PLEA Network

23 July 2015, New York Times, Whiplash Warning When Climate Science is Publicized Before Peer Review and Publication: The study is “Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms: Evidence from Paleoclimate Data, Climate Modeling, and Modern Observations that 2°C Global Warming is Highly Dangerous.” The 66-page “discussion paper” (the authors’ description) was posted Thursday in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, the discussion forum of the European Geosciences Union journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The paper was was written by 17 prominent climate, ice and ocean scientists, led by James E. Hansen, the pioneering climatologist who since 2007 has argued that most of his peers have been too reticent in their projections of the possible pace of sea-level rise in a warming world. It is a sweeping and valuable cross-disciplinary description of ways in which climate and ocean dynamics, pushed by the planet’s human-amplified greenhouse effect, could accelerate sea level rise far beyond the range seen as plausible in the last report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the most recent review of what leading experts on sea level think, this 2014 paper: “Expert assessment of sea-level rise by AD 2100 and AD 2300.” Read More here