Anders Levermann writes at RealClimate:
What we found was that for each degree of global warming above pre-industrial levels the ocean warming will contribute about 0.4 metres to global mean sea-level rise while Antarctica will contribute about 1.2 metres. The mountain glaciers have a limited amount of water stored and thus their contribution levels off with higher temperatures. This is over-compensated for by the ice loss from Greenland, so that in total sea level rises quasi-linearly by about 2.3 metres for each degree of global warming (see figure).
How fast this will come about, we do not know. All we can say is that it will take no longer than 2,000 years. Thus the 2.3 metres per degree of warming are not for this century. They need to be considered as our sea level commitment – the sea level rise that cannot be avoided after we have elevated global temperatures to a certain level.
In 2000 years Holocene will have ended and we are in next ice age and sea levels will drop by over 100 meters as they do every 100,000 years
…but I think that the Department of World History doesn’t get as much grant money as the Department of Hysteria.
2.3 meters in 2000 years is 1.15 cm per decade – not too different from what has been going on steadily for 7000 years..
2 meters is 2000 mm. So 2000 mm in 2000 years is an extra mm per year. If an average value for sea level rise is 2 mm/yr, then a rise to 3 mm/yr would do it. There have been a few stretches recently where the rise was 3 mm/yr but they had also switched to new ways of monitoring sea level. But then we have also seen recent periods where sea level increase slowed. Let’s follow it another 15-20 years and see.
But an extra mm/yr we can easily handle.
Sea levels change slowly and people adapt. It’s very fuzzy indeed whether people are contributing to changes in sea level rise, so we would start from the proposition that radical changes in our lifestyle are not justified by any information on this topic.
I’m amazed that these wise men expect everything to be static. Does anyone doubt that if the sea level were to rise 2.3 meters in 2000 years that we couldn’t adapt to it? I don’t think I’m going to get rich on my speculation on beach front property in Richmond if I have to wait a couple millennia for the seas to come up.