Wow. 57 meters. 171 feet.

Good bye, Florida. Most of Texas. New York. London. Sydney. New Orleans? Get your water wings. Bangladesh, gone. Most of indonesia, gone. LA? Gone. Venice? HA! TOAST!

Hell, lets be honest folks... Every major port city will be under water. All the countries that rely on oceanic shipping will be screwed. Between this and the coming oil shock/collapse, western style society is as dead as the dodo and passenger pigeon.

Unfortunately, the view from my lay perspective shows that Hansen is one of very few scientists with a couple of prerequisites of performing useful science in the 21st century:

1) An appreciation for the (now evidently) fragile nature of earth's physiology, and
2) The guts to speak out about it, despite every kind of scientific repression we'd expect of a fascist state such as our own.

Some climate professionals, it seems to me (to emphasize, I have no special knowledge) are still living in a strange mathematical universe where the predictions of their equilibrium-based models matter more than the current observed behavior of an earth in disequilibrium. No model had what happened up north this summer anywhere near the error-bars of its alarming, evidently not alarming enough, linear predictions. And yet many reports we hear are still coming out with spectacular predictions of what's happening now, only 30 years or so hence. It's starting to make what should be respectable institutions like the IPCC appear somewhat less respectable. It's not the slightest bit constructive, and it has to stop immediately.

Earth to mankind, come in please! Think of well-intentioned wetlands-reclamation projects, often touted as something making a positive contribution. How can anyone make intelligent plans about something like that without a better idea of how long we have before that big white sheet over Greenland disintegrates entirely? This is an international emergency, and news stories continually go on about open shipping lanes, for the love of Pete! We don't have a choice anymore people. We have to live in the actual world now for awhile, or else die here. Possibly, our choices could make a difference in that, or else not. That's how it is. In my opinion, you should be able to tell that to your children, because they're going to thank you later for letting them know how things are as soon as possible.

I thank you most sincerely.

ANd in the CLimate Change meeting called today by Bush he is talking about another meeting next summer. Sad sad sad

"But that's more or less speculation. There isn't scientific documentation other than the observations," he said.

Gee, last I heard, observations ARE documentation!

This weeks Time magazine's cover story is about the race for the Arctic's resources as they become accessible by the melting ice. Which corporate/state hyenas will begin devouring and raping the virgin waters and lands first?

US, Russia, England, France. Exxon, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Esso.

But fear not... no ports, no trade. No economy. Oh, that's right... NO COUNTRIES!

(hey 'Imagine' that...John Lennon was right...cool)

Someone will build a church, then another denomination will build a church, then two self serve gas stations and a Quick Mart, then another denomination will build a church, then a Dairy Queen will appear, a McDonalds and a Wot a Booger, next Wal-mart will put up a super store, and here comes Toys-R-Us. Meanwhile, there will be a county court house, a tax assessors office, building inspectors office and a jail. And before you know it, we will have another huge community of born again Christians and a lot of traffic jams, drug dealers and four storage locer facilities. Finally, the Indians will build a casino. "The Extinct Polar Bear Club". And America will have arrived in classic style.

Fearmongering!! Not one flat-as-a-pancake cay among the thousands lying in the Caribbean has shown any sign of rising waters. Water rises equally all across the earth's oceans and here in California the water mark on our beaches hasn't budged a fraction. Boy, dire predictions and apocalyptic visions certainly make for good copy, much more interesting reading than African children who were saved from starvation by food donations from philanthropic foundations!

JoeT: Actually, world sea levels were documented to have risen by six inches in the past two years...

If you want cheap 'beachfront' property in the not-so-distant future, now's the tme to 'head for the hills, and build your solar stills' in case you have to bucket in sea water for drinking.

You are incorrect JOE, even Fox News had stories of the rising sea waters, natives of several South Pacific islands are now in serious trouble and will have to desert their islands in a year or two. Look for a fourty foot rise of sea water in the next ten years, 'world-wide', as you did state correctly.

