There are lots of ways to construct a graph to look scary. Just try to redraw that graph as the change in overall depth of the ocean. It would be so flat as to be useless. Wikipedia (might be right or not) says the average depth of the ocean is 3,688 meters or 12,100 feet. If we take that and convert to mm we get 3,688,000. So let's take some of the number thrown around here. If we have a 250 mm rise since 1888 we have a percentage change of 0.01 % If we have around a mm per year, we have a an annual change of .000027%, if it is 3 mm per year that is .000081% Just for reference 1 mm is about the size of the average pin head and a flea is approximately 1.5mm in length. Not exactly an alarming graph when you look at it that way. By the way I am also really interested in why sea level actually fell in 2010 according to the NASA satellite graph from 56 mm to 48 mm. Were we especially good people that year? Steven Naslund Chicago IL
JUST BARELY curve upwards. So I dug into THEIR actual data - and even THEIR data shows something like a cumulative 1mm/year increase - and - it took ~40 years or so to get to that 1mm increase (to be extra clear, this is a reported increase over how much oceans are rising now compared to ~40 years ago. But I'm not even sure this added up to even a full 1 mm.)
Compound interest is a bitch.