Port Guns Fire!

Well, well, well - here comes a "rapid response team" to debunk Lomborg.

  This is getting ridiculous.  Claim number 1, about sea level rises claims the following:

"Bjorn’s claim that the IPCC report says that global sea levels are not likely to rise more than about 20 inches by 2100 is incorrect. You have to remember that the sea level projections in the 2007 IPCC report had a big asterisk by them. The report was very clear that the 20 inch projection was probably too low because it did not account for the kinds of dynamic changes in the glaciers and ice sheets that we see today. In fact, the IPCC report was careful to say that they could not place any upper bound on the amount of sea level rise that is likely over the next century."

   Taking this in reverse order, the "no upper bound" seems to be the standard hedging one gets when any responsible scientist is asked to project.  Much more importantly, the projections that Lomborg "misrepresents" are "5 to 95% ranges".  Second of all (by the way, if you follow the link - where's the asterisk?) you don't see any guff about "probably too low"; they include the uncertainties by way of fleshing it out.  You can look at it here, as well; again, where's the flipping asterisk.  As regards glaciers, they are indeed taken into account; they say that it could add an extra 0.1 m to 0.2 m to the level, if it happens, but that they can't predict it. They say, quote "Understanding of these effects is too limited to assess their likelihood or to give a best estimate. "  So, where did this "probably?" come from.

  Now, what does it say about uncertainties?  That the carbon cycle feedback is unknown, which is why it's not included.  So, Wovon man nicht weiss, davon muss man schweigen.  Sage advice.

  Taking the rest of this, it all happens to be, how do I phrase it? Bollocks on stilts.  Take Robock who is deciding to say that the IPCC has been superseded.  Fine, publish your criticism of it, and get a new report together.  The whole point of the IPCC is that it is supposed to collect the gold-standard of evidence.

  The rest is all matters of opinion and interpretation. We can skip this easily, but there is one gem that I have to cite - namely the idea that Lomborg is "lying" by not including these latest models.  They have all appeared in the last five years since Cool It was published.  So Lomborg was literally using the most up-to-date distillation of science available, and he is supposed to be "cherrypicking".