* Sea level disaster ahead, but when?

It’s time to stop waffling and say that the evidence is pretty strong … multi-meter sea level rise is an issue for today, not for the next millennium

Dr. James Hansen, formerly Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, where he directs the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions.

In 2005 I argued that ice sheets may be more vulnerable than IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) estimated, mainly because of effects of a warming ocean in speeding ice melt¹. In 2007 I wrote “Scientific Reticence and Sea Level Rise”, describing and documenting a phenomenon that pressures scientists to minimize the danger of imminent sea level rise².

About then I became acquainted with remarkable studies of geologist Paul Hearty. Hearty found strong evidence for sea level rise late in the Eemian to +6-9 m (20-30 feet) relative to today. The Eemian is the prior interglacial period (~120,000 years ago), which was slightly warmer than the present interglacial period (the Holocene) in which civilization developed. Hearty also found evidence for powerful storms in the North Atlantic near the end of the Eemian period.