You... really have no idea how to read that graph, do you? Or what a lagging indicator is, I'm guessing.
The fact is - we can see the rate of change of the sea levels start changing in the mid-90s, though the graph you're using compresses the Y-axis to minimize how obvious that is (deliberately, I'd say, given the source).
Which, given its a lagging indicator of the result of rising CO2, makes sense it would happen after.
So, even accounting for the dishonesty of the presentation (and make no mistake, it's VERY dishonest) it actually demonstrates the exact opposite of what you claim.
It's risen ~97mm since 1993. The rate of increase in that rise has been increasing steadily since ~1993. The consistency of our data has also been much better since then (previously it was only the highly noisy coastal tide gauge data).
Fun fact: the slowest its been in the last century was when we did a crap-ton of dam projects in the 50s-70s, still rose, but very little.
> I'm old enough to remember we were all "science" supposed to be entirely underwater by now.
The science never really said that. Bad PopSci reporting did. The science said that was a worst case possibility. Kind of "if we do the worst things possible as much as possible, then this is the worst case scenario".
Then you read hacks--and paid disinformation spreaders, which we have documentation of various oil companies in particular doing I might add--reporting that as if it was a sure thing. Because clickbait isn't a new concept.
Also - we actually DID change what we did. We did things like ban CFCs, etc. It made a significant difference to models! Hooray us for doing the bare minimum.
We're not quibbling over millimeters, not unless you're completely misunderstanding or misrepresenting the topic anyhow. We're pointing out the rate of change is increasing and we haven't even seen the worst case effects yet (like CO2 release from the oceans, Greenland melting, etc).
The global temperature is going up, rapidly, and we're at the point were these effects are already starting to be seen. That's... a tipping point.