Climate Catastrophes: Worst-Case Scenarios


Climate change is a global reality. Extreme weather events are taking a toll on the daily lives of people around the world. If climate change is already fueling powerful storms, long-lasting droughts and more frequent floods, what will the future look like?
James Hansen, the former NASA scientist who helped first raise awareness of the issue of climate change in his testimonies before Congress in 1988, sounded the alarm this week in a grim and controversial report that predicts catastrophic from a warmer world and rising tides, up to 16 feet by 2100, four times the level predicted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The magnitude of climate effects in Hansen's predictions are beyond what most climatologists are comfortable with. But even if Hansen is an outlier, what exactly does the worst-case scenario look like for human beings and other life on Earth?

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