That's an interesting point.

Loss of sea ice = no sea level rise.

Loss of land ice - we've always been told there would be sea level rise. But...if the land rises as a result, and the sea floor drops - is that really the case? As Greenland is almost entirely ice covered, and surrounded by sea, the ice will raise the sea level by displacing the sea bed upwards, by a volume close to its weight. Once in the sea, it does the same.

So if the whole of Greenland melted out, would there be any sea level rise in the long run?

This obviously wouldn't work for continents not completely (or almost completely) covered in ice, as it might be that some surrounding land sinks instead.

Yes, but... all the continents sitting on those ocean floors fall too.

If Greenland goes up, then the shores and surrounding seabed also rise in relation to distance.

Pressure on the magma is relieved, so the rest of the worlds ocean beds *and land masses* fall together. There'll be a delay because of mantle viscosity but it could be measured.

Result is a net rise in sealevel as the water displaced from the depression redistributes.

Even if sea level were to rise dramatically in one region of the world, it would still take many years or decades to flow and redistribute. This is why it is important to monitor the whole Earth with millimetre precision to see where the action is.

"For such an IT literate and therefore intelligent readership here"

You must be new here stranger !

ignorance?

To be fair, I think you are falling into a familiar trap. IT literate people are not necessarily the same group as climatologically cogniscent people. You need to bear in mind the difference between intelligence, wisdom, and learning. No matter how intelligent a person, if they have never studied a subject in depth then they define the maxim 'a little learning is a dangerous thing'. A wise person would avoid commenting in an area they perceived as a weak subject for them.

"No matter how intelligent a person"

I agree entirely with that.

I worked with an extremely intelligent chemist who could think & rationalize well outside his area of expertize but he thought computers were binary - it never crossed his mind that you could parallel the binary logic and make 8-bit,32-bit etc,. systems.He assumed it was ALL serial.

Very fair point.

I guess I have a failure to comprehend that others don't see the world in the same way as I do, aren't as interested or don't have the time and motivation.

I'm a programmer/sysadmin/dba for over 30 years but also have a lot of time to read everything I can related to all kinds of science, physics, chemistry, electronics, astrophysics, genetics and nature and general technology since the age of 3. To me they are all like interrelated springs and levers, magnitudes and quantities with causes and effects, and many things can be explained by concepts based on everyday metaphors. (QM not so easy!)

However, I don't agree that a wise person should always avoid commenting in an area that they perceive as weak. It's an opportunity to gain more knowledge and wisdom, provide some input and occasionally get into a damned good scrap... :)

Wilful ignorance, and pride in being ignorant really gets me.

We now have the collected wisdom and knowledge of a billion brains at our fingertips, but perhaps instant knowledge has a negative effect - Why use your brain to remember stuff when you can use Google? Brains atrophy with neglect.

What use is that knowledge without the "ungoogleable knowledge" required to process it?

It doesn't necessarily actually educate, exercise and develop skills in critical reasoning. because It's easier to throw keywords into cerebral bins containing various stuff, than learn principles of how they relate and interact. (Comments on youtube are a particularly depressing example of education and society gone wrong!)

Back to climate change...

Skeptics are not denying the fact that the Earth is warming, they have seen, discussed and digested the unfolding evidence.

Whether it is anthropogenically caused is still under debate by those unwilling to accept the strong evidence that supports it.

There is a huge difference between skepticism and denialism, but when jumping off a cliff, gravity doesn't care.

A warmer Greenland means a return of Vikings. Ah, good times! Raping, pillaging, looting, paganism, three day mead benders, enslaving others, killing religious zealots, ... or was that when I played football at the University of Miami? My memory is pretty hazy.