Excellence in Wanker/Wingnut Science!

[Title changed from the usual series title since WSJ is more wankey than nutty].

Today's winner: The Wall Street Journal, with help from Lord Monckton [PDF]:

More pertinent is the underlying scientific report. And according to people who have seen that draft, it contains startling revisions of previous U.N. predictions. For example, the Center for Science and Public Policy has just released an illuminating analysis written by Lord Christopher Monckton, a one-time adviser to Margaret Thatcher who has become a voice of sanity on global warming.
Take rising sea levels. In its 2001 report , the U.N.'s best high-end estimate of the rise in sea levels by 2100 was three feet. Lord Monckton notes that the upcoming report's high-end best estimate is 17 inches, or half the previous prediction.

The following deserves repeating since sea levels are going to be as contentious this time around as the hockey stick was last time:

The SLR is 0.88 top-of-range and this is presumably what M is using for 3 feet. But thats all-models all-SRES plus land ice uncertainty (except for the WAIS). The value sans land ice uncertainty (which is what the AR4 uses) is 0.7 in the TAR against 0.59 in the AR4. But hold on, 0.7m is 27". 17" is 0.43m. Where has M got that from? Top of the B2 range? Average of the A1F1 range? Why would he choose either of those? Also I'm told, but have not verified, that the TAR range is 95% but the AR4 range is 90% uncertainty. So perhaps its better to look at the mid value for which AR4 sez For each scenario, the midpoint of the range in Table SPM-2 is within 10% of the TAR model average for 2090-2099.

OK, that simply means 1.) you can't compare 2001 and 2007 upper-range estimates since one includes land ice uncertainty, the other doesn't. If you do want to compare the two, you have to correct by that amount, which they didn't want to do this time since that amount might be too low. 2.) If you compare the overall mid-range, they're similar. 3.) If you compare the composite range with the highpoint from one of those ranges used to compute the composite, you might get a different number, just like Monckton did.

Why choose one scenario's highpoint and make it sound like that is *the* highpoint for the 2007 report's estimate? According to his own report, Monckton doesn't like most of the scenarios in the 2007 report, so he simply chooses the one he believes encompasses what the future will look like and disregards the rest. The future according to Monckton:

Of the UN’s six modeled scenarios, three are extreme exaggerations. Two assume that population will reach 15bn by 2100, though demographers say population will peak at 10bn in 40 years and then plummet.

Monckton's favorite scenario is:

B2. The B2 storyline and scenario family describes a world in which the emphasis is on local solutions to conomic, social and environmental sustainability. It is a world with continuously increasing global population, at a rate lower than A2, intermediate levels of economic development, and less rapid and more diverse technological change than in the B1 and A1 storylines. While the scenario is also oriented towards environmental protection and social equity, it focuses on local and regional levels.

He may be right, but then he still has to compare apples to apples if he wants to make a statement about the reports and their differing estimates. While the WSJ is simply wankey and quotes Monckton directly, NRO goes one step further and compares Monckton's estimate with Gore's estimate:

The new assessment also cuts in half the range of predicted sea-level rise over the next century. Now the maximum prediction is about 17 inches, as compared with the 20 to 30 feet Al Gore dramatizes in his horror film. (Which truths are inconvenient now?).

And then we've got the next level of extrapolation which then land this post clearly within the realm of the wingnutty:

At this rate there will be zero estimate of sea level increase in ten years and in 20 we should be back to the hysterics of Global freezing, as these people ring the alarm bells so they can garner research money and travel the world presenting papers before the cocktail hour.

Nice.