To answer your implied questions regarding my words, yes ice flow is variable, that’s why it wasn’t considered in final IPCC estimates though it was mentioned in the report.

Most of the models related to sea levels in the IPCC report are not questionable — as I said before they include things like “water expands when it is heated.” Again, only ONE of the six models were based on a projection of current rates that were clearly defined and used primarily as a comparison (it fell in the same range as the others incidentally).

A meter rise by 2100 is not impossible, a meter rise due to the contribution of melting Greenland ice is highly improbable. There are many other sources of potential sea rise, I was just giving an example of the variable ice flow.

I don’t quite understand why you question current models based on the fact that they exclude a currently unpredictable variable. These models clearly spelled out what rise they predicted based on which variables and the report discussed the variables that were not included. Would you RATHER scientists start adding blind guesses to models? Ice flow should become much more predictable in the coming decades, there was just some strange behavior regarding speeds in the last decade that hasn’t been fully agreed upon yet as to cause and effect.

How we decide to deal with global warming isn’t a scientific problem, so now you’re just getting into politics. Politics is fun (I might point out that the US has by far the largest pollution per capita) but doesn’t really affect models. I personally suspect that adapting our foods and habits to 1-2 degrees of warming would cost far more than simply curbing emissions but that’s as much speculation as claiming that curbing emissions will destroy economies.

Icebergs do not hold a significant portion of the world’s water and are not considered in these models. Glaciers and Icecaps are on land and their melting would indeed add to the ocean’s volume.

Glaciers have indeed been advancing in a few of the last years in some places. The overall mass of the glaciers is still decreasing though we’d have to talk about specific cases to get more specific. As I said before, most of the IPCC’s numbers are NOT derived from projected rates including glacier movement.

I really don’t know what you mean by ‘catastrophic global warming.’ I personally am quite convinced that 1 degree of warming on average will disrupt food crops enough to be catastrophic to some, but not to humanity in general. We will simply (if not easily) adapt to even a meter or two of sea level rise, though it’ll be expensive if not human-threatening.

As for what would convince me that the Earth is not warming, certainly a decade of falling temperatures would help (a couple examples of graphs with cherry-picked averaging periods don’t count, I’m talking statistically here). As I noted before, I found the article by David Evans quite convincing… except that as he included no sources, I was unable to verify that climate scientists in general (called ‘alarmists’ is the paper so he might not be referencing the majority of scientists) ignored this or that variable or even check to see where he got his damning evidence from and whether it’d been peer-reviewed and scrutinized by other climate scientists.

Of course the theories are falsifiable. For example, if the surface temperature stays the same, but the ocean levels do not rise, the model predicting that water expands with additional heat will be falsified. That’s because the surface temperatures take decades to affect some of the deeper areas of the ocean far from strong currents. Of course, this is basic physics and does not require further warming, but it’s certainly falsifiable!

Your first paragraph includes several estimates and assumptions based on models that also assume and estimate.

Ice flow is variable.

Models are not reliable.

A meter rise by 2100 is impossible.

ice flow. .. probably won’t . . .too uncertain

Yet, we are supposed to irreparably damage the world’s greatest economies on the basis of this information? (oh, Except for China and India, who are the world’s greatest polluters)

A couple of questions for you: Doesn’t water have a smaller volume than ice? Furthermore, most icebergs are under water. . . if they all melt wouldn’t the sea level decrease?

As for glaciers, I have read two recent reports that glaciers are growing in several places including Mt. Shasta and the Himalaya’s. Are all glaciers in the world receding? If they aren’t, does this disprove the theory?

Deamiter, Do you see any data to suggest that the hypothesis of catastrophic global warming is false? If you have not, what kinds of data would we have to see in order for you to change your mind?

To sum up, is the theory falsifiable?

A key point is that because ice flow is so extremely variable, it was not included in the number you cite (the six models considered actually range from between 18cm to 59cm though a simple average isn’t really appropriate there).

Anyway, you’re right, 33cm over a century is not catastrophic. However, that’s not what scientists are worried about as anywhere near a worst case, it’s simply a best estimate based on the information now considered reliable. As a quick datum, if the buildup of water flowing under Greenland causes most of the Greenland ice to flow into the ocean, the sealevel rise would be 6 meters. That wouldn’t be spread out neatly over a century and would be rather catastrophic, though you don’t see it predicted widely in scientific circles except as a possibility because the models regarding ice flow aren’t yet reliable.