{"id":61513,"date":"2015-07-27T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T11:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=61513"},"modified":"2015-07-27T09:08:42","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T08:08:42","slug":"earths-most-famous-climate-scientist-issues-bombshell-sea-level-warning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/07\/earths-most-famous-climate-scientist-issues-bombshell-sea-level-warning\/","title":{"rendered":"Earth\u2019s Most Famous Climate Scientist Issues Bombshell Sea Level Warning"},"content":{"rendered":"

20 Jul 2015 – <\/em>In what may prove to be a turning point for political action on climate change, a breathtaking new study casts extreme doubt about the near-term stability of global sea levels.<\/p>\n

\"Monday's<\/a>

Monday’s [20 Jul] new study greatly increases the potential for catastrophic near-term sea level rise. Here, Miami Beach, among the most vulnerable cities to sea level rise in the world.
Photo by Joe Raedle\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

The study\u2014written by James Hansen, NASA\u2019s former lead climate scientist, and 16 co-authors, many of whom are considered among the top in their fields\u2014concludes that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years. The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, brings new importance to a feedback loop in the ocean near Antarctica that results in cooler freshwater from melting glaciers forcing warmer, saltier water underneath the ice sheets, speeding up the melting rate. Hansen, who is known for being alarmist and also right<\/a>, acknowledges that his study implies change far beyond previous consensus estimates. In a conference call with reporters, he said he hoped the new findings would be \u201csubstantially more persuasive than anything previously published.\u201d I certainly find them to be.<\/p>\n

To come to their findings, the authors used a mixture of paleoclimate records, computer models, and observations of current rates of sea level rise, but \u201cthe real world is moving somewhat faster than the model,\u201d Hansen says.<\/p>\n

Hansen\u2019s study does not attempt to predict the precise timing of the feedback loop, only that it is \u201clikely\u201d to occur this century. The implications are mindboggling: In the study\u2019s likely scenario, New York City\u2014and every other coastal city on the planet\u2014may only have<\/a> a few more decades of habitability left. That dire prediction, in Hansen\u2019s view, requires \u201cemergency cooperation among nations.\u201d<\/p>\n

We conclude that continued high emissions will make multi-meter sea level rise practically unavoidable and likely to occur this century. Social disruption and economic consequences of such large sea level rise could be devastating. It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization.<\/em><\/p>\n

The science of ice melt rates is advancing so fast, scientists have generally been reluctant to put a number to what is essentially an unpredictable, nonlinear response of ice sheets to a steadily warming ocean. With Hansen\u2019s new study, that changes in a dramatic way. One of the study\u2019s co-authors is Eric Rignot, whose own study last year found that glacial melt from West Antarctica now appears to be \u201cunstoppable.\u201d Chris Mooney, writing for Mother Jones<\/em>, called that study<\/a> a \u201choly shit\u201d moment for the climate.<\/p>\n

One necessary note of caution: Hansen\u2019s study comes via a nontraditional publishing decision by its authors. The study will be published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics<\/em>, an open-access \u201cdiscussion\u201d journal, and will not have formal peer review prior to its appearance online later this week. [Update, July 23:<\/strong> The paper is now available<\/a>.] The complete discussion draft circulated to journalists was 66 pages long, and included more than 300 references. The peer review will take place in real time, with responses to the work by other scientists also published online. Hansen said this publishing timeline was necessary to make the work public as soon as possible before global negotiators meet in Paris later this year. Still, the lack of traditional peer review and the fact that this study\u2019s results go far beyond what\u2019s been previously published will likely bring increased scrutiny. On Twitter, Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist whose work focuses on Greenland and the Arctic, was skeptical<\/a> of such enormous rates of near-term sea level rise, though she defended<\/a> Hansen\u2019s decision to publish in a nontraditional way.<\/p>\n

In 2013, Hansen left his post at NASA to become a climate activist because, in his words<\/a>, \u201cas a government employee, you can\u2019t testify against the government.\u201d In a wide-ranging December 2013 study, conducted to support Our Children\u2019s Trust, a group advancing legal challenges to lax greenhouse gas emissions policies on behalf of minors, Hansen called for<\/a> a \u201chuman tipping point\u201d\u2014essentially, a social revolution\u2014as one of the most effective ways of combating climate change, though he still favors a bilateral carbon tax agreed upon by the United States and China as the best near-term climate policy. In the new study, Hansen writes, “there is no morally defensible excuse to delay phase-out of fossil fuel emissions as rapidly as possible.”<\/p>\n

Asked whether Hansen has plans to personally present the new research to world leaders, he said: \u201cYes, but I can\u2019t talk about that today.\u201d What\u2019s still uncertain<\/a> is whether, like with so many previous dire warnings, world leaders will be willing to listen.<\/p>\n

____________________________________<\/p>\n

Eric Holthaus is a meteorologist who writes about weather and climate for <\/em>Slate<\/strong>\u2019s Future Tense.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 slate.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

20 Jul 2015 – In what may prove to be a turning point for political action on climate change, a breathtaking new study casts extreme doubt about the near-term stability of global sea levels \u2014written by James Hansen, NASA\u2019s former lead climate scientist, and 16 co-authors, many of whom are considered among the top in their fields.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}