Sea levels will rise over the coming century about a foot or about as much as they rose over the past 150 years. This is Bjorn Lomborg's best guess...and his guesses are better than most because he knows what he is talking about.
To learn more read Cool It!: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming...the antidote to what Lomborg refers to as 'choreographed screaming'. This detailed study of global warming is published by Marshall Cavendish. (London, 2007, 352 pps, £19.99, ISBN 978-0-462-09912-5) and includes a thousand references and a thousand endnotes.
If sea levels rise this amount it will be a problem...but it won't be a catastrophe. Ask a very old person about the most important issues that took place in the 20th century. She will likely mention the two world wars, the cold war, the internal combustion engine and perhaps the IT revolution. But it is very unlikely she will add: 'Oh, and sea levels rose.'
We dealt with sea levels rising in the past century, and we will do so in this century too. It doesn't mean that it will be unproblematic, but it is unhelpful...and incorrect...to posit it as the end of civilization.
Moreover sea level rise will be a much bigger problem for countries that are poor than for countries that are wealthier. In fact if we work hard at reducing sea level rises, it is likely that we will reduce the rise by 35% but at the same time end up making each person about 35% poorer. The upshot is that places such as Micronesia and Tavalu will get three times more flooded, simply because lower incomes more than outweigh the lower sea level rise.
Thus we cannot talk about CO2 when we talk about dealing with climate change...we need to bring it into the dialogue considerations both about carbon emissions and about economics, for the benefit of both humans and the environment.
http://omniclimate.wordpress.com
14/01/08 @ 19:01