I Just Hope He's Wrong

It's hard not to respect James Hansen, the man often called "the grandfather of climate science." The retired former director of the NASA Goddard space science laboratory created a stir back in 1988 when he told a Senate hearing that the greenhouse gas effect was changing our climate.

Hansen left NASA to commit his time and effort to the fight against anthropogenic global warming. He's done a lot since then including getting himself arrested twice.

Now Hansen and 18-other prominent climate science types have published a new paper that warns we have dangerously underestimated sea level rise over the course of this century. We've been talking about one metre of sea level rise by 2100. Hansen & Co. warn that could be many metres, not one, enough to drown many coastal cities and trigger a mass retreat from the sea. They also foresee more, massively more powerful storms.