JoeT,

The lack of rising waters is entirely consistent with the models. Sea-bound ice melting has very little impact on water levels, and that is what the article is about. The problem comes when land-bound ice melts, such as the Greenland ice shelf or Antarctic ice. There is already evidence that land ice is cracking at an unprecendented rate through a process of water tunneling resulting from melted surface ice.

You are making one the classic mistakes amongst people who are scienfically illiterate - you assume trends are linear. The fact is that the models are predicting catastrophic changes. That is little rise in water levels observed until a large land ice mass slides into the sea. At the point, the water level rise would be catastrophic, as much as several feet in a matter of weeks. Please, do some reading and become informed. Tim Flannery (The Weather Makes) talks about climate change going in "jerks" or gateways. And he used to be a global warming denier like you!

Platitudes about how conservatives are saving Africa only reveal more of your ignornance, please read up the colonial history of Africa as well.

JoeT and Galen,

Actually you are both wrong. The current world-wide average rate of sea level rise (SLR)is about 3 mm/yr. The rate does vary considerably from one station to another. For more information, see:
http://co-ops.nos.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global.shtml

The site has a link to a table of SLR rates for stations around the globe.

Virtually all oceanographers agree that sea level as well as the SLR rate will continue to increase.

For more bacground, see also: http://www.ipcc.ch/

but you should be aware that the IPCC projections of SLR err on the low side, since they do not take account of ice sheet dynamics.

Really, it's not that hard to get informed.

Bob: Thank you for the correction.

I have heard that, because of centrifigal forces, the sea level rise that has recently occured tends to be concentrated in a band around the equator. Are there scientific reports that address this issue?

Don't worry be happy, Bush has a better plan. He will bomb every country and kill us all in order to save us from drowing.Drink up-my man we'r in good christian hands.This one's for you.

KEM PATRICK

and don't forget the drive ins to show all the disaster movies.!!!!

p.s. actually some islands have already been evacuated.

There are sea surges, which may be caused from centrifical force, I'm not well informed as to the cause. One hit Long Island in 2002 and there was some serious flooding where it was totally unexpected. Kathyodat sent me that information BTW. She is still having problems of signing in here at Common Dreams. We miss her posts.

Hi COCO, what do you know about drive-ins babe? Hmmmmmmm.

ahh, whats a little 200 foot rise in sea level, reduced salinity, death of all estuarine life, muddy erosion, putrid Oceans to worry about?

Would be interesting to see where the Repugs are buying up( rock-solid future waterfront)land for their Grandchildren, just above the 200 foot above sea level mark, I'd imagine.

golddog, you assume that the Repubs actually care about their kids...maybe you didn't read W's characteristically callous comment about his own daughter during her hospitalization. he was on a "fishing trip" with "friends" or something. a reporter asked him if he was going to go see his daughter. He said something like, "maybe, but I'm a bit busy fishing. you see I believe in tough love". when asked about his place in history w just shrugged, "History? we'll all be dead by then..."

I don't think they give a rat's ass about their kids, ours, history or anything else of any real value.

The tipping point was nine miles back down the road. What we're looking at now is free-fall.

I don't hear many predictions by scientists that overstate the observable facts. The pattern is that their models continually underestimate the impact. It appears that they are being caught off guard the positive feedback loops.

If sea ice is melting faster than anticipated and is considered to have crossed a "tipping point", that will greatly speed up the process of melting the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The consensus says that will be catastrophic.

Part of our problem is that evolution did not equip us with a "fight or flight" response for seemingly distant threats. Either we don't see those threats, or when we do, we don't register much, if any alarm. Unfortunately for us, global warming will seem distant until it is too late.

We should listen to the environmental scientist, James Lovelock, a brilliant scientist from the UK. He took an unflinching look at the evidence and had the courage to write that it is probably too late to avoid a worst case scenario. His recommendation is that we should begin disaster planning in earnest.

If you aren't familiar with him, he is one of those scientists who has the habit of making bold statements that others like to dismiss in cavalier fashion. However, much to the dismay of his detractors, he has a history of getting the last laugh because he is often right.

