World's Top Climate Scientist: It's Worse Than We Thought
James Hansen just released a terrifying new study on rising sea levels.
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James Hansen, the legendary former top climate scientist for NASA, is the lead author of a sobering new study
that suggests that sea levels will rise as much as 10 feet in the next
50 to 100 years. The study, published and peer-reviewed in real time in
the open-access journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, brings
attention to what is called a "feedback loop" in the oceans around the
glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica: cold water from the melting
glaciers forces warmer, saltier water deeper into the ocean, where it
warms the glaciers further, resulting in faster melting. If the process
continues at this rate, the study argues, meltwater will fully shut down
the transport of warmer water to higher latitudes, which creates a
planet with warmer tropics and colder poles, triggering more powerful
winter storms. Evidence from the study suggests that coastal cities like
New York may only have a few decades of habitability left. As for
whether there is anything we can do to stop or slow the process, Eric
Rignot, one of the study's co-authors, wrote his own study last year
that concluded that the glacial melt is now "unstoppable."
Coping with the grim reality of climate change is the subject of John H. Richardson's feature in the August issue of Esquire.
In the piece, Richardson interviews several climatologists and touches
on the same idea of the "feedback loop" in the opening of the story,
which is excerpted below.
The incident was small, but Jason Box doesn't want to talk about it. He's been skittish about the media since it happened. This was last summer, as he was reading the cheery blog posts transmitted by the chief scientist on the Swedish icebreaker Oden, which was exploring the Arctic for an international expedition led by Stockholm University. "Our first observations of elevated methane levels, about ten times higher than in background seawater, were documented . . . we discovered over 100 new methane seep sites.... The weather Gods are still on our side as we steam through a now ice-free Laptev Sea...."Click here to read the rest of article
As a leading climatologist who spent many years studying the Arctic at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at Ohio State, Box knew that this breezy scientific detachment described one of the nightmare long-shot climate scenarios: a feedback loop where warming seas release methane that causes warming that releases more methane that causes more warming, on and on until the planet is incompatible with human life. And he knew there were similar methane releases occurring in the area.
end quote from:
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a36583/sea-levels-rising-study/
Around where I live here if water were 10 feet higher most houses would not be underwater. But, what would happen is the wash from the seas during storms likely would go through the front windows and doors of beach houses near the ocean.
Even now, when we get 30 foot waves once or twice a winter usually from the north seaweed and sea detritus is deposited on some beach house porches.
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