While there are still people out there who think global warming is about politics rather than a real threat to us, scientists attending the Copenhagen conference on climate change warned that the predictions on sea level rise have actually been too mild, and that in fact, if we don’t take action soon to lower greenhouse gas emissions, at least one in ten people on the coastal areas would lose his home.

According to Dr. John Church of the Center for Australian Weather and Climate Research, Hobart, Tasmania, who spoke at the conference, recent observations have shown that sea level has been continuously rising for the past 15 years at 3mm/year rate. This, he said, is above the average of the 20th century, adding that oceans continuously warming and expanding, and mountain glaciers and ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland continuously melting also contribute to sea level rise.

“Unless we undertake urgent and significant mitigation actions, the climate could cross a threshold during the 21st century committing the world to a sea level rise of meters,” Church also said during the conference.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change revealed in the 2007 report that global sea-level rise could be between 0.18 and 0.59 m by 2090-2099. But during the Copenhagen meeting, scientists revealed that those predictions are actually below what is really going to happen, considering the planet is getting warmer. Sea level is currently raising at rates above these levels, Church also said.

The 2,000 scientists attending the Copenhagen conference are now working on updating the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s predictions to levels that are more realistic. Sea level is rising faster, and above any model projection.

“Different groups may come to slightly different projections, but differences in the details of the projections should not cloud the overall picture where even the lower end of projections looks to have very serious consequences,” said Konrad Steffen, Director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado, Boulder and co-chair of the congress session on sea level rise.

German scientists warned last year that sea levels will rise one meter this century alone, and that only by dramatically lowering greenhouse emissions by 2050 and CO2 emissions entirely by the end of the century will we be able to slow the global temperature from rising.

The Copenhagen conference on climate change will continue until March 12, and researchers from approximately 80 countries will be there to discuss the predictions. The scientists will discuss the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report, and the steps that need to be taken on a global level.