More climate scaremongering from the Woke-owned Guardian – pity no one told climate-pushing Gates, Bezos and Obama when they bought seafront properties which they visit in private jets

Not only is dangerous sea level rise “absolutely guaranteed”, but it will keep rising for centuries or millennia even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, experts say.

Rising seas are one of the most severe consequences of a heating climate that are already being felt.

Since the 1880s, mean sea level globally has already risen by 16cm to 21cm (6-8in). Half of that rise has happened over the past three decades.

It is accelerating, too: the ocean rose more than twice as fast (4.62mm a year) in the most recent decade (2013-22) than it did in 1993-2002, the first decade of satellite measurements, when the rate was 2.77mm a year. Last year was a new high, according to the World Meteorological Organization. It is no coincidence that the past eight years were the warmest on record.

The numbers might seem small. Even 4.62mm is just half a centimetre a year. So why did the UN secretary general, António Guterres, warn in February that the increase in the pace of sea level rise threatens a “mass exodus” of entire populations on a biblical scale?

A centuries-long time lag

Part of the problem is the that even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases immediately – which it will not – sea levels would continue to rise. Even in the best-case scenario, it’s too late to hold back the ocean.

The reason for this is not widely known, outside the science community, but is crucial. The systems causing sea level rise – specifically, the thermal expansion of the ocean and the melting of glaciers and ice sheets due to global heating – have a centuries-long time lag.

“The atmosphere changes quite rapidly but deep ocean circulation takes centuries,” says Prof Jonathan Bamber, director of the Bristol Glaciology Centre at the University of Bristol.

“As the heat sinks into the deep ocean, it takes centuries to be moved around and for a new equilibrium to be reached. Ice sheets also have a response time, so that if you change the thermometer tomorrow, it can take hundreds to thousands of years to reach an equilibrium.