Rising seas 'to beat predictions': How much will this cost the world?

Frankly I would be surprised if the sea level rise this century didn't exceed the current IPCC predictions. The IPCC doesn't take into account much of the melting of ice shelves in Greenland and Antarctica, which will significantly contribute to the rising of sea levels. The one criticism I have of the IPCC is that it's simply too conservative in many of its predictions.

This rise will cause serious problems for those living on low-lying coasts, but especially for island nations.

All these "estimates" are based on theories, guess work and unprovable scientific hypothesis.

Man does is not even close to having a clue about what causes our climate changes.

The best thing you can do is to try to work hard and be as productive as possible in your life. If the economy continues to expand then changes in technology will help provide us with the means to adust to our changing climate.

The planet has always had cooling & warming periods as well as periods of high and low sea levels. There is nothing man can do to change this and it will take man a very long time to even start to comprehend its' complexity.

They say tha if ocean water rises just 21 feet, the 9/11 memorial will be under water.

But thats FEET. not inches.

Im not sure how much it will -cost- besides alot of lives.

Well, that hardly "beats predictions" as it is just another prediction. Who knows, that is why there are so many different predictions.

The BBC is not really a scientific source.

Who cares? The rich are the ones that live on the sea shore. They can afford it!

This demonstrates how conservative the IPCC really are in their reports. Which is why they should be taken seriously, and not as if they are the mere opinions of politicians.

The cost of 64 inches would be enormous. Because storm surges would break through existing protection systems causing much destruction.

VoiceOfReason (below), the study referenced by the BBC is from Nature Geoscience (which is indeed a peer reviewed journal and available freely on-line). I've linked to it below (along with a good analysis on the IPCC sea-level estimates) for anyone interested in furthering their knowledge on the topic.

It should tell you something when there is such a drastic difference in the reports. Maybe it's because nobody knows for sure. And if nobody knows for sure, maybe it won't rise to any significance at all.

Won't happen. First, seal levels today are below where they were 160 years ago.

Second, all doomsday predictions are wrong. If they were right, half the worlds population would have died from AIDS, the other half from SARS, with Y2K killing off all the machines.

I heard it would probably be a few billion dollars for the US mostly in the southeast. People should use common sense and leave a buffer above the sea level of at least 20 feet. Anything less is irresponsible and should be borne by those foolish builders and not governments but sadly it never works that way. The government always comes to the rescue and put structures back in the danger zone as they get wiped out by storm surges.