Sea Level rise impossible ... oh, yeah?

The Americans for Limited Government had an article "An Alarming Trend" On: 04/22/2009 10:21:00 by Isaac MacMillen and Robert Romano. Basically, they state that melting ice caps can not raise sea levels because ice floats, lakes keep water from reaching the oceans, and plate tectonics raise mountains which trap water in snow and ice.

I couldn't stand it and submitted what was to the be the first comment as follows:

"Greenland's Ice Cap is Melting at a Frighteningly Fast Rate"
(http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0811-06.htm)

The vast ice cap that covers Greenland nearly three miles thick is melting faster than ever before on record, and the pace is speeding year by year, according to global climate watchers gathering data from twin satellites that probe the effects of warming on the huge northern island.

The consequence is already evident in a small but ominous rise in sea levels around the world, a pace that is also accelerating, the scientists say.

According to the scientists' data, Greenland's ice is melting at a rate three times faster than it was only five years ago. The estimate of the melting trend that has been observed for nearly a decade comes from a University of Texas team monitoring a satellite mission that measures changes in the Earth's gravity over the entire Greenland ice cap as the ice melts and the water flows down into the Arctic ocean. ...


"Sea level rise could bust IPCC estimate"
(http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16732-sea-level-rise-could-bust-ipcc-estimate.html)

Sea level rises could bust official estimates – that's the first big message to come from the climate change congress that kicked off in Copenhagen, Denmark, today.

Researchers, including John Church of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, presented evidence that Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice fast, contributing to the annual sea-level rise. Recent data shows that waters have been rising by 3 millimetres a year since 1993.

Church says this is above any of the rates forecast by the IPCC models. By 2100, sea levels could be 1 metre or more above current levels, he says. And it looks increasingly unlikely that the rise will be much less than 50 centimetres.

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast a rise of 18 cm to 59 cm by 2100. But the numbers came with a heavy caveat that often went unnoticed by the popular press.
...
Because modelling how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will react to rising temperatures is fiendishly complicated, the IPCC did not include either in its estimate. It's no small omission: the Greenland ice cap, the smaller and so far less stable of the two, holds enough water that if it all melted, it would raise sea levels by 6 metres on average across the globe. ...


ExxonMobil scientists ... participate in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and numerous related scientific bodies. (http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/energy_climate_views.aspx)