Thursday, January 24, 2013

Bought and paid for?: Greenpeace-backed scientist claims that "there's no doubt that if climate continued like in 2012, Greenland's gone."

Why Greenland's Melting Could Be the Biggest Climate Disaster of All | Mother Jones
Glaciologist Jason Box predicted the massive melt of the Greenland ice sheet's surface last summer. Now he's racing to figure out just how rapidly we're pushing its 7 meters of sea level rise onto our shores....And the coastal consequences of allowing Greenland to continue its melting—and pour 23 feet's worth of sea level into the ocean over the coming centuries—are just staggering. "If you're the mayor of Hamburg, or Shanghai, or Philadelphia, I think it's in your job description that you think forward a century," says Box. "They're completely inundated by the year 2200."
...Rather than waiting on funding agencies, he teamed up with Greenpeace on a series of expeditions to document, and also dramatize, the ice sheet's melting....But all of this pales in comparison to a global ocean containing what used to be Greenland. And that, Box says, should serve as a major wake-up call, since "there's no doubt that if climate continued like in 2012, Greenland's gone."

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