Back in 2006, our expectations were set when An Inconveient Truth contemplated what would happen if sea levels rose by six meters (in our lifetime). 3.6mm a year seems a bit meh in that context.

Something I see a lot is people looking at worst case predictions as if they were presented as the most likely predictions. A lot of the IPCC reports say things like “if we continue to increase emissions, this will happen” (a worst case scenario) and also “if we make moderate improvements, this will happen” (a slightly better scenario). Then people who don’t want to talk about climate change mitigation will highlight the worst case scenario and say “see they were wrong and hysterical!” even when the moderate prediction, which they will ignore, ended up being essentially totally accurate.

Well, I'll go a step further and say that 3.6mm/yr is not evidence of a crisis.

that's not a problem in the decade timeline but it is problematic over a century or two. it's especially problematic since it's accelerating and has a couple decades of inertia. the CO2 we release today will raise sea levels for the next 50 years or so.

>that's not a problem in the decade timeline but it is problematic over a century or two.

So after roughly 100 years, we can look forward to the terrible catastrophe of sea levels (in some places only, not in others) rising by.. just over a foot. A problem for many really flat coastal areas, sure, but hardly the picture of global coastal flooding much of the alarmism has put forward. And if that one-foot rise happens across a full century, there will be many measures that can be taken to counter it even if the rise itself is unstoppable.

I'm not arguing against human-caused climate change, but some of the hyperbole i've seen said with deep certainty goes well beyond the scope of known evidence, realized events or even many scientific assessments.

With such things, it's not hard to see why some people find good reasons for being skeptical of yet another worst-case prediction.