lightblueline

SB Independent reporter and photographer Nick Welsh and Paul Wellman cover the local events surrounding the talk by James Hansen at UC Santa Barbara. The story involves several issues that are worthwhile examining, including the IPCC report and new scientific data and thinking on the non-linear process of the large ice sheets (Greenland and the West Antarctic) melting over the next hundred to a thousand years.

Nick still calls this the "Global Warming Debate," although IPCC may have just taken the "Debate" out of the picture. Like the "Earth Rotates Around the Sun Debate," after a while even the fringe groups and the media get the concept.

What we do have is an "Ice Melt Science" debate, which is centered on the lack of scientific models that can predict how large ice sheets actually melt, and what happens when they start to melt. The other question is this: can we afford to wait for the scientists to agree on everything before we start working to keep the water as ice on Greenland and off our beaches, freeways, and airport.

Hansen clearly thinks we do not have the luxury of certainty, given the potential danger of these ice sheets melting more rapidly than we have previously considered.

Lightblueline uses Greenland as the basis for its seven meter (actually 23 feet... not 21 feet) contour line. We do this for simplicity: Greenland is our symbolic climate change poster child. The lightblueline public awareness art project is not predicting when Greenland would melt, or even if Greenland would be the first ice sheet to melt: some scientists are more concerned about the West Antarctic ice sheet which holds 6 meters of sea-level rise water.

You can read the entire Independent story here:

The Scariest Man on the Planet