It will happen, but we don't know when…
This kind of pointless, gratuitous alarmism does nothing but damage The Cause. It’s like saying “planet will be swallowed by Sun – entire population to die… in 4.5 billion years”.
But I’m not complaining. If the alarmists want to shoot themselves in the foot with this kind of hysterical climate astrology, I’m very happy to sit back and watch them do it:
Even if humankind manages to limit global warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends, future generations will have to deal with sea levels 12 to 22 meters (40 to 70 feet) higher than at present, according to research published in the journal Geology.
The researchers, led by Kenneth G. Miller, professor of earth and planetary sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University, reached their conclusion by studying rock and soil cores in Virginia, Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific and New Zealand. They looked at the late Pliocene epoch, 2.7 million to 3.2 million years ago, the last time the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was at its current level, and atmospheric temperatures were 2 degrees C higher than they are now.
“The difference in water volume released is the equivalent of melting the entire Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets, as well as some of the marine margin of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet,” said H. Richard Lane, program director of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the work. “Such a rise of the modern oceans would swamp the world’s coasts and affect as much as 70 percent of the world’s population.”
“You don’t need to sell your beach real estate yet, because melting of these large ice sheets will take from centuries to a few thousand years,” Miller said. “The current trajectory for the 21st century global rise of sea level is 2 to 3 feet (0.8 to1 meter) due to warming of the oceans, partial melting of mountain glaciers, and partial melting of Greenland and Antarctica.”
Miller said, however, that this research highlights the sensitivity of Earth’s great ice sheets to temperature change, suggesting that even a modest rise in temperature results in a large sea-level rise. “The natural state of the Earth with present carbon dioxide levels is one with sea levels about 20 meters higher than at present,” he said.
Read it here.
Australian Climate Madness 
only mentions Nthrn hemisphere ice melts. Doesnt take into account Antarctic ice growth. Cherry picking at its best!very vague prediction
the weekly forecast can’t even be correct, so…
“The natural state of the Earth with present carbon dioxide levels is one with sea levels about 20 meters higher than at present”
If they’re trying to correlate CO2 levels with sea levels, the above statement means they’re mistaken, or that the error range can be at least 20 metres.
I wonder if they considered the differences in epochs and what that might mean to their study. Right now it looks as useful as a screen door on a submarine.
You really have to worry about these people. How do they think that they can predict what will happen to the environment in thousands of years when they can’t even do basic mathematics. 1 foot is 30.48cm. Therefore 2 feet is 0.6096m not 0.8m. 3 feet is 0.9144m not 1m.
The key to understanding the whole AGW argument is this. There is a grain of truth in many of their predictions and ideas. Earth temperature does change, ice sheets do melt, sea levels do rise. We know this from geological history. Mostly it’s from the sun, not trace gases. But the main sticking point is this: the rate.
Geological processes are invariably very slow. Large scale changes such as a 20m sea level rises take place very slowly. The whole AGW argument has various geological responses speeded up several orders of magnitude. The earth will warm slightly from doubling of C02, but to get to 3 degrees probably takes several thousand years, once signficant parts of ice sheets have melted, the oceans have warmed, and these secondary slow feedbacks kick in, etc. Not in the few decades they claim.
Oh God, these Global Warming clowns get more stupid every day.
The inmates have the keys and whats more they have escaped.
Another one the file under ‘Junk Science’.
“… future generations will have to deal with sea levels 12 to 22 meters.”
” … will take from centuries to a few thousand years.”
Don’t you just love the error margins … ± 10 metres (a nearly 50% error margin) and ± 2000 years (a 100% error margin) and all without any form of ‘might’, ‘could’ or ‘maybe’ caveat !
Local councils are stupid enough to believe in man caused sea level rise. They don’t bother to check data.
Grant, the less stupid amongst us, deny that MAN is causing climate change.
1979 was the peak year for Arctic ice, yet 2012 has more ice around Greenland and Alaska than 1979 did.
The only year which had more ice in Baffin Bay was 1983, but that year had a lot less ice in the Bering Sea.
Scientists have been busy telling us that missing Arctic ice is causing record cold in many places this winter.http://www.real-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/ScreenHunter_208-Mar.-10-06.08.jpg
what year did satellites start making measurements?
to understand the properties of co2. when you understand that along with ir spectra you will discover the hoax that human emissions of co2 driven climate change is…
If current carbon dioxide levels now are the same as they were 3.2 million yeras ago what caused the situation at that time? It couldn’t have been us. Or maybe it was. Maybe we were all around in a previous life in our same numbers polluting the globe as we are charged with doing now!
In 2000 they said sea levels would rise 100m by 2100. Its 2012 and I’m still waiting for the other 11.96m rise that was to come by 2012 !!!!!
“The natural state of the Earth with present carbon dioxide levels is one with sea levels about 20 meters higher than at present,” he said.
If this statement is true then there is some as yet unknown powerful force keeping the sea level 20 METRES lower than otherwise it should be!!!! Wonder what that force is? Perhaps it is governmentium or even adninistratium!!!
IDIOTS
Stop talking – do something to stop these people.
Try this gem from the Australian Academy of Science’s 2010 tract for the masses on climate change Questions and Answers:
Global warming above some threshold, believed to lie between about 2°C and 4.5°C, would lead to an ongoing melting of the Greenland ice sheet. If sustained for thousands of years, this would virtually eliminate the ice sheet, raising sea level by about seven metres 144.