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For Immediate Release
November, 25 2013, 12:02pm EDT
Contact:
Lynsy Smithson-Stanley
646-559-8284
lsmithsonstanley@climatenexus.org
Survey of Experts Suggests 1 Meter Sea Level Rise By 2100
The largest survey ever of the world's foremost sea-level rise experts shows that a meter of warming is possible by 2100 with unchecked emissions. Quaternary Science Reviews published the study over the weekend.
NEW YORK
The largest survey ever of the world's foremost sea-level rise experts shows that a meter of warming is possible by 2100 with unchecked emissions. Quaternary Science Reviews published the study over the weekend.
Because projecting sea-level rise comes with many uncertainties (glacier and ice cap melting, use of water for irrigation and more), different modeling approaches yield significantly different answers. By surveying leaders in the field, study authors offered more assurance on the ranges of future sea-level rise.
In a best-case scenario where warming is limited to 2oC beyond pre-industrial levels, experts predicted about half a meter of rise by 2100 and between 0.6 and 1m by 2300. In a high-emissions scenario with 4.5oC of warming, expert predictions were even more dire: 0.7 to 1.2m by 2100 and 2 to 3m by 2300.
The potential damage from sea level rise is significant. An additional meter of rise poses significant risks to U.S. coastal regions, which are inhabited by 29% of the national population, including five of the ten largest cities and generate 45% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product.
In each scenario, the experts surveyed predicted more sea level rise than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Working Group I report, which was released in September. This finding is in line with the IPCC's reputation as being conservative in its estimates.
The survey also asked for a "high-end" estimate below which respondents expect sea level to stay with 95 percent certainty until the year 2100 (the IPCC does not include this data point, although the high-end value is relevant for coastal planning). For unmitigated emissions, half of the experts (51%) gave at least 1.5m, and a quarter (27%) reported 2 or more meters. A majority of experts (58%) reported the high-end value for 2300 as 4m or higher.
"The results show that unmitigated emissions could have catastrophic impact on many coastal cities and low-lying areas," said lead author Dr. Benjamin Horton, professor at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University. "But they also illustrate the potential for allaying such large sea-level rise through successful reduction of emissions."
To ensure unbiased selection of experts, study authors identified the authors most active in the peer-reviewed sea-level rise literature. Of this pool, 90 experts (representing 18 countries) provided full responses. Their responses reveal uncertainty and variation, but point to general agreement that mirrors the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) sea level rise estimates.
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Canadian Youth, Groups Sue Over Carney 'Failure' on Climate Crisis
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"You cannot abandon the map and still expect to reach your destination. Yet that's exactly what the federal government has done with its 2030 climate plan."
That's according to Charlie Hatt, climate director at Ecojustice, Canada's largest environmental law charity and one of the groups that partnered with a trio of young citizens this week to challenge Prime Minister Mark Carney's "failure" to bring the country's 2030 emissions reduction plan into compliance with a key federal law.
"Right now, its only climate plan is a plan to fail—and that's not just irresponsible, it's unlawful under the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act," said Hatt. "Neither the climate nor the law can tolerate rollbacks today in exchange for promises of action many years from now."
The act requires the federal government to set science-based climate goals, create a plan to achieve them, and report on its progress. However, Carney has recently pursued various rollbacks and boosted fossil fuel development, putting his nation's 2030 emissions reduction target out of reach—which the groups and young people argued violates the law.
"Everyone in Canada deserves to be safe and healthy," said Dr. Samantha Green, president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. "Instead, our government is putting people at risk by dismantling key climate policies without a credible plan to reduce emissions. Climate change is not an abstract future threat: It is a public health emergency that is already harming patients and communities across Canada. That's why CAPE is joining this lawsuit."
The fossil fuel-driven climate emergency isn't just a danger to public health. As Environmental Defence's Julia Levin noted, Canadians "are paying the price through wildfires, heat domes, rising food insecurity, and high costs of living."
"PM Carney is betraying Canadians by taking a wrecking ball to our hard-fought climate progress," Levin declared, accusing the Liberal Party leader of following in the footsteps of Big Oil-backed Republican US President Donald Trump.
