Sea Level Rise

There are some people who doubt that there is a greenhouse effect.  I think that argument is unlikely.  The physics of absorption of various frequencies of light is quite solid.  I doubt that the scientists will have to revise their opinions about these properties of carbon dioxide enough to find that carbon dioxide doesn't lead to a greenhouse effect.  It seems quite plausible that by placing CO2 in the atmosphere we are causing the temperature to rise and implausible to believe otherwise.  A more likely argument against anthropogenic global warming would be that there is considerable negative feedback.  That is as the temperature rises there are processes that would cause the process to slow down.  For instance, plants might grow faster in an environment with more CO2.

In any case we have evidence that the sea level is rising here.  Detailed reading of this article will point out one point that I think is overlooked in this issue.  The rise in the sea level since the beginning of the industrial revolution has been 0.6mm per year.  Since the rate has tippled over the time period we can expect a rise that is roughly three times this rate.  That would be 1.8mm per year.  This is far from disastrous.  This is slow enough that people will have plenty of time to move away from the advancing flood waters.

The point I am trying to make is that when people make predictions that sea levels will rise to a level that will make life in some coastal regions impossible, they are ignoring that over these same periods of time most of the people who live there would have to move or replace their housing in any case.  The buildings we make don't last forever anyway.

It may well be that global warming is disastrous for many species on earth.  We might feel guilty about causing a mass extinction.  However, we aren't likely to be one of the species that will go extinct.  We will easily be able to adjust to any of the difficulties that we cause by global warming.