It is just so easy to deny sea level change. Sea level is both predictably and unpredictably variable so we can conveniently pretend it isn't there most of the time.
Consider the one in ten year storm surges butcherboy mentions as replacing what were previously one in a hundred year events. These storm surges last for a couple of days at most and there are 3652.5 days in a decade. This means that almost all of the time we will not see any evidence of the surge. The danger may be there but we can pretend it isn't.
Unfortunately there are other consequences of global warming that are much harder to deny. For example the prediction is for an ice free summer arctic at some time within the next decade. How are we going to deny that? Will we dredge up a few ancient newspaper articles about unusually warm events in the past or will we all accept an ice free arctic as just another consequence of our destruction of fossil carbon reserves?
Whatever we choose to do, the changes we are causing are going to be with us for the foreseeable future. We can pretend otherwise but our descendants will be living with the consequences of the changes we are making to the chemical balance of our biosphere.