"The rest of the world is rapidly adopting clean energy systems that are already more reliable, affordable, and secure than fossil fuels," she said. "Meanwhile, our prime minister is copying President Trump's playbook, ensuring that Canada will be left behind."
Carney's climate policies as prime minister—especially compared with how he talked about the crisis before rising to his current position last year—have frustrated many citizens and left "climate-anxious voters... feeling a major case of buyer's remorse, disoriented by the dissonance between who they thought they were supporting and a climate plan that is now a complete shambles," as Canadian climate writer and activist Seth Klein wrote for The Guardian last month.
Youth applicants in the new legal fight made that frustration clear on Tuesday. Montréal, Quebec-based climate organizer Shirley Barnea said that "the Carney government's gutting of climate policy is a massive insult. After presenting himself as a climate leader, our prime minister is now abdicating responsibility—to Canadians, to future generations, to the law. As long as governments continue ignoring climate science and rolling back protections for our futures, young people will continue taking them to court."
Marie Maltais, who is from Sainte-Catherine-de-la-Jacques-Cartier, Québec, and has advocated for the climate since her early teens, said that "my generation has grown up surrounded by climate disasters and broken political promises to address them. We're told to trust the government's climate commitments—but commitments mean nothing without a real plan behind them."
Sudbury, Ontario-based Sophia Mathur, an early participant in Greta Thunberg's Fridays for Future movement who recently met with Carney and urged him to keep his climate promises, added that "young people are being handed the consequences of decisions we didn't make. We are going to live with the impacts of unchecked climate change for the rest of our lives—so we're standing up for our futures, now."
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Following assertions from Israeli leaders that it would not end its occupation of Lebanon, Araghchi reiterated that the memorandum of understanding signed virtually by the US and Iran required in no uncertain terms that "war will be ending everywhere, on all fronts, including Lebanon."
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It was a shot across the bow from Tehran following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion the day before that Israeli forces would remain in Lebanon "for as long as necessary” regardless of any US-Iran agreement.
“We established deep security zones around the state of Israel," he said, referring to the roughly 230 square mile occupation area where Israel has forcibly expelled more than 1 million Lebanese civilians and systematically demolished dozens of villages. "I want to make it clear: We will remain in these security zones… to protect our country.”
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Trump criticizes Netanyahu and Israel: "Israel has been fighting Hezbollah too long and too many people are being killed. You don't need to knock down an apartment every time you're looking for somebody. I suggested to Israel to let Syria take care of Hezbollah, because too be… pic.twitter.com/NAmqoNkhpj
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There is "no rush" to retrieve uranium from nuclear sites the US bombed in June 2025, Trump said, adding that taking the highly enriched uranium is something the US wants "psychologically," but not enough to prioritize extracting it right away.
One could make the argument, he said, that it wasn't worth the effort to take the material at all.
"Frankly, to go get it—we're going to go get it—but to go get it is a big deal, because they say only China and us have the equipment," said the president. "You could make the case, 'Why do you even bother?' because it's not very valuable, you know. It's probably half a million dollars worth, it's not very valuable stuff."
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White House officials, though, told The Washington Post that details of Iran's nuclear program will be subject to negotiations over the next two months. The question of whether talks on the nuclear program could be held separately, after a deal to end the war was reached, had been a major sticking point for the US leading up to the MOU.
Trump brushed off suggestions that the deal to end the war, in which Iran demonstrated its economic might by effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz and sending energy prices skyrocketing—obtained no guarantees on Iran's nuclear program that hadn't already been secured in 2015 in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was brokered by the Obama administration and which limited Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump exited the JCPOA during his first term.
Iran will only be able to enrich uranium “for nonmilitary purposes. Forever," said Trump on Monday.
On Fox News on Monday, former National Security Council chief of staff Alex Gray insisted the president had secured a deal that, for the first time, would stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Before the US and Israel began attacking Iran in February, the Middle Eastern country maintained that its nuclear power program was not for military purposes.
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At CNN, Aaron Blake noted that Trump has spent weeks sending inconsistent messages about his demand that Iran end its nuclear program.
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Two weeks later, he again said that the US had "to take that nuclear dust," before telling Fox News last month that destroying the uranium was not "necessary except from a public relations standpoint."
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