Just a quick couple of lines

Just to vent for a second, I hate people who think that the rising sea level is coming from submerged ice - I know that even the science journalist for AP has made that mistake on a couple of occasions (he doesn't have a science background, just researches articles and writes his opinion, I think). Even people who think melting land bound ice is leading to sea level rise are incorrect, because the Antarctic Ice pack is getting thicker because of the global weather trend, and land bound ice growth about matches the rate of its shrinking - it is just being redistributed around the globe. The real reason for sea level rise (and it is rising to the tune of .3 cm per year on average - that's about 10 inches in the last century -though the IPCC puts it between 4.4 and 8.8 inches in that century) is thermal expansion. As sea water temperatures rise, the density decreases because the volume increases (this has to do with temperature as a measure of kinetic energy - how fast the molecules are moving. Higher temps = Higher Kinetic Energy = same amount of water taking up more space). On a small scale, this expansion does very little, but on the large scale it can lead to rising sea levels - albeit very slowly rising sea levels.

Worst case scenarios predict a 1 meter rise in the next century - very manageable, even in low lying areas with dikes, levees, and damns. The cost would be fractional compared to the draconian solutions many are positing. Further, there are parts of the world where the sea level is dropping - Alaska, for example, as plate techtonics pushes Alska up, sea level there can drop by inches a year!

Just some interesting facts - whether you believe in anthropogenic warming or not, it is best to know what the hell you are talking about (and I know not to end with about - it should be "know about that which you are talking", but damn it that phrasing is so stilted).