Gregory:
what keeps bugging me is:
1. we are 20k yrs out of the last ice age.
2. the last ice age lasted 100k yrs.
3. lucy is some 2000k yrs old, so
it is likely humans have been here before..

most of humanity will not make it thru, but
as long as earth does not do a venus
some will..

i probably will not see the results
of our folly, but if i do
i hope i can still say now
we be
"living in interesting times"
ken

Ken,

Your perspective is interesting and well taken. However, I think Lucy is a tad older than two million years. I've read she is more like 3.2 million years old. But not problem, if she were here today, I am sure she would be flattered that you thought she was so young.

I don't know enough to question your dates on the last ice age, but assuming those dates are accurate, Lucy's antiquity lends credence to your statement...."as long as earth does not do a venus some will...(survive)".

Gregory:
the idea i think is
"its a circle"
and until the sun
envelopes the planets (a venus for sure)
"it shall be unbroken"

and of course the numbers could
be acquired (or best guesses i imagine),
but does it matter as
they be big
like the national debt
imagine a million million
times what??? (9)
ken

But gee whiz guys, there's all that oil under the Arctic. Can't we just wait a little longer so that Canada, US, Norway, Russia, and whoever else has stuck their flag there can drain the planet of the rest of its oil? ;o)

Jareilly, you're correct, the right wingers don't care about their kids, primarily because their political ideology takes root due to the unabated cruelty they experienced in their own childhoods. I'm sure that it is just the same with climate change; bush is busy destroying the world and making money for him and his friends; the fact that his daughter and possible grandchildren (I don't know or care if this person has grandchildren; hopefully not) may suffer and die in the floods and scorching is beside the point.

And yes, some island nations have already gone under, and we are next unless we take control of the issue and get results.

The Age of Almost and Maybe. The Arctic is almost at a tipping point. The military is almost "broken" (still). We have almost reached the peak oil tipping point. Iraq has almost devolved into a free-for-all. The economy is teetering on collapse. Countries with oil reserves almost have nukes. Victory is almost ours...

It's gonna be a bad week when we realize almost and maybe are codespeak for done deal and too late.

We live at an altitude of 5,800 feet above sea level and 500 miles, as the crow flys, to the shores of the Pacific. I just bought a 65 footer houseboat with all of the toys. I'm gonna put sails on it and hire a crew of displaced Playboy's bunnies to crew it.

KEM PATRICK

just what i've seen on the films. and i actually went to one in ghana of all places. it was so funny, cos the bats kept flying in front of the screen.
what do you know about kathy? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

JACOB FREEZE

you can say that again.. good website........

Funny the people here are worrying about oceans attaking the world's cities, They should be worrying moore about the fresh water estatuaires whats left of them right at the oceans edge. You see a great amount of food production comers from them . So when the people runfaway from the rising oceans up some hill somewhere bunkie theey just ain't going to have the food to sustain then unless itt is Soylent Green.
I find it amusing thaat the doubters will buy and use any other things scientists create,but those scientist that proclaim climate change is real they throw mud.
Ah but it was only a few hundred years ago they use to burn Scientists as witches . Perhaps our doubters want to revive that custom.

genaman you make a good point about the scientists. While we are wasting our resources in Iraq as well as having the religious out patients decrying the teaching of science in schools unless it includes creationism, can't you just pictue the Chinese and Indians laughing their heads off at our follies while they gain on us.

Hi there COCO. Kathy has not been able to get her computer aligned so she can post on this website. I haven't seen any posts from Aymon, and or several other old timers lately either. I believe it is a computer glitch, perhaps with the Common Dreams system. The CD stats page has been unavailable for more than a week now for example, so it's impossible to easily research past articles.

This global warming is only one of several serious problems facing not only humanity and all other life forms, it is also only one of severral major problems which could end the life of a planet, namely Earth. If manmade pollution killls off the ocean's phytoplankton for example, and it currently is doing just that, Earth could eventually end up being another Mars. Our radio-active pollutions could easily do thet, as could the burning of our forests and fossil fuels. Any who believe global warming caused by humanity is not a fact are delusional, or do not wish to accept the true facts.

