webdiplomacy.net

https://www.sciencealert.com/far-more-p ... s-realised

In research that doesn't surprise me, more people are threatened by sea level rise than previously predicted.

A lot of the science on this is very conservative. You don't want to have reports coming back going 'you predicted 1m sea-level rise but we only got half that!', so when the minimum turns out to be low, I am not surprised.

That said, the two biggest contributors to sea level rise are land based glaciers (ie ice currently not in the sea, as sea ice is already in the sea whether it melts or not). There are two main sources of these glaciers. Antarctica and Greenland. And both have a serious problem, we don't know how fast the glaciers will move.

When some some melt water gets warm enough it can drip down under the glacier and form a thin liquid layer which allows the ice to slide along. Making predictions to account for this can be very difficult. A kilometer of ice might take 1 year to slide into the sea, or it might take 50 years.. So we also see researchers ignoring this unknown data in their findings. They can make accurate predictions, without massive error bars.

This should be the discussion we're having, and how we're going to address the issue (or who is going to suffer the consequences...)

To quote from the UK's Committee on Climate Change 2018 report on managing the coast

It is almost certain that England will have to adapt to at least 1m of sea level rise at some point in the future. Some model projections indicate that this will happen within the lifetimes of today's children (i.e. over the next 80 years). Coastal structures being built today need to be ready to cope with these rates of sea level rise. Rising sea levels will make the most damaging coastal floods more frequent, as well as increasing rates of coastal erosion in most places.

The sea level rises talked about in your science alert article are pretty much in line with the expectations that have been around for years. There's nothing new or surprising in it.

It's the denials by some world leaders that it is a problem that needs to be dealt with, like Daffy Donald. Considering all the sea side properties he owns, you would think he might want to do something about preparing for it before rising levels erode the shores and storms allow surges inland.

This is deeply worrying and we are not doing enough to tackle the causes or mitigate the effects.

However Octavious is also correct that this is not a radical new prediction.

It is a weird message to put out though. Like 'we have previously predicted 1/3rd of this, now let's report this total, and do a press release about how it is 3 times...'

Or does the science journalist take that as their headline in an attempt to make a click able headline?

Headlines are usually done by the editor and not the writer. These days unless it's a peer reviewed science journal, the author has no control over the headline and click bait is important for snagging those eyeballs.

Which would you look at?

Trump said something stupid.

Trump said windmills cause cancer.