re: #430 Thanos

Looking at the data in the chart Charles posted from the Netherlands you see a rise of about 7 inches if I’m converting CMs right, that just doesn’t equate to “no rise” or micro effect.

I’m not claiming that the sea level has no rise; just that they are currently rising — even by the data cited by the alarmists — at a much, much slower pace than the average person visualizes. According to that wikipedia chart, the rise has been 7-ish inches over the last 140-ish years, which equals to 1 inch every 20 years, or 1/20th of an inch per year.

Now, compare that to the scenes in Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth with millions of downtrodden people literally fleeing the coastline is mass migrations, as the seas inundate that land behind them. In reality, as I said, there will be essentially only the tiniest perceptible rise during any one person’s lifespan, so that you wouldn’t even notice it. Gore was whipping up fears, playing on our guilt.

Sure, over many many millennia, the seas may go up 30 feet or 100 feet or even 300 feet, as they have done in the past. (And then likely go down again.) But in what way is that disastrous, or problematic? The shape of the coastline will change. Some cities may slowly become uninhabitable and little by little be abandoned (such as is already happening with Venice.) But cities rarely last that long anyway. Aside from Jerusalem, Rome, Babylon and a handful of others, the cities we inhabit today are of fairly recent vintage; and 3,000 years from now, when the sea levels might be a few feet higher, we’ll probably all be living in New Quetzelcoatl or Obama City or wherever, while Berlin and Shanghai will be distant memories from a history book.

And life will go on.