Climate Catastrophe, Coming Even Sooner?

Climate change could deliver devastating effects to coastal communities sooner than once thought. Researchers, since 1968, have pointed out that warming oceans could seep around and underneath polar ice sheets, undermining them and causing sea levels to rise. New research and a new model from Penn State confirm the worst fears, suggesting that “just a few more decades of ‘unabated’ carbon emissions could result in more than three feet of sea-level rise from [the West Antarctic Ice Sheet] by the end of this century,” writes Elizabeth Kolbert for the New Yorker. “(The over-all rise would be much greater, as ice would also be lost from Greenland and from mountain glaciers.) Over the longer term, melt from Antarctica could raise sea levels by fifty feet.” Two countries combined, the United States and China, use nearly half the world’s energy. Politicians who deny climate change is underway and suggest that researchers are exaggerating the problem are courting disaster. – YaleGlobal