Skip to content
  • ABOUT
  • EVENTS
  • ESSAYS
  • SPECIALS
  • DOWNLOADS
  • AUTHORS
  • VIDEOS
  • LINKS

Ecologise

The 21st century's converging crises and alternative pathways

Header Widget Area

  • ABOUT
  • EVENTS
  • ESSAYS
  • SPECIALS
  • DOWNLOADS
  • AUTHORS
  • VIDEOS
  • LINKS
  • Home
  • CLIMATE CRISIS
  • Video: Climate science pioneer Hansen warns of disastrous climate shift

Video: Climate science pioneer Hansen warns of disastrous climate shift

31st March 2016


The world may be much closer to an abrupt and catastrophic climate shift than previously thought. That’s the warning from modern climate science pioneer James Hansen. His latest research suggests that polar ice sheet disintegration may cause sea level rise enough to drown coastal cities, not in a few centuries, but in a few decades.

Nayantara Narayanan, Scroll.in 

The world may be much closer to an abrupt and catastrophic climate shift than previously thought. That’s the warning from the pioneer of modern climate science James Hansen. His latest research suggests that polar ice sheet disintegration may cause superstorms stronger than any we’ve ever seen and sea level rise enough to drown coastal cities, not in a few centuries, but in a few decades.

In a paper written along with 18 other authors and published in European science journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics on March 22, Hansen discusses findings from paleoclimate data, climate models and observations, which indicate that freshwater melt from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are creating feedback loops that hasten the effects of climate change.

According to Hansen and his collaborators, as freshwater from these giant melting masses of ice pours into the salty ocean, it forms a cold layer on the water surface. This layer weakens ocean currents that redistribute heat around the planet and allow some of that heat to escape into space. The more heat gets trapped in the oceans, the more the ice sheets melt pouring more cold low-density water unto the ocean surface so that it might form a lid completely shutting down the all-important ocean circulations.

Yes, the research does resemble the premise of the 2004 climate apocalypse movie The Day After Tomorrow.

The impacts of such an ocean circulation shutdown would be felt as killer superstorms, before which Hurricane Sandy and recent snowstorms across the US would pale, Hansen said. The phenomenon would also result in a sea level rise of several meters, drowning almost every coastal city and low lying area from Bangladesh to the Netherlands. Current scientific consensus pegs sea level rise to be not more than one meter by the end of the 21st century, which itself will have devastating consequences.

The study has already seen a share of controversy after Hansen, deeming the findings to important to wait, released a non-peer reviewed draft of it in 2015. Since then, the paper has been reviewed and discussed by the climate research community, many of whom feel that it’s important as a predictor of the worst case scenario.

Hansen has been at the forefront of climate science, having warned the world through his testimony to the US Congress back in 1988 that global warming had already begun. He has also been a vociferous climate activist and constantly demanded the phasing out of fossil fuels. In video above, released along with the study, Hansen once again asks for an immediate shift to clean energy technologies.

(Visited 61 times, 1 visits today)

Tags: Climate Change, education & awareness, future scenarios, ice melt, James Hansen, science & research, sea level rise, videos

«« NEWS UPDATE #89

Charles Eisenstein: In a Rhino, Everything »»

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Stories

Paul Kingsnorth: The Great Unsettling

Economy and ecology are now in conflict; it’s time to integrate them with wisdom

War, mismanagement and climate change: Iraq’s environment on the brink

More Stories From CLIMATE CRISIS

Joshimath Crisis is a Warning from the Himalayas

Paul Kingsnorth: The Great Unsettling

The electric car must fail

Left Asides

Upcoming Events

  • Call for Entries: Urban Climate Film Festival at

    …Submit your films till March 3rd. For more information visit: https://niua.in/citiis/ucff       (Visited 13 times, 1 visits today)

    3rd February 2023 – 3rd March 2023
  • Natural Building Workshop at

    Puvidham Learning Centre, Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu                                 (Visited 11 times, 1 visits today)

    24th February 2023 – 5th March 2023
  • River Dialogues (Edition VI) at

    India International Centre, New Delhi (Visited 4 times, 1 visits today)

    3rd March 2023 – 3rd March 2023
View All Events

Important

Please note that all the material we have posted in various categories from October 2013 onward is freely available here. You can also search through the archives sorted month-wise on the option below or browse through the listed categories. Also available are e-books, research papers and videos, accessible from the tabs on top. We hope that are of use to you in a world in transition. Good luck!

