I became aware that the timeline of sea rise level announced in the linked article by Mouginot et al. is not at all clear. To such regard, a discussion on the risk analysis webgroup underlined that the rise would amount to about one milimeter per decade. Now that's only a single glacier, but it would take 10 000 glaciers melting in the same way to cause an annual rise of one meter. There are not so many large glaciers melting quickly I reckon. The article as usual was presented in a sensationalist fashion. I'm goign to post the comments of a member of the riskanalysis group.
It would be nice if somebody gave an estimate of the time it will take to raise sea level various amounts from this glacier melting. Maybe the actual research paper gave that? But, the link was to a media outlet that seems to specialize in sensationalism.
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So, when will the water at the end of my mother's dock be deep enough for me to get my sailboat there to tie-up? And when will it be so deep that we will need to evacuate my mother and abandon her house? Her lifetime? My lifetime?
Of course, I don't expect that even experts can predict that with enough accuracy and reliability to make it useful for planning the rest of MY life. Average numbers for sea level rise aren't much use in planning if the variations around the average are large. If this glacier continues to melt at its current rate, I don't think it will affect me seriously in my lifetime. BUT, if it "collapses" in the sense of sliding into the ocean from the land as well as melting, then it MIGHT raise sea level by a lot in just a few years.
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There are ALWAYS things to worry about because they MIGHT happen. Risk assessment is supposed to help us focus on the ones that we need to be spending the most effort on dealing with. We seem to be missing some important inputs for such assessments with respect to global warming / sea level rise. Putting all of our efforts into trying to eliminate the HAZARD seems unwise, especiall since geology tells us that the same hazard exists WITHOUT human activities. The human activites are at most affecting the probabilities and timelines.
