As someone who actually lives in the area in the satellite image shown in the article, this worries me. What worries me even more is that a few days ago on a local news website there was an article of a group warning the local government about rising sea levels, but most of the reactions were of climate denial. Saying that sea levels have been rising for centuries, but are not accelerating, that the island Tuvalu is growing[1] as some sort of proof that sea levels aren't rising.
I wonder how these people figure how the icecaps can melt without raising the sea level. It's become very fashionable to be 'skeptic' these days.
I don't define myself as a denier but in the last months I'm more sceptic about all of this. I also live in a coastal city and remember clearly (we also have lots of archive on the internet) how when I was a kid there were lots of news about global warming and the rising of sea level to life changing amounts in few years. More than 20 years have passed and I don't see any of that here, not even minor changes on the coast. I see more problems (here at least) because agrochemicals and deforestation than from global warming.
> when I was a kid there were lots of news about global warming and the rising of sea level to life changing amounts in few years
No.
There was no such news, unless your only source of information were tabloid headlines.
It's a favorite strawman tactic of the deniers to say "20 years ago they told us the world would end before today and it didn't", when in truth nobody credible ever said that.
The truth is that since the near-term impacts of global warming became mainstream science and an international political issue in the late 1980s, the overwhelming majority of actual forecasts have steadily been getting worse, i.e. they were way too conservative at the beginning. Also the discourse has almost always used the "by the end of 21st century" time-frame; nobody credible ever said anything at all about (for example) sea-level rise over a couple of decades. Science is by its nature conservative, at least in official forecasts and predictions, and the political pressure was always greatest on the side of avoiding "alarmism". The result is that we're now already beginning to see real impacts (especially in the arctic) that only a decade ago were still being talked about as "by the end of the 21st century".
Sea-level rise isn't going to be fast... even in the worst case scenarios, it's still one of the global warming impacts that over the short and intermediate term we can most easily "adapt" to, by building dykes, moving people and cities, etc. Even if you turn up the heat, trillions of tons of ice just take a while to melt, and no sane scientist ever said it would happen in decades. Other global warming impacts are likely to cause global civilization bigger headaches in the next couple of decades. But over the longer term, sea-level rise is important because it is relentless, and if the last 15 years show us a trend, then it is only likely that we'll continue to see the scientific consensus lean further and further to, and beyond, the current "worst case" scenarios.
I'm not a crazy conspirationist denier, but saying "no" to what I've experienced in MY life, is a little too much and is really not effective to convince anyone of anything, let alone a conspirationist that would think that you are a judeo-masonic-reptilian.
Nonetheless I'll tell you that my sources of information as kid were the 3 private TV news of my country and later some "science" shows from cable TV.
We can discuss if that was true science or not, but it was what lots of people were exposed to, and those "predictions" didn't happened. If your sources of information are peer reviewed scientific papers, good for you, but that is not what happens to the 99% of the population.
There's plenty of crappy science journalism out there, but odds are you're forgetting all the qualifying statements like "as early as" and "if emissions keep growing at the current rate". If you go check articles from 20 years ago I'd be willing to bet these qualifiers are in most of them.
Many people seem to mentally filter all these qualifying statements entirely.
Well, I've lived on three different continents and during this time always read a wide range of news sources in several different languages, and MY life experience is that what you're saying didn't happen, and I don't believe that the media in any country are all that different. Oh, science reporting is atrocious and the media just love to sensationalize everything, but at the end of the day with respect to global warming what I've seen in the media from all over the world has been consistently downplaying the seriousness of it and including denier opinions "for balance".
I think that you're misremembering, and I'm calling you on it. If you want to insist, then show some evidence. Give us one link to a mainstream news source (from any country) which actually said during the last couple of decades that global sea-levels would rise by "a life-changing amount" by 2021. The Internet archive may help.
It seems interesting that, at least amongst people I know, the "deniers" about things like covid and climate change are also the first to believe daft conspiracy theories.
Why are some people so resistant to one set of idea and so open to other ideas?
Most of these 'movements' are merely contrarian in my opinion, is any perceived 'elite' for something? You're against! Are they against? You're all for it!
A prime example is Covid-19 and hydroxychloroquine, on the one hand the virus is 'just a flu' because scientists and politicians say it's dangerous, on the other hand hydroxychloroquine is highly effective because scientists say it's either useless or dangerous. It reminds me of Orwell's idea of doublethink, holding two thoughts contradictory to each other but still accepting it as the truth.
From my experience of talking to such denialists and conspirologists, it just comforts them to be a part of smaller group, so they feel like the chosen ones, like they know a secret that the most humanity doesn't.
Of three COVID denialists that I personally know, two are flat earth believers and one believes in secret world government led by jews.
If you only believe things because they're endorsed by your favored authorities, then your thinking is no better than theirs except that the authorities your culture told you trust happened to be more reliable than theirs.
I wonder how these people figure how the icecaps can melt without raising the sea level. It's become very fashionable to be 'skeptic' these days.
[1] which is actually sediment and reef growth, rising sea levels are still a large threat to the island https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-19/fact-check-is-the-isl...