Dr. James Hansen is the eminent scientist who researched the rising levels of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere, and published the initial findings that indicated that Climate Change was taking place. Hanson is a leading authority on Climate Change and one of the scientists who's been most outspoken in trying to get people and governments to change our carbon based Energy economy from business as usual.
Flood risk grows as ground slumps
Sea level rise is "non-linear", he explains, in that it doesn't occur at the same rate, year after year. Rather, it can accelerate rapidly if tipping points are reached.
Hansen says a multi-metre sea level rise is possible this century if greenhouse gas emissions, caused by things such as coal-fired power plants, vehicle engines and agriculture, are not reduced.
That might eventually see a return to a hotter world that occurred more than 30 million years ago. It had no ice sheets and the sea level was 75 metres higher.
"In my opinion, there's no way that the West Antarctic ice sheet could be stable for a full century, if we follow business as usual," Hansen says.
"It's going to cause summer melt on the surface of parts of the West Antarctic ice sheet and it's going to melt the ice shelves."
Dr. Hanson says the time has come for citizens to take direct actions against continued coal production, and the 70 old scientist walks his talk even getting arrested at a protest against Mountaintop Removal coal mining.
Some experts, Hansen included, are picking that once the ice sheet melt reaches a certain point, it will rapidly disintegrate and inundate low-lying areas - home to hundreds of millions of people.
Hanson's urgent warning is disputed by a number of legitimate climate scientists as being on the high end of the range of possible outcomes from Climate Change.
If we hesitate to take action now and Hanson's warning turns out to be true, by the time catastrophic melting of the Antarctic Ice sheets is under way it will be too late to put the brakes on our carbon consumption to significantly affect the outcome.
Yesterday while I was watching Meet the Press an Exxon ad came on and claimed that Exxon can produce oil from Tar Sands without generating any more CO2 emissions than conventional oil production generates. Unless Exxon has discovered how to produce Magic Wands THAT CLAIM IS A BALDFACED LIE. Personally I've never stopped boycotting Exxon and this outrageously false claim validates boycotting Exxon for the foreseeable future. I hope you'll join me in boycotting Exxon.