Scientists Warn of Perilous Climate Shift Within Decades, Not Centuries

A massive boulder on a coastal ridge in North
 Eleuthera, the Bahamas. A new research
 paper claims it was most likely moved there by
 powerful storms during the last warm period of
Earth history, 120,000 years ago, and warns
that such stormy conditions could recur
 because of human emissions of greenhouse gases

The nations of the world agreed years ago to try to limit global warming to a level they hoped would prove somewhat tolerable. But leading climate scientists warned on Tuesday that permitting a warming of that magnitude would actually be quite dangerous.

The likely consequences would include killer storms stronger than any in modern times, the disintegration of large parts of the polar ice sheets and a rise of the sea sufficient to begin drowning the world’s coastal cities before the end of this century, the scientists declared.

“We’re in danger of handing young people a situation that’s out of their control,” said James E. Hansen, the retired NASA climate scientist who led the new research. The findings were released Tuesday morning by a European science journal, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Read The New York Times story by Justin Grillis - “Scientists Warn of Perilous Climate Shift Within Decades, Not Centuries.”