One of the world’s most renowned climate scientists, James Hansen, has just dropped a bomb on climate change forecasts.
In a new study, the former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies says that the popular global warming target of 2°C isn’t the safety cushion we think it is and could cause a catastrophic rise in sea levels.
The draft study Hansen and 16 co-authors published last week in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics paints a different picture than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The study predicts that rapid ice melt could trigger a staggering 10-metre rise in sea levels in as little as 50 years – even if we manage to keep temperature -increases within the 2°C target that global climate policy-makers are gunning for.
The team combined insights from paleoclimatology, climate modelling and on-going observations. They suggest that amplifying feedback loops may spur mass loss of the Antarctic and Greenland ice shelves way faster than scientists have projected.
“It is unlikely that coastal cities or low-lying areas such as Bangladesh, European lowlands, and large portions of the United States eastern coast and northeast China plains could be protected against such large sea level rise,” the study says.
On the societal impacts, Hansen’s study predicts: “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.”
Hansen’s facing a wave public criticism not from climate deniers, but from other mainstream climate scientists who’ve called the study “far-fetched” and “rife with speculation” and say the data doesn’t support parts of his theory.
All the backlash has been heightened by the fact that Hansen decided to publish the paper before getting it peer-reviewed. (It’s now open to peer-reviewing post-publication.) He says he wanted it out ASAP in order to influence policy-makers in the lead-up to the COP 21 -climate change talks in Paris in December.
No doubt Hansen’s used to skepticism. He first testified before Congress about the threats of climate change back in the late 80s. Nearly three decades later, he’s not pulling any punches.
“There is no morally defensible excuse to delay phase-out of fossil fuel emissions as rapidly as possible,” he says. He’s now calling for a near-global carbon fee or tax instead of national caps for emissions reductions.
Regardless of whether the climate science community backs the entirety of his new paper or not, many agree our 2° guardrail may not cut it. And -virtually all echo Hansen’s position that “the grave threat posed by continued high emissions is urgent and calls for emergency cooperation among -nations.”
ecoholic@nowtoronto.com | @echolicnation
