James Hansen, perhaps the most outspoken of mainstream climate scientists, reckons that unless we take urgent steps to cut emissions we’ll be committing the world to multi-metre sea level rise this century. In this week’s New Scientist, he presents his reasons why:
In my opinion, if the world warms by 2 °C to 3 °C, [..] massive sea level rise is inevitable, and a substantial fraction of the rise would occur within a century. Business-as-usual global warming would almost surely send the planet beyond a tipping point, guaranteeing a disastrous degree of sea level rise.
That’s a controversial viewpoint, and has lead to Hansen being described as “alarmist