Former Top NASA Scientist Predicts Catastrophic Rise In Sea Levels

WASHINGTON -- One of the nation's most recognizable names in climate science, Dr. James Hansen, released a new paper this week warning that even 2 degrees Celsius of global warming may be "highly dangerous" for humanity.

The paper, which will be published online in the European Geosciences Union journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussion later this week, projects sea levels rising as much as 10 feet in the next 50 years.

The paper notes there is evidence indicating that average temperatures just 1 degree Celsius warmer than today caused sea levels to rise 16 to 30 feet and fed extreme storms thousands of years ago.

Hansen and 16 co-authors drafted the paper as a message to policymakers that current greenhouse-gas reduction goals are not strong enough. World leaders have committed to limiting average warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), a goal articulated in the Copenhagen Accord in 2009 and reiterated by G7 leaders in June.

"The message for policymakers is that we have a global crisis that calls for international cooperation to reduce emissions as rapidly as practical," wrote the authors.

Their projections are based on an anticipated accelerated melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica due to rising atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. The melting ice sheets will put more cold, fresh water into the oceans, changing circulation patterns and ultimately causing even more melting of the ice sheets -- thus causing sea levels to rise much, much faster than other projections have forecast.

"We conclude that continued high emissions will make multi-meter sea level rise practically unavoidable and likely to occur this century," the scientists wrote. "Social disruption and economic consequences of such large sea level rise could be devastating."

Hansen, who was the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies until April 2013and is now an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, has been warning about climate threats for years. He's moved from dispassionately investigating the science to actively advocating for specific solutions to the problem. As Eric Holthaus at Slate put it, Hansen "is known for being alarmist and also right."

The paper has already ruffled some, including Associated Press science writer Seth Borenstein, who said on Twitter that he would not cover it -- primarily because it had not yet been peer-reviewed, a process that allows other scientists to critique the work.

The Washington Post's Chris Mooney asked other climate experts to weigh in on the paper. While many said it raised key discussion points, Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research called it "provocative and intriguing but rife with speculation and 'what if' scenarios."

Source: The Huffington Post

Pope calls for action on climate change in draft encyclical

Pope Francis delivers a speech during an audience for the participants of the Convention of the Diocese of Rome in St. Peter's square at the Vatican City, June 14, 2015.

REUTERS/GIAMPIERO SPOSITO

Pope Francis makes an urgent call for protection of the planet and repeats his view that global warming is mostly man-made in his keenly awaited encyclical, according to a draft published by an Italian magazine on Monday.

The Vatican said the document, leaked in its Italian edition by the magazine l'Espresso, was not the final version, which would remain under embargo until its release on Thursday.

It was not clear how advanced in the writing process the leaked document was or how similar it would be to the final version.

Pope Francis has said he wants the document, called "Laudato Si (Be Praised), On the Care of Our Common Home", to be part of the debate at a major U.N. summit on climate change this year in Paris. He said on Sunday it was addressed to all the world's people. In the draft he speaks of "the urgent challenge to protect our common home" and calls for sustainable development.

The leaked draft confirmed what people familiar with the final version told Reuters last week about how the document addresses climate change and the man-made causes of global warming.

As sources said before Monday's leak, the encyclical addresses the impact of climate change on the poorest nations and notes a broad scientific consensus that global warming is mostly caused by fossil fuels.

It also asks rich nations to re-examine their "throw-away" lifestyles, an appeal the first Latin American pope has made often since his election in 2013.

Repeating what he or his top aides have said in recent months, the pope calls for a reduction in carbon emissions, an increase in policies that favor renewable energy and warns of the long-term effects of continuing to use fossil fuels as the main source of the world's energy.

Climate change skeptics, particularly in the United States, have excoriated Francis, who is due to address the United Nations and the U.S. Congress on sustainable development in September.

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, a Catholic and climate change skeptic, said the Church would be "better off leaving science to the scientists".

Maureen Mullarkey, a commentator for the conservative U.S. website First Things, published by The Institute on Religion and Public Life, called Pope Francis "an ideologue and a meddlesome egoist" who was "sacralizing politics and bending theology to premature, intemperate policy endorsements (on climate change)."

The pope himself hinted at what he would say while talking to reporters about climate change in January.

"I don't know if it is all (man's fault) but the majority is, for the most part, it is man who continuously slaps down nature," he said. "I think man has gone too far ... thank God that today there are voices that are speaking out about this."

At a conference at the Vatican in April, the Holy See teamed up with the United Nations and came down firmly against skeptics who deny human activity helps change global weather patterns.

By making environmental protection a moral imperative, his intervention could spur the world's 1.2 billion Catholics to lobby policymakers on ecology issues. - Reuters