Doooooom!
Earth’s Most Famous Climate Scientist Issues Bombshell Sea Level Warning
Could the oceans really rise 10 feet in the next 50 years?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.
The study—written by James Hansen, NASA’s former lead climate scientist, and 16 co-authors, many of whom are considered among the top in their fields—concludes 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 The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, brings new importance to a feedback loop in the ocean near Antarctica that results in cooler freshwater from melting glaciers forcing warmer, saltier water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, 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 “substantially more persuasive than anything previously published.” I certainly find them to be.
Two points. First, this is all about scaring politicians and those who really don’t pay attention beyond the superficial to Do Something. Second, if this came to pass, it would in no way prove anthropogenic causation. Because it has happened before.
Actually, there’s a third. This is beyond nutty. Even during much warmer Holocene warm periods the sea rise was less. All we saw during the 20th Century was 7 inches. To think that there will be well over twenty times this amount in the next 50 years is bat-guano insane. And plain scare-mongering.
And only a portion of Antarctica is actually melting, and Science says that it is primarily from underneath the ice, from the Earth’s natural heat, mainly volcanic activity.
