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Disclaimer: I am a skeptic of the theories advanced by the IPCC, and believe that the human signal is only part of a more complex set of natural variations, meaning that their forecasts for large scale warming later this century could be entirely wrong.

But having said that, if we accepted their reasoning and thought these large increases might be about to set in, we can see that it is already too late to avoid them. There is no way that any economic or social changes made today will have enough impact on the current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to avoid the outcome they suggest is already in the works.

The second problem with their position is that no governments can or will go to the extremes of zero carbon emissions even by 2050 let alone by 2030, so that makes it even more likely that carbon dioxide levels will do no better than levelling off at slightly higher values than we have now.

So therefore logic would tell you that the best strategy is mitigation, not prevention. If we are to be stuck with the sea level rise implied by large-scale arctic land ice melt, then we should be preparing for that today. Much of the preparation would be planning rather than action, we probably should plan for this even if we don’t take it as seriously as the IPCC, just as we should plan for a Carrington level solar flare or an asteroid strike. Planning costs relatively little but provides a framework for action if the event either happens or becomes inevitable.

With sea level rises, a full meltdown of Greenland and other land ice in the arctic would produce a rise of about 20 feet. But this would not all happen in one day or even in one decade. It would likely take five or six decades, the worst I could imagine happening would be a steady 2-3 foot rise for each decade after 2030 to a finish around 2100. That gives governments seventy years to accomplish a gradual response, which in most cases will be to move vital infrastructure to safer locations, and to move human populations once seawall protection is ruled out. That will have a considerable impact but would not be a catastrophe of extinction proportions by any means. Even if the seas rose instantly and wiped everything out in that first twenty feet, the human race would easily survive and adapt.

As to all the rest of the IPCC alarmist rhetoric, none of that is real. A warmer climate will not necessarily mean more intense storms. If it warms up to the extent they fear, these transient very cold events like last year’s Texas freeze will stop happening altogether, the variability of climates will shift to higher values at both ends of the spectrum. We can probably stand the slightly higher extreme warmth values because a lot of the increase is going to be in overnight lows rather than daytime highs. There would not necessarily be more hurricanes and they would not necessarily be more severe. Etc etc.

So all of the chicken little act is pointless, all we should really be doing at this point is to plan for the “what if” scenario of gradual sea level rise, and wait and see what actually happens. I don’t think there is anything we could do now that would change the outcome. And personally I don’t think it will happen, we could lose 10-20 per cent of northern ice which might raise sea levels 3-6 feet, and that would need some adjustments, but thinking of most coastlines, 3-6 feet is often just a part of the barrier between beach and land development. Some coastal areas could easily absorb a small rise on that scale. And perhaps future technology of mass desalination could reduce the total volume of global ocean water content too.