That's actually the funny bit. I remember reading about how, if the temperature rose by a degree centigrade, there would be a specific rise in the sea level. It has now happened. The problem is that not everyone has studied this in school. We learned it as fact. The US (and Americans don't really understand this) is probably the only country where climate change is taken as a debatable issue. What's worse is that climate change denial has been exported by the US to other countries, especially via the internet/cultural discourse, so now there are lay people who think that global warming is something that you can debate about. Most of this, of course, so the US can continue to guzzle oil. I remember when China was shamed for its carbon emissions. Just this year it's actually begun to cut them; in the US, though, Keystone is still a frackin' issue...