Here`s an excellent essay by James Hansen, one of the worlds pre-eminent climate scientists and the head of NASA`s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
The essay was published by New Scientist.
Here`s his conclusion:
The broader picture strongly indicates that ice sheets will respond in a non-linear fashion to global warming – and are already beginning to do so. There is enough information now, in my opinion, to make it a near certainty that business-as-usual scenarios will lead to disastrous multi-metre sea level rise on the century time scale.
There is little to NO evidence of sea level change and the non-linear hypothesis is designed to create more fear.
The one thing that all of these predictions have in common, almost none make a testable prediction within a reasonable time frame. nearly all predict disaster 100 years away. The individuals making this type of prediction risk nothing. They will be dead when it becomes apparent that they were wrong.
I challenge them (the doomsters) to make predictions within a reasonable period that will be testable. How about sea level in 5 years, 10 years and 15 years.
Stop using words like “may”, “could”, “possibly” and put your money where your mouths are.
Well I don’t think this makes any sense at all. They are not only predicting but measuring the sea rise per decade already. They already know how much it has risen and how fast it is currently rising. So to predict where it will be in 10 years is a non-event, and something you can do yourself with a little arithmetic.
But who cares about the fact that it will be a couple of centimeters higher in 10 years? The real damage happens in the long run.