Archives

Right Asides

On Ground

South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP)

2023: India’s Wetlands continue to face Rising Threats and Misgovernance

2022: People’s Resistance against Unviable HEPs, Destructive Dams

Categories

  • ALTERNATIVES (404)
  • Bookshelf (136)
  • CLIMATE CRISIS (534)
  • Conflict/Dispossession (305)
  • Conserve/Resist (294)
  • Consumerism/Lifestyle (182)
  • Culture/Cognition (204)
  • Development/Growth (386)
  • Digests/Specials (59)
  • Downloads (7)
  • ECOCIDE/EXTINCTION (149)
  • Ecologise Events (28)
  • Economy (305)
  • Education/Awareness (556)
  • ENERGY (352)
  • Finance & Debt (78)
  • Food/Farming (263)
  • Forests/Wildlife (235)
  • GREEN POLITICS (354)
  • Guides/How-To (40)
  • Health/Safety (131)
  • Ideas/Ideology (266)
  • INDIA (651)
  • Indigenous Worlds (55)
  • Inspiration/Musings (290)
  • Livelihoods/Rights (492)
  • NEWS ARCHIVE (202)
  • Oceans/Marine Life (40)
  • Peak Oil (67)
  • Planning/Policy (616)
  • Pollution/Toxicity (147)
  • Population (21)
  • Poverty/Inequality (205)
  • RECOMMENDED (281)
  • Resource Use (419)
  • Rural India (317)
  • Sharing/The Commons (52)
  • Soil/Fertility (56)
  • Sustainability (360)
  • Systemic Collapse (193)
  • Technology (159)
  • Transition (286)
  • Trends/Scenarios (469)
  • Uncategorised (160)
  • VIDEOS (425)
  • Water/Rivers (156)
  • Weather/Calamities (187)

Find us on Instagram

  • Instagram

Recent Comments

  • Mohit Garg on Series: Weathering the change – Part 1
  • Questioning Technological Determinism – II – Outlook First on Bookshelf: Scarcity – Humanity’s Last Chapter?
  • Questioning Technological Determinism – II - Gear Media on Bookshelf: Scarcity – Humanity’s Last Chapter?
  • Questioning Technological Determinism – II – Technology News on Bookshelf: Scarcity – Humanity’s Last Chapter?
  • Babita wadhwani on Daripalli Ramaiah: The man who planted (ten million!) trees

Most Popular

  • USAID, Monsanto and the real reason behind… by Contributor 20th October 2018 (188,574)
  • Noam Chomsky: Indigenous people are our only hope… by Contributor 4th November 2017 (91,295)
  • The Bishnois, India’s original… by Contributor 28th May 2017 (62,372)
  • How Indians started drinking milk (and what it has cost us) by T. Vijayendra 17th April 2017 (16,850)
  • Forget ‘developing’ poor countries,… by Contributor 21st April 2017 (16,331)
  • The Great Water Grab: Wall Street is buying up the… by Contributor 17th November 2019 (14,809)
  • Indian environmental movements: Why they failed or… by Sagar Dhara 24th February 2019 (11,781)
  • Rojava: The radical eco-anarchist experiment… by Contributor 27th October 2019 (5,979)
  • ABOUT by Ecologise 31st October 2015 (5,978)
  • “A scam bigger than Rafale”: P. Sainath… by Contributor 9th November 2018 (5,762)

Ecologise Visitors

Facebook ProfileRSS Feed

© 2023 Ecologise