We are looking yet more screwed on #climatechange

First, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration upped its estimate of sea-level rise by the end of this century from three feet to six feet, as Al Jazeera reports.

Not looking good, right?

Well, climate change solon James Hansen has now weighed in and said, in essence:

We should be lucky if it's only six feet.

Because he thinks oceans will rise 10 feet before at least some of us are dead.

Once more.

James Hansen thinks ocean levels will rise 10 feet in 50 years.

Cut both in half, and that's 5 feet in 25 years, when a lot of us will still be alive, and far before NOAA's 2100.

If he, and other authors on a report, are right about the West Antarctic ice sheet, yes, we're screwed.

Look here. Major chunks of the heart of Boston gone. NYC is OK, but Jersey City and Newark aren't. Tampa-St Pete have major problems.

Go here for more; see New Orleans become a narrow marshy archipelago at a 3-meter (10-foot) rise. Add another meter and much of it disappears. Out west, the whole Sacramento Delta becomes ocean. Millions of acres of farmland disappear.

Meanwhile, the idea that deniers are an endangered species is simply not true. It may be a cute phrase to rally the troops, but it's not true.

Big Tobacco, 20 years after the Medicaid lawsuits, still fights a residual rearguard action. And, on climate change, we're nowhere near that point. We're somewhere around Luther Terry's original 1964 Surgeon General's report on tobacco.

Another greenhouse gas effect on oceans

Carbon dioxide’s increasing acidification of the oceans is making them noisier. That, in turn makes it harder for many marine mammals to communicate.

Unwanted fish fry worse than thought?

The "unwanted fish fry" is the acidification of our oceans by our ever-increasing carbon-dioxide emissions. And, it appears to be worse than previously believed.

That means more stresses on oceanic species, and less ability of oceans to absorb yet more CO2.

Fish at 20,000 feet under the sea?

Or even near 30,000 feet, and quite active fish at that. Oceanographers and marine biologists expected extreme water pressures in the deep sea to put constraints on the activity level.

Visit the story for more, including video

Oceans warming faster than thought

The latest worrisome news on the climate change front is now in: Oceans have warmed 50 percent faster over the past 40 years than previously believed.

Higher temperatures, of course, expand the water, in addition to any water level rise from melting glaciers and icebergs with global warming. The new estimates will also affect climate change computer modeling — for the more accurate, but probably not for the more hopeful.