“The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.”Twenty years from 1988-89 would be coming up in around, ooooh well, now actually. Watts Up With That? makes use of Google Earth to show how not under water the West Side Highway is as well as a graph showing the lack of obvious sea level rise at Manhattan. Anthony Watts gives Hansen a little bit of leeway here, though not very much:
Yeah, well, the original question was
When did [Dr. Hansen] say this will happen?...
Within 20 or 30 years. And remember we had this conversation in 1988 or 1989.
Even if we give Dr. Hansen the benefit of 30 years, I’ll point out that satellite measurement of global sea level has slowed significantly in the last few years, and is not likely to rise enough to meet Dr. Hansen’s prediction even 30 years out. See this story.
“If what you’re saying about the greenhouse effect is true, is anything going to look different down there in 20 years?”And made in 1988 or 89. Hmm, on that basis I'd say that late 2009 is a fair date to hold him to. At the extreme edge of the outside a very generous soul might give Hansen's prediction another decade to see if it pans out, but I'd say a couple of months at the outside and possibly it should have happened already.
So the updated hard predictions list should look like this:
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Come on in - the water's lovely.
2 comments:
Another one to cross off in the Apocalypse sweepstake.
Yeah. I don't rate my chances of winning the sweepstakes. I've got 'moles to die out from skin cancer by 2019'.
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