Scientists Warn of Perilous Climate Shift Within Decades, Not Centuries

By JUSTIN GILLIS

A massive boulder on a coastal ridge in North Eleuthera, the Bahamas. A new research paper claims it was most likely moved there by powerful storms during the last warm period of Earth history, 120,000 years ago, and warns that such stormy conditions could recur because of human emissions of greenhouse gases. Credit Charles Ommanney/The Washington Post, via Getty Images

 The nations of the world agreed years ago to try to limit global warming to a level they hoped would prove somewhat tolerable. But leading climate scientists warned on Tuesday that permitting a warming of that magnitude would actually be quite dangerous.

The likely consequences would include killer storms stronger than any in modern times, the disintegration of large parts of the polar ice sheets and a rise of the sea sufficient to begin drowning the world’s coastal cities before the end of this century, the scientists declared. Read more.