Global Warming, pollution of the planet, overpopulation are all attributable to suicidal patriarchy, organized patriarchal religions and capitalism.

While the masses remain mainly unorganized, the few are well organized -- especially in regard to right-wing propaganda which easily fools the less informed and drowns out voices of the more informed -- indeed, having suppressed scientific evidence over decades.

ExxonMobil was recently cited for their decades long campaign of propaganda against Global Warming and much of that campaign took place on the Op-Ed pages of the NY Times . . . in that unholy alliance.

There's a 50 year delay in Global Warming .... We are now only up to feeling the effects of the disaster we put in place in 1957 -- how many gasoline-guzzing cars came after that? There will be a huge compounding and increasing speed of all the effects as we move forward --

No reason why we can't have ALL electric cars on our roads -
in the next five years --
See: "Who Killed The Electric Car" --

4,000 and more of them on CA highways for almost five years -- GM wouldn't sell them to those leasing them --
they recalled every one of them and CRUSHED them!!!!

PS: Right-wing propaganda continues to create ignorance for us to try to deal with and the need to awaken the public is urgent -- !!!

The Age of Almost & Maybe will last as long as the last Ice Age. As I said, apocalyptic news always sells better than state fairs and cupcake sales. We'll be hearing about the "impending" economic crash for the next hundred years.

Nope JOE, you will soon sadly see you are wrong. I sincerely wish you were not.

conscience September 29th, 2007 1:14 pm

"No reason why we can't have ALL electric cars on our roads -
in the next five years —
See: "Who Killed The Electric Car" –"

The electric car died because of a lack of range and the large amount of time it took to recharge them. Not to mention the fact that the electricity used to recharge them also came from plants that burned coal or fossil fuels so the savings in pollution produced was minimal at best.

The better solution would be to invest in a crash program to develop hydrogen to power our transportation, and our homes , along with the development of renewable sources such as wind and solar to produce the electricity we need.

BTW our homes count for 45% of the gases that contribute to global warming as opposed to 25% for transportation.

Lobo Gris

For those not already "in the know":
This whole "tipping point" idea is but a facet of a science called "systems analysis." I encourage anyone dubious about the topic to take a trip to the library or at least take a spin on Google or Wikipedia to familiarize yourself with the concepts of feedback analysis. Gore did an admirable job trying to explain it in his slideshow, but you really need to sink your mental teeth into it to get it right. While you're at it, Google or Wiki-search the term homeostasis. Trust me: spend 30 minutes making yourself smarter and you will never regret it.

KEM -Excellent post
"Someone will build a church, then another denomination will build a church, then two self serve gas stations and a Quick Mart, then another denomination will build a church, then a Dairy Queen will appear, a McDonalds and a Wot a Booger, next Wal-mart will put up a super store, and here comes Toys-R-Us. Meanwhile, there will be a county court house, a tax assessors office, building inspectors office and a jail. And before you know it, we will have another huge community of born again Christians and a lot of traffic jams, drug dealers and four storage locer facilities. Finally, the Indians will build a casino. "The Extinct Polar Bear Club". And America will have arrived in classic style."

Sadly, it's where I live but soon to be history.

Look Out guys. This Rueter's article is nothing but cherry-picking Fortune 500 understatement. 1000 years my arse!

You want the real story, first use google earth and spot the countless Huge blue lakes all over Antartica and Greenland. Then click here: to learn what's already happening with the runaway Jakobshavn Glacier (thebiggest one on greenland)

http://www.google.com.ph/search?hl=en&q=Jakobshavn+Glacier&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

remember, verify everything that comes out of their dirty corporate mouths!

pac

PACPLYER

good link. very disturbing indeed. what hope is there? the nova science is a very good website too.

