James Hansen: We’re Totally Living In The Doomy “Hyper-Anthropocene Age” Or Something

28 Jul, 2015 by William Teach

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If anthropogenic climate change was so utterly real, so dangerous, and the science was so utterly sound, one would think that there would be no need for hyperbolic, over-the-top stories and pronouncements, eh? Here’s hyper-alarmist Joe Romm at Climate Progress

James Hansen Spells Out Climate Danger Of The ‘Hyper-Anthropocene’ Age

James Hansen and 16 leading climate experts have written a must-read discussion paper on what humanity risks if it can’t keep total global warming below 2°C (3.6°F). The greatest risk they identify is “that multi-meter sea level rise would become practically unavoidable.”

This is warning everyone should heed — not just because Hansen’s co-authors include some of the world’s top sea-level rise experts, such as Eric Rignot and Isabella Velicogna, but also given Hansen’s prescience on climate change dating back more than three decades.

In 1981, Hansen led a team of NASA scientists in a seminal article in Science, “Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.”

They warned: “Potential effects on climate in the 21st century include the creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia as part of a shifting of climatic zones, erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent worldwide rise in sea level, and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage.”

Wow. A 35-year-old peer-reviewed climate warning that is 100 percent dead on. Is there anyone else on the planet who can has been right for so long about climate change?

Except, the “fabled Northwest Passage” is not open. Yes, it opened for a brief time, very brief, but, interestingly, it was also open during the “safe” time when CO2 was well below 350ppm, back between 1903-1906. Every prognostication of an ice free Arctic has failed.

Predicting drought? There are always parts of the world, including North America and Asia, that experience drought. Most non-alarmist scientists have noted that the West Antarctic melting is primarily occurring due to thermal heat underneath from volcanic activity.

Hansen has a long history of failed prognostications. His 1988 forecast was off by 150%. Manhattan is not under water. And so many more.

Hansen and co-authors deftly dismiss those ill-informed Pollyannas who use Orwellian terms like “good Anthropocene.” They explain that we are far past “the era in which humans have contributed to global climate change,” which probably began a thousand years ago, and are now in “a fundamentally different phase, a Hyper-Anthropocene … initiated by explosive 20th century growth of fossil fuel use.”

The “Hyper-Anthropocene” is a very good term to describe the unprecedented acceleration in global warming that humanity has set in motion with the explosive growth of fossil fuels and carbon pollution, as the recent science makes clear:

The Hyper-Anthropocene”!!!!!!!! Which has seen Mankind reach highs our ancestors never dreamed of. But, hey, you know, doom

The fact that 2°C total warming locks us in to sea level rise of 10 feet or more has been obvious for a while now. Heck, the National Science Foundation (NSF) issued a news release back in March 2012 on paleoclimate research with the large-type headline, “Global Sea Level Likely to Rise as Much as 70 Feet in Future Generations.” The lead author of that study explained, “The natural state of the Earth with present carbon dioxide levels is one with sea levels about 70 feet higher than now.”

Yeah, this is about the 10 feet of sea rise very very soon paper, not peer reviewed, and may never be, because his compatriots are not enthused by the paper. But, “climate science”needs lots of scary stories about future doom. It’s how they roll.  Because the so-called science itself continues to fail spectacularly.

Meanwhile, James Hansen and the rest of the Cult of Climastrology refuse to give up their own use of fossil fuels. Weird, right?

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.