I've been watching a sandbank for ten years now. At first there were about two or three mangroves sticking up but submerged at high tide. Now the building of an island is almost complete. Even at the highest of tides the mangroves are still above water & a lot of mud & sand has built up. The sea has been rising for several thousand years now since the last ice age. I found coral some 20 metres above high tide embedded in the ground. This indicates that we've had higher sea levels than what's predicted for the next 100 years. Perhaps the crowd who built the pyramids & carved out the nasca plains created so much pollution hence this high sea levels. It's called evolution, nothing ever stays the same unlike academic mentality.

every winter North Queensland and the top end of Western Australia receive many refugees from the Southern States. Now that airfares are cheap many refugees visit Bali and like Island during the cold months. When are the jokers going to wake up that climate has and always will change. Using this fact for political causes has resulted in us having an idioitc tax. Please don't burden us with more political rubbish.

2m increase inevitable this century.... BBBBWWWWHAHAHAHAH!

Mike, mate, they had to abandon all those forecasts because they realised that the big ice sheets just don't break up that quickly.. not even at the end of the last ice age, which was a massive change. Even James Hanson has basicaly backed down.. the best they could do was about 0.8 metres for the century I think.. at least that's sort of the number must planners in Aus are using.

a glance at the satellite date compiled by the Uni of Colorado
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/ shows that the increase in sea levels has been running at 3.2 mm a year (0.32 metres over a century - or about a foot) since the early 1990s. Might be a bit below average in recent years but nothing significant..

Won't get many climate refugess on those numbers..

I dunno about the 2m sea-level rise, but does anyone else find it a bit bizarre that DavidL seems to think that anyone who mentions it owns coastal property? Property that he wants to buy for cheap of course.
Weird.

Hasbeen and Curmodgeon probably know that sea level rises because land based ice, particularly at the poles, melts quicker than it is replenished. But it does not melt at the same rate. Each year it melts at an increasing rate so that, over time. sea level rises at an increasing rate.

In 2000, land based ice loss from Greenland was about 100 gigatonnes a year and from West Antarctica, around 60 gigatonnes per annum. By 2010 the rate of loss from Greenland had increased to 300 gigatonnes and from West Antarctica, over 160 gigatonnes per annum. In both cases loss was accelerating.

IPCC estimates of sea level rise do not take account of the contribution of polar ice loss, which is why they are low. However satellite data is now available and supports the view of Dr Hansen that global warming will cause polar ice loss to double each decade throughout this century. If that prediction is sustained, by 2100 sea level will have risen not by 2 metres but by 4 metres.

Our hope should be that polar ice loss slows down and that Dr Hansen is proven wrong but that is not happening.

Now, we measure sea level rise in milimetres/annum but within 30 years it is likely to be measured in centimeters/annum. By then it will be too late to worry about the effects of sea level rise and extreme weather events on densely populated countries to our north. Their coastal regions face devastation (as do some of ours) and the effect will cause mass movement of populations in search of the essentials of life.

Whether that causes people to move en-mass to our shores is a different matter. However if violence in places like Sri Lanka and Afghanistan is any guide, we should be concerned.

50 million climate refugees? Name one.

Besides, aren't they all supposed to be dead by 2012?

http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2007/01/08/01291.html