If I can figure out how to put sails on our houseboat COCO, We'll pick you up. How long can you tread water?

coco,

Google says there are 36,000 articles that mention that Glacier, and I can't find the specific one now (out of hundreds) which deals on the massive earthquakes and several science periodicals where the climatologists warn that quakes of that magnatude, which are caused by the bottoms of the glaciers ripping off the bedrock, from thawing, cause cause complete and rapid breakup of the Greenland Ice sheet. So the sequence is first temps are soaring there twice as fast as they are in the U.S., next the sea ice is gone more and more of the summer, this causes the glaciers to have nothing to hold them in place so they recede and start galloping for the sea, they thin out and liquify from below, this causes weakness which rips them off the bedrock and produces geologic instability (earthquakes,) and lastly: the worry is that the icecap could breakup as fast as the Larson B ice shelf did. The Larson B in antartica is gone. It shocked scientists who were convinced in 2002 it would be around for hundreds of years by expoding into peices rapidly. There are 28,000 articles on Google, but I don't remember this getting much coverage (if any) on the MSM.

http://www.google.com.ph/search?hl=en&q=Larson+B+iceshelf%2C+breakup&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

As to what to do:

I like Kem Patrick's Sail House idea! Don't forget an airplane on the top KEM, so you can run a screen for "Smokers" (armed jet skis) :)

pac "waterworld" plyer

Additional thoughts:

It occurs to me that Joe T may be operating at the "Mad George" level of intellect:

Joe T: "Fearmongering!! Not one flat-as-a-pancake cay among the thousands lying in the Caribbean has shown any sign of rising waters. Water rises equally all across the earth's oceans and here in California the water mark on our beaches hasn't budged a fraction. Boy, dire predictions and apocalyptic visions certainly make for good copy, much more interesting reading than African children who were saved from starvation by food donations from philanthropic foundations!"

pac: Using a crayon on your pacific beach rock does not sound very sophisticated to me. I had a boat in Florida and believe sea water does not rise equally all across the earth's surface. The East Coast has four tides a day whereas, the California has only two. These are driven by the moon in concert with other celestial objects (the sun) as well as other factors. As well, several feet of unexpected level change can happen with atmospheric variation. Here in the South Pacific we are experiencing more and more frequent flooding in the local city. But it's not yet from sea rise. What gets us is a predicted high tide combined with a low pressure system. So while we wouldn't flood with just the astronomic predicted high tide by itself, we certainly do when a tropical storm (low pressure system) coincides with that high tide. Low air pressure pulls the water up higher if you will.

Joe T , and Bush should read this to understand that a crayon isn't going to cut it:

http://www.whoi.edu/info/tides.html

But what is ominous for the future is Galen's very brilliant hypothesis. Centrifugal force in the future (say if the greenland ice cap breaks up,) massing the ocean higher at the equator. I flew for a living for twenty years and can tell you that this is true for the atmosphere. The atmosphere is thicker at the equator. Thunderstorms commonly rise to over 60,000 feet there, whereas in the U.S. buildups only range on the 30,000 to 40,000 height for the most part. This means we can't "top" these monsters near Singapore, so we spend alot more time going around them. Standard sea level pressure is 14.7psi at sea level or 29.92 inches of mercury or 1013.1 milibars of mercury. We get nervous when it drops below that!

What can be done? We have to oust these cowboy officials. We have to boycott wall street and hurt their earnings so that these dictator CEO's will quit making a monkey out of our government.

That's what I think.

pac

PACPLYER

thankyou for all that info. will go look at antartica now which will probably make me more depressed...........but i think it's a bit late to help the earth by merely ousting the cowboys...........if things are happening this quickly, then to put the brakes on might be like a mouse trying to stop a runaway train..............

KEM PATRICK

a hard man is good to find kem. ooh sorry i mean a good man is hard to find.............you're one of the best i;m sure...........i can tread water for quite some time but don't know how long i can go without drinking it.................

COCO, we have to stop seeing each other like this. I've fallen in love and my wife is suspicious.

KEM PATRICK

tell her you're going to see a shrink.........that should do it.......