Worse, on current trends, we will be lucky for seas to rise “only” 8ft by 2100. The reason is that the computer models used by Noaa and others do not reflect what we know about how seas have risen in the past. These models assume that sea level rise unfolds gradually, but the
geological record shows that in fact it can occur in rapid pulses. Warmer temperatures following the previous ice age caused disintegration of one polar ice sector after another, causing seas to rise in pulses of three to 30ft per century. Today, accelerating ice melt in Greenland and Antarctica are almost certainly the beginning of a new pulse of rapid sea level rise.