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Andrew Bolt gets a perfect score on global warming

By Tim Lambert - posted Thursday, 18 January 2007


Elsewhere, Heartland refers to this as a "study". The "study" is in reality no scientific study at all, but a news piece devoted almost entirely to Euan Nesbit's proposal to save the Kilimanjaro glacier by wrapping it in a giant tarp. The article never says who the "experts" are, nor does it quote any scientific studies supporting the claim.

Bolt didn't even get the year of the non-study right.

5: Gore shows scary maps of how New York and Shanghai would drown under 20 feet (600cm) of water if all Greenland's ice melted.

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In fact, various studies say Greenland's snow cover - and Antarctica's - is increasing or stable. The scientists of even the fiercely pro-warming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict seas will rise (as they have for centuries) not by Gore's 600cm by 2100, but by between 14 and 43cm.

This one is wrong. First, the IPCC projection for 2100 is 11-77cm. Second, recent evidence suggests that the eventual rise will be 400-600cm. Eric Steig writes:

Projecting forward in time, the implication is that our future will also see 4-6 m of sea level rise, and that - given the recent evidence for accelerated flow of both Greenland and Antarctic glaciers - this may occur much faster than we expect.

6: Gore claims the seas have already risen so high that New Zealand has had to take in refugees from drowning Pacific islands.

In fact, the Australian National Tidal Facility at Tuvalu in 2002 reported: "The historical record from 1978 through 199 indicated a sea level rise of 0.07 mm per year." Or the width of a hair.

Says Auckland University climate scientist Chris de Frietas: "I can assure Mr Gore that no one from the South Pacific islands has fled to New Zealand because of rising seas."

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This one is wrong. The South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project 2005 report on Tuvalu says (PDF 1.66MB):

The sea level trend to date is +5.0 mm/year but the magnitude of the trend continues to vary widely from month to month as the data set grows. Accounting for the precise levelling results and inverted barometric pressure effect, the trend is +4.3 mm/year. A nearby gauge, with a longer record but less precision and datum control, shows a trend of +0.9 mm/year.

And despite de Freitas' denial, people have fled to New Zealand from Tuvalu:

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First published in Deltoid - ScienceBlog on September 15, 2006. It is republished as part of "Best Blogs of 2006" a feature in collaboration with Club Troppo, and edited by Ken Parish, Nicholas Gruen et al.



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About the Author

Tim Lambert is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales. He blogs at Deltoid ScienceBlogs.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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