Al Gore's Oscar-winning environmental documentary exaggerated the likely effects of global warming on sea levels, a new study shows.

The film, An Inconvenient Truth, suggested that the sea would rise up to 20ft "in the near future" as the ice in Greenland or Western Antarctica melts.

Other documentaries have picture Britain deluged with water, showing the House of Commons submerged.

However, while some mainstream predictions project sea levels 2 to 4 meters higher by 2100, a new study published today in Science concludes that a rise in sea level between 0.8 and 2 meters is much more likely.

While scientists agree that sea levels rose by six inches over the course of the 20th century, estimates of future rises remain hazy, mostly because there are many uncertainties, from the lack of data on what ice sheets did in the past to predict how they will react to warming, insufficient long-term satellite data to unpick the effects of natural climate change from that caused by man and a spottiness in the degree to which places such as Antarctica have warmed. 

[H/T to Marc]  Climate is always changing, and always will.  There are seasons.  There are day-night (diurnal) cycles.  At any one location, heat energy from the sun varies during the day.   Energy from the sun is affected by local conditions and clouds.   Heat absorption depends on whether it impacts water or land … and even then, the type of land (desert, forest, snow covered land), or the layout of the land (continental masses, or islands surrounded by seas).  In some parts of the world temperatures are climbing on average, and in some areas they are dropping.  Warming is not occurring everywhere at once and hence ‘global warming’ is a misnomer.

So what are the key players in ‘Climate Change’?  The major driver is the sun.  Warming depends on the sun.  Cooling is due to the lack of sun’s energy.  Radiant energy enters the earth’s atmosphere.  Air (on a dry basis) consists mainly of nitrogen 78.08% and oxygen 20.94%.  Of the 0.98% remaining, 95% of that (ie 0.934%), or almost all is the inert gas argon.  Carbon dioxide CO2 is a trace.  It is less than 400ppm (parts per million) or 0.04% of all the atmosphere (on a dry basis).  Surprisingly, less than a fifth of that is man-made CO2 (0.008% of the total), and that is only since the beginning of the industrial era and the rapid increase in world population.

Global warming findings to be published in Science

A new University of Colorado study debunks the scientific speculation that global warming will cause seas to rise by 20 feet or more by the end of century.

In fact, the study says, global sea rise exceeding 6 feet looks to be a physical impossibility.

Tad Pfeffer, a fellow of CU’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, and his colleagues made calculations using conservative, medium and extreme glaciological assumptions for sea rise expected from Greenland, Antarctica and the world’s smaller glaciers and ice caps. The team concluded the most plausible scenario, when factoring in thermal expansion due to warming waters, will lead to a total sea level rise of roughly 3 to 6 feet by 2100.

Pfeffer said the research calling for the more extreme 20 to 30 feet of sea rise by the end of the century is not backed up by solid glaciological evidence. Still, the team’s most likely estimate of seas rising roughly 3 to 6 feet by 2100 would be potentially devastating to huge areas of the world in low-lying coastal areas, he said.

“The gist of the study is that very simple, physical considerations show that some of the very large predictions of sea level rise are unlikely, because there is simply no way to move the ice or the water into the ocean that fast,” Pfeffer said.

“The big picture is that global warming is putting hurricanes on steroids,” says Dr. Amanda Staudt of the National Wildlife Federation.

It was predictable that global warming alarmists would use the latest hurricane as an example of the devastation wrought by out of control man-made global warming. Never mind that hurricanes and tropical storms have dashed apart ships that were powered by wind hundreds of years ago. This is different. These are new global warming hurricanes, “on steroids.” Scary.