I’m on my second read of an extremely important and interesting paper from James Hansen (former head of NASA’s Goddard Institute) and a number of other respected climatologists. The ambitious paper argues that a previously unidentified feedback may cause the ice sheets of Antarctica to melt much faster than previously thought, leading to several meters of sea level rise, possibly in the next 50 years (depending on the details of the feedback). For those who don’t want to take on the full paper, there are interesting articles from the Washington Post and New York Times on it, and a new article on the open peer review it’s undergone. It remains to be seen whether further research will confirm Hansen et al’s hypothesis, but it’ll be interesting to follow, because the consequences are enormous if they’re correct.