The scientific method is making testable predictions. You can look back 10, 20, 30, 40 years at the predictions of sea level rise made by climate scientists, and the sea level today is nowhere near where they predicted it would rise to. If someone's continuously making incorrect predictions it's not reasonable to assume their predictions will suddenly become accurate, especially when there's no feedback loop to weed out people making bad predictions (unlike e.g. in finance where people whose models have little predictive power eventually go bankrupt). No climate scientist has lost their job for making incorrect predictions of sea level rise twenty years ago.
That sounds like a perfect match for a meta study do you have any? I am very dubious about your conclusion. I am basing this on work I did in high school on this so I really have no sources for my claim.
EDIT did some more searching and have not been able to finding anything supporting you claim. People have not been very alarmist about sea levels.. 7500m by the year 2500 in Waterworld does not count.
In fact I remember reading the opposite recently, that IPCC sea level rise predictions from the 90s were actually pretty accurate given the limitations of the models at the time. And that a good bit of the error was underestimations of rise, not overestimations.
> Here we show that the mid-range projection from the Second Assessment Report of the IPCC (1995/1996) was strikingly close to what transpired over the next 30 years, with the magnitude of sea-level rise underestimated by only ∼1 cm.
It's much harder to predict exactly than to dismiss anything slightly off.
But the tendency is showing: in my country, we're getting records in extreme temperatures, forrest fires and storms.
But a study 1% can be dismissed, some random in a basement 99% off can be believed. This just says: many people are just looking for a confirmation of their beliefs, not evidence. And many companies play this game (supporting the right politicians, spreading disinformation aka lies, etc), because there are billions at stake.
Systems are complicated. Given there are numerous predicted outcomes (it's not just about the actual measured sea-level rise, after all) and many of those predictions are coming to pass far earlier than hoped, it might be worth having an open mind to the fact that sometimes people who devote their lives to studying something might be worth listening to.