JAMES HANSEN: There are two things that are cause of concern. First of all, if we look at the history of the Earth, we know that at the warmest interglacial periods, which were probably less than 1 degree Celsius warmer than today, it was still basically the same planet. Sea level was perhaps a few metres higher. But if we go back to the time when the Earth was two or three degrees Celsius warmer, that’s about three million years ago, sea level was about 25 metres higher, so that tells us we had better keep additional warming less than about one degree. And the other piece of evidence is not from the history of the Earth but from looking at the ice sheets themselves, and what we see is that the disintegration of ice sheets is a wet process and it can proceed quite rapidly. We see that the ice streams have doubled in their speed on Greenland in the last few years and even more concern is west Antarctica because it’s now losing mass at about the same rate as Greenland, and west Antarctica, the ice sheet is sitting on rock that is below sea level. So it is potentially much more in danger of collapsing and so we have both the evidence on the ice sheets and from the history of the Earth and it tells us that we’re pretty close to a tipping point, so we’ve got to be very concerned about the ice sheets.
Disrupting the Borg is expensive and time consuming!
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And West Antarctica is a chain of volcanoes! However Greenland and West Antarctica are both gaining ice and that is causing the ice rivers to flow faster.
We could only hope the globe would actually warm and the weather be milder, which would be the case if Global Warming fairy tale were true! The amount of land lost to sea level rise would be minimal compared to the amount of land that would be available for habitation as it would be warmer in those regions.
“[in twenty years {2008} ] the West Side Highway [and thus much of Manhattan] will be under water… ” -James Hansen
“Yesterday, a group of scientists warned that because of global warming, sea levels will rise so much that parts of New Jersey will be under water. The bad news? Parts of New Jersey won’t be under water.” -Conan O’Brien [Maybe they could just get Christie to step off the state, and that would lift the land, lol,]
In truth, the sea hasn’t risen even an iota in decades. Ok, maybe an iota, whatever that is, but no discernible amount that we can actually perceive. No, the sea level rise scare is little more than fear mongering doomer bunk.