- Sep 10, 2017
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Here's my uneducated understanding of rising sea-levels:
Most of the forecasts predicting the entirety of Florida underwater assume that all the ice in the world melts, which is not the current prediction. For now, much of Antarctica, which contains much of the ice in the world, is safe. However, the real concern is Greenland and the Arctic, which is rapidly melting and losing shape, and how the loss of the ice caps might accelerate warming (ice caps reflect sunlight and actually do a lot to keep the Earth cool; the loss of Greenland could accelerate Global Warming). That's what we call the "Cascade Effect," which is when global warming reaches a point where the effects of warming generates its own warming. Other examples of this include the melting permafrost in Russia, which releases large amounts of Greenhouse Gases that traps even more heat and creates even more warming.
That's where all those "we need to do something by 2030" articles come in: they're not saying that we're all gonna drown in 2030, they're saying that if we act later than 2030, then climate change will be literally outside of our control by then. The melting of the entire Antarctic sheet is still decades in the future. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be worried as all hell right now - this is our kid's world, after all - but I'd worry about Atlantic City and Miami before I'd worry about Orlando.
Here's a nice primer on what's happening in Greenland:
In Greenland’s Melting Ice, A Warning on Hard Climate Choices - Yale E360
