The two paragraphs in quotation marks below are from the epa.gov web site, not from some global warming deny-er's site.
"Sea level is rising along most of the U.S. coast, and around the world. In the last century, sea level rose 5 to 6 inches more than the global average along the Mid-Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, because coastal lands there are subsiding."
Subsiding means sinking. The water's not rising that much; the land is sinking. The same is true for those small Pacific islands that may soon be completely submerged.
"Higher temperatures are expected to further raise sea level by expanding ocean water, melting mountain glaciers and small ice caps, and causing portions of Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets to melt. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the global average sea level will rise between 0.6 and 2 feet (0.18 to 0.59 meters) in the next century (IPCC, 2007)."
That equals 0.18 to 0.59 centimeters per year, not 3.3. I'm assuming an innocent misplacement of the decimal point is what happened.
http://epa.gov/climatechange/effects/coastal/index.htmlAnd the rate of rise we're experiencing now is WAY less than the rate of rise that took place between 14,000 and 8,000 years ago. I don't think we had too many cars, power plants or factories back then. Come to think of it, there weren't even that many people. For the last 8,000 years there has been comparatively little rise. Here's the chart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
