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Seriously? It's the entire ocean... it's only going to get worse and possibly accelerate. What does a decade adding 1cm do to salinity, microscopic life, wate

Seriously? It's the entire ocean... it's only going to get worse and possibly accelerate. What does a decade adding 1cm do to salinity, microscopic life, water temperature, storm surge and god knows what else? I read your quote from the article and panicked. I'm even more panicked that there's people who can read something like that and not be deeply alarmed. What's happening to our planet makes me sick, and your apathy makes me even more sick.

harperlee 7y ago
Well I’m very concerned about climate change, and I agree that choosing that measure to alarm the reader is harming the cause, because a lot of people will think the same as your parent. It is hard to see 1mm of water and feel threatened. We need to understand that there are 7 billion people on Earth and we need to communicate to ALL of them, lest you want Trump/Johnson/Salvini/etc. reactionary movements dismissing climate change or complaining about actions. 1mm ocean rise asks for being ignored. Why not address direct effects to people? People that die, migrate, wars... how many dead people implies 1mm change? That would be much more useful.
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
At 1mm a year it would take one thousand years to get one metre of sea level rise. That’s not the sort of slogan that’ll likely motivate a lot of change. That’s ignoring the potential for runaway feedback loops. I’m just saying that it didn’t, in fact, cause much change, as evidenced by the business-as-usual scenario we find ourselves in seven years after 2012.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  It's not the only source of sea level rise, or even the major one - that I believe is expansion from rising sea temperature. So it's an additional 1mm on top of the others, and any catastrophic glacier collapses such as may be approaching with Thwaites in the Antarctic. The more that melts results in changing albedo and smaller thermal mass to encourage an accelerating melt - a small runaway feedback loop. Rising air and sea temperatures will accelerate it further. You and I may not care that much - yet, but those in the Marshall Islands, Maldives and other low lying regions almost certainly care about every millimetre. Sea level rise is probably the least dramatic effect of climate heating, but the most inexorable. It takes a while to melt 650,000 cubic miles of ice, yet we seem to be managing to get going. It will accelerate. It should be cause for major concern.
deleted 7y ago
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harperlee 7y ago

Well I’m very concerned about climate change, and I agree that choosing that measure to alarm the reader is harming the cause, because a lot of people will think the same as your parent. It is hard to see 1mm of water and feel threatened. We need to understand that there are 7 billion people on Earth and we need to communicate to ALL of them, lest you want Trump/Johnson/Salvini/etc. reactionary movements dismissing climate change or complaining about actions. 1mm ocean rise asks for being ignored. Why not address direct effects to people? People that die, migrate, wars... how many dead people implies 1mm change? That would be much more useful.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago

At 1mm a year it would take one thousand years to get one metre of sea level rise. That’s not the sort of slogan that’ll likely motivate a lot of change. That’s ignoring the potential for runaway feedback loops. I’m just saying that it didn’t, in fact, cause much change, as evidenced by the business-as-usual scenario we find ourselves in seven years after 2012.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
It's not the only source of sea level rise, or even the major one - that I believe is expansion from rising sea temperature. So it's an additional 1mm on top of the others, and any catastrophic glacier collapses such as may be approaching with Thwaites in the Antarctic. The more that melts results in changing albedo and smaller thermal mass to encourage an accelerating melt - a small runaway feedback loop. Rising air and sea temperatures will accelerate it further. You and I may not care that much - yet, but those in the Marshall Islands, Maldives and other low lying regions almost certainly care about every millimetre. Sea level rise is probably the least dramatic effect of climate heating, but the most inexorable. It takes a while to melt 650,000 cubic miles of ice, yet we seem to be managing to get going. It will accelerate. It should be cause for major concern.

deleted 7y ago

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