Climate change - from tidal wave to tsunami?

One of the explanations, that political actions to prevent climate change are so slow, is that the observed physical changes also are slow. We gradually get used to the changes just in the same way as eye-sight is reduced and we only discover one day that maybe we should have seen a doctor earlier to get medical help or at least glasses. In the film "An inconvenient truth" the phenomenon is illustrated with a frog that sits in water that is gradually warmer and does not observe that it will soon be boiled. Yes we know that climate change may result in a (slow) sea level rise. Some research show however that the processes may be much, much faster than we have expected. Metaphorically speaking it might be more of a tsunami than a tidal wave.

Spelling the consequences of this speeded process out in detail is frightening and made in a report "Up in the smoke" by the Working Group on Climate Change and Development, which is supported by 20 NGOs worldwide. And it is not only the rise of the sea-level that is the threat. Huge areas in Latin America, the Andes are threatened to lose their water supply within a 20 year period by the melting of the glaciers there.

Richard Alley reports in his book "Two-mile time machine" about the Greenland glaciers and relate the past variations, read from ice-cones, to the possible future with man-made disturbances in atmosphere. The author of the article in the Guardian, highlighted above, Fred Pearce, has published a book "The last generation" in which the theme, that meltdown might be faster, is elaborated. The general warming may also contain and release further dangers. One is that melting permafrost may release methane, which is one of the most powerful GHGs, and speed the process even more.

PS In the film the frog is saved before it is cooked. May humans be able to pull themselves out of the mess?