stop being so rational Armchair. It upsets the alarmist. I still enjoy going to the beaches I went to 40 years ago. Almost the same except for a little erosion here and there that comes from storms. Certainly the ocean temperature is as cold if not worse. Still I suppose we must be due for another drought in Aussie soon. It will give the alarmist something to wet their pants over especially the kids that have not been around to long.

Toni Lavis,

The problem with keeping paper books as a carbon sink is that at some time those of a 'certain persuasion' are going to want to burn those books. Think of all the 'carbon pollution' released all at once - oh the humanity!

Armchair Critic thinks his anecdotal observations of the coast somehow disprove sea level rise. He obviously doesn't live on the Northern Beaches, and didn't watch the news that week when a swimming pool 20 metres into the land nearly swam out to sea itself!

He obviously didn't watch the news when Cyclone Sandy hit NY, and hasn't visited the Pacific Islands or watched the reports coming out of there. NASA must be in on the conspiracy as well, as they write:

"Global sea level has risen by about 8 inches since reliable record keeping began in 1880. It is projected to rise another 1 to 4 feet by 2100. This is the result of added water from melting land ice and the expansion of seawater as it warms.

In the next several decades, storm surges and high tides could combine with sea level rise and land subsidence to further increase flooding in many of these regions. Sea level rise will not stop in 2100 because the oceans take a very long time to respond to warmer conditions at the Earth’s surface. Ocean waters will therefore continue to warm and sea level will continue to rise for many centuries at rates equal to or higher than that of the current century."

http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/

Sea levels have risen since 1850. Little question about that. This is probably primarily due to the warming from that time. But as we now all know :) since that warming is merely returning us to a state that has applied for a large part of the last 12000 yrs, then it can be assumed that the sea levels are also returning to a state that's applied for that same period.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that the various RCP calculations are correct and we do get an 80cm rise in sea levels from the current levels. What can we say about the consequences of that?

Well the first thing we know is that the people affected are way off in the future. For many of them, their grandparents haven't yet been born!

We also know that they will be spectacularly wealthier than we are today and therefore better able to easily afford to build the odd sea wall to hold back the relatively modest sea level rise that occurs then.

We can also assume that they'll have technologies that haven't even been thought of as yet that will further ease the burden of adapting to a small rise in the oceans.

I also suspect that our great-grand-kids will find it mildly amusing that those relative paupers from 2016 thought it prudent to totally gut their economy to fix a problem that they would see as a mere irritant.

//The problem with keeping paper books as a carbon sink is that at some time those of a 'certain persuasion' are going to want to burn those books.//

Only if we let them.

They will only take my books out of my cold, dead hands.

@Max Green "maybe even Oprah and Dr Phil need to know about it." - a few weeks in the Dr Phil House even? :-)

fwiw Quoting JM:
I’m continually reminded of the Thomas Kuhn quote: “As in manufacture so in science, retooling is an extravagance to be reserved for the occasion that demands it.” http://jennifermarohasy.com/about

I add:
"These shifts are what Kuhn describes as scientific revolutions - "the tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science" New assumptions –"paradigms" - require the reconstruction of prior assumptions and the re-evaluation of prior facts. This is difficult and time consuming. It is also strongly resisted by the established community."

Climate Science is one of the "scientific revolutions" that has "required the reconstruction of prior assumptions and the re-evaluation of prior facts."

Breakthroughs in Climate Science's embrace of other scientific specialties eg astrophysics, paleontology, biology, geology, physics, statistics created a revolutionary substantive whole new discipline: "strongly resisted by the established community" at the beginning, until such times as the science had established NEW FACTS that could no longer be denied by that broader scientific community... that led to today's Consensus, not the other way around.

Climate Science was NOT the Orthodoxy of the day ... there are still a small number of orthodoxy holdouts though.

You see KUHN also said:
“Men whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice. That commitment and the apparent CONSENSUS it produces are prerequisites for normal science, i.e., for the genesis and continuation of a particular research tradition.” Kuhn, 1970 http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/kuhnsyn.html

But Marohasy seems to skip over it.

I quote the last bit in my response to Marohasy's article: http://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-M0yAR0UPhPT2xYM2ViOVBwTU0

Surely Science is there as a tool to help Politicians make better decisions based on the empirical evidence vs on beliefs alone.

6 dumbest ideas politicians have about science @ #6 17 mins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBIET-uEbXA&feature=youtu.be&t=17m27 -

Political responses can be informed by evidence and facts via Science but it is still the Politicians alone who will be remembered for their decisions.