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In his Academy Award-winning scare-u-mentary, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore warned that global warming could raise sea levels by 20 feet, and implied it could happen in our lifetimes or those of our children.

Gore explained that the Greenland Ice Sheet could break apart and slide into the sea as “moulins” (ice crevices and fissures) transfer surface melt water during warm summers down to the underlying bedrock, thereby lubricating glacial ice streams and accelerating their seaward flow.

In CEI’s July 2009 film Policy Peril, climatologist Dr. Patrick Michaels handily debunked Gore’s 20-foot hobgobblin. A month later, I provided additional information and links to relevant studies here.

Gore’s thesis was always a bit goofy, because his main “evidence” was a 2002 study in Science magazine finding that summer ice melt enhanced the annual flow rate of certain Greenland glaciers by a few percentage points — in other words, by several meters. For perspective, the Greenland Ice Sheet is about 2,500 kilometers long and 1,000 kilometers wide.

Last week (Jan. 27), Science Daily profiled a study that pours more cold water on Gore’s doomsday scenario. The review article could not be more provocatively titled: “‘Hidden Plumbing’  Helps Slow Greenland Ice Flow: Hotter Summers May Actually Slow Down Glaciers.”

Science Daily explains the paradoxical finding as follows: “The authors suggest that in these years the abundance of melt-water triggers an early switch in the plumbing at the base of the ice, causing a pressure drop that leads to reduced ice speeds.” Implication? “If that’s the case, increases in surface melting expected over the 21st century may have no affect on the rate of ice loss through flow.”

That’s the question I address today on the free-market energy blog, MasterResource.Org.

This morning, the  House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Environment is holding a hearing on the Blowout Prevention Act. The bill text says that the federal government “shall not” issue a permit for an offshore oil well unless the applicant can “demonstrate” that he has the “capacity to promptly stop a blowout in the event the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail.” However, as the ongoing disaster in the Gulf makes painfully clear, once “the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail,” there is no way to “promptly stop” oil from spilling into the ocean. At that point, physics (two fluids coming into contact) takes over.

In short, the Act sets a standard that no oil company can meet. As written, the bill would effectively prohibit all future offshore drilling. Logically, moreover, it implies that all existing permits to drill should be revoked.

Two points should be kept in mind.

First, although oil spills are bad, oil is good. Without oil, there would be no modern commerce and no mechanized agriculture. Life for most people would be nasty, poor, brutish, and short. Many of us would not even be alive.

Second, banning offshore drilling would increase consumers’ pain at the pump, destroy tens of thousands of high-paying jobs, cripple the economy of the gulf states, and make the United States more dependent on OPEC oil.

In what has to be one of the most disgraceful examples of political, unscientific attacks, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a report, “Expert credibility in climate change,” alleging to show that climate change “deniers” have less impressive credentials and haven’t published as much as those promoting anthropogenic climate change. With the billions in research money given to climate change advocates over the past 15 years, and the recent ClimateGate email disclosures about shutting skeptics out of key scientific journals, it’s no wonder there is a discrepancy. But, of course, neither of those issues is mentioned.

The article was researched and/or written by a biology professor, an engineer, a foundation executive, and the infamous Stephen H. Schneider, known for his advocacy of catastrophic global warming and his endorsement of duplicity and hyperbole in pushing the climate change agenda:

“. . . we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.”  (Discover magazine pp. 45-48, Oct. 1989)

What might be the purpose of this exercise?  One gets a clue in the conclusion of the article – that media coverage is contributing to public misunderstanding by giving an undeserved platform to climate skeptics:

“This extensive analysis of the mainstream versus skeptical/contrarian researchers suggests a strong role for considering expert credibility in the relative weight of and attention to these groups of researchers in future discussions in media, policy, and public forums regarding anthropogenic climate change.”

Dr. Roy Spencer has a good article discussing what’s now known among skeptics as the “Black List.”  The Examiner’s Thomas Fuller writes an open letter to Schneider deploring the article:

Is this science you are proud of? Does damaging the reputation of some scientists by mistakenly (or vindictively) including them on a blacklist serve science well? Does establishing a climate of fear that will dissuade scientists from expressing their true opinion?