point out that is still a prediction of an average 670 mm a year, compared to the 0.54 mm from the IPCC. It means Gore is out by only three magnitudes, instead of four.

UPDATE2: Have rewritten article to reflect timeframe and also correct mms to cms for IPCC. Wow this is a dogs breakfast of a post. My bad. Commenters have also usefully pointed out the 10 year timeframe applies to the North Pole ice cap disappearing in winter months within 5 – 10 years, and not the Greenland melting which would be the 6-7 metre rise. Again I welcome people picking me up on this, and this is why links to sources are so important.

But let’s not lose sight of the big issue over whether sea level increases this century will be measured in metres or millimetres.

I was going to post some odds for sea level rises and challenge people to take them up. But that may get me in trouble with DIA gambling laws.

So let me try it this way. If you think the sea levels will increase by more than the 4th IPCC assessment report, then tell me what you think the average global increase will be by 2015 and 2020? And maybe we can have a private wager on that occuring. Or just have the honour of seeing who is right.

Now again I am not saying there will be no increase. I am disputing how large it may be.

Like a medieval religious zealot, Al Gore claims that those who still doubt that global warming is caused by man are the equivalent of those who think the moon landing was faked. This says more about Gore than anyone else. Scientific debate is in fact the exact opposite of lunatic conspiracy theories.

However while there is a fairly wide consensus that greenhouse gas emissions contribute to warming, there is still a lot of uncertainity about the speed and extent of this, and especially how nature itself responds to external factors like increased greenhouse gases. We are generally dealing with theories and projections, not measurable fact.

The Australian has an article on the extent of climate change:

Duffy: “Can you tell us about NASA’s Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we’re now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?”

Marohasy: “That’s right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you’ve got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you’re going to get a positive feedback. That’s what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite … (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they’re actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you’re getting a negative rather than a positive feedback.”

Duffy: “The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?”

Marohasy: “That’s right … These findings actually aren’t being disputed by the meteorological community. They’re having trouble digesting the findings, they’re acknowledging the findings, they’re acknowledging that the data from NASA’s Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they’re about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide.”

The view being put forward by Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs, seems to be that greenhouse gas emissions do certainly cause warming, but that other weather processes may be compensating and limiting the effect of those emissions.

Hat Tip: Not PC