Ok for those who care

ok the scientists stating that the "Artic" ice is melting, and in 100 yrs when it melts the sea will rise 5-20ft are stating utter BS


think Ice in your glass, when it melts does the height of the liquid increase so that the liquid spills over the edge of the glass?


Now the scientists who state the issues with "Antarctica" ice melting have a leg to stand on with me


but you know, the earth has gone through phases of high and low sea levels, ice ages, ice melts, and so forth

For those that say it is all the US's fault on greenhouse gas, what about China, India, and Russia too....they are bad also



OK let's have an open forum to discuss the merits of all the arguements.....OH AND NO PARTISAN POLITICS

[Edited on March 29, 2006 at 12:36 PM. Reason : ]

3/29/2006 12:08:41 PM

oh my god did you seriously just make a direct comparison between an entire ecosystem and a glass of ice water

3/29/2006 12:13:04 PM

aaahahahahahahahaha

P.S. the ice in a gass isn't typically stacked two inches above the rim.



[Edited on March 29, 2006 at 12:16 PM. Reason : .]

3/29/2006 12:14:49 PM

I was making a specific comparison to the people who are saying if the icebergs melt then gloom and doom cause the oceans will rise to a glass of ice water

3/29/2006 12:16:14 PM

Quote :

"P.S. the ice in a gass isn't typically stacked two inches above the rim."

and that isn't even your analogy.

3/29/2006 12:17:15 PM

wow, just wow.

3/29/2006 12:23:06 PM

wow....quoting yourself there

umm you know that 90% of an iceberg's mass is below water right?

3/29/2006 12:23:08 PM

Look, I can counter your bad science with some not-so-bad science.

Let's say, for the purpose of argument, that you have an 8 oz. glass of water. Let's say that when the ice melts, the water level does increase...but imperceptibly. I'm talking, like, a micron. That's a millionth of a meter. You can't see that shit with the naked eye, but it's reasonable to assume that such a trivial expansion might occur, don't you agree?

Well, that gives us a ratio of 1 micron of increase in level per 8 oz. of water, or (1 x 10^-6 m)/0.0625 gal. How much of a increase in water level might we expect in, say, a similar proportioned glass of a MILLION GALLONS of water and ice?

Do the math! SIXTEEN FUCKING METERS! AND THERE'S A LOT MORE THAN A MILLION GALLONS OF WATER AND ICE IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN #O%Y*#()*YUTHG#P(Y%

[Edited on March 29, 2006 at 12:24 PM. Reason : omg double post]

3/29/2006 12:23:24 PM

[Edited on March 29, 2006 at 12:24 PM. Reason : omg double post]

3/29/2006 12:23:34 PM

PARDON ME FOR THE INTERRUPTION



BUT WHERE ARE THE "ARTIC" AND "ANTARTIC" REGIONS?



I CANT SEEM TO FIND THEM ON MY GLOBE.

3/29/2006 12:30:47 PM

artic is above anada

antartic is below afria

3/29/2006 12:36:31 PM

antarctica


that better?

3/29/2006 12:39:56 PM

id respond to you seriously, but froshkiller has already beat me 2x to the point.

3/29/2006 12:43:31 PM

Maybe when the caps melt, we can construct a giant straw and let the vacuum of space suck out the excess water.

And we can make an Austrialia-sized cocktail unbrella to shade the earth from global warming.

3/29/2006 12:44:32 PM

ahahahahaha cyrion wins

3/29/2006 12:46:09 PM

Frosh....good assumption, however give me a dimension of the glass

I do think that ice that is melting that is one land (ie greenland, ANTARCTICA ) can cause a major rise in sea level,


just not convinced that melting ARTIC ice is the end of Florida in 2100

3/29/2006 12:47:25 PM

oh my god

it's like beating a dog that thinks you're petting it

3/29/2006 12:51:22 PM

think about how much arctic ice is above sealevel.

damn.

3/29/2006 12:51:30 PM

thats why there are varying estimates.

3/29/2006 12:51:49 PM

Here is roughly how my astronomy professor put it:

Rising water, storms, and climate changes are the small potatoes that come first. Once a point of no return is reached, while the land is still livable, the heat will pull carbon from the rocks and water into the atmosphere. Laws at this point restricting additional pollution won’t matter. Once enough carbon is in the atmosphere a chain reaction starts of pulling more out, heating the planet more, pulling more out, and heating the planet more until virtually all of the carbon is in the atmosphere instead of in the rocks and water and the planets temperature rises to hundreds of degrees above what is livable regardless of how eco-friendly we become once we've waited too long. We would end up like Venus which has weather and temperatures that would kill us, and the whole planet basically occasionally resurfaces at once catastrophically rather than the slow moving geology we’ve got going on. He said that this point of no return is somewhere between about as much pollution as we have going on now, and 90% more, but we don’t know where in that range it falls.

He also, on a different day, pointed out that our oxygen atmosphere was created by prehistoric plants that could turn bad air into good air at a rate that makes all our modern plants look pansy. He didn’t really go more into it, but I think the idea is interesting. We know massive converter plants are within the bounds of nature’s possibility, so I think breeding or genetically engineering plant converters would be an interesting route to explore.

But then again the Sun will eventually kill us, if Jupiter’s gravity doesn’t kill us first, if the moons moving away from the earth doesn’t kill us first (its moving away he said is leading us to being close to the last generation to see full eclipses), if we don’t kill our selves first by screwing over the planets climate or blowing ourselves up or biological weaponry.

3/29/2006 12:55:43 PM

all i know is that day after tomorrow movie looked scary. then again it was fine after a week or so.

3/29/2006 12:57:12 PM

HOW DOES GLOBAL WARMING APPLY TO THE THEORY OF NATURE'S HARMONIC SIMULTANEOUS 4-DAY TIME CUBE

3/29/2006 12:58:41 PM

explain how carbon is pulled out of rocks prz?

3/29/2006 1:00:08 PM

I can't. I'm just roughly repeating what he said happened to Venus, and what he said would start happening to us in the near or semi-distant future depending on where the point of no return fell between the amount of pollution we have now and the 90% more range.

I can however quote blocks of information from wiki however.

Quote :

"Venus has an atmosphere consisting mainly of carbon dioxide and a small amount of nitrogen, with a pressure at the surface about 90 times that of Earth (a pressure equivalent to a depth of 1 kilometer under Earth's oceans); its atmosphere is also roughly 90 times more massive than ours. This enormously CO2-rich atmosphere results in a strong greenhouse effect that raises the surface temperature more than 400 °C (750 °F) above what it would be otherwise, causing temperatures at the surface to reach extremes as great as 500 °C (930 °F) in low elevation regions near the planet's equator. This makes Venus's surface hotter than Mercury's, even though Venus is nearly twice as distant from the Sun and only receives 25% of the solar irradiance (2613.9 W/m² in the upper atmosphere, and just 1071.1 W/m² at the surface). Owing to the thermal inertia and convection of its dense atmosphere, the temperature does not vary significantly between the night and day sides of Venus despite its extremely slow rotation of less than one rotation per Venusian year, meaning that, at the equator, Venus' surface rotates at a mere 6.5 km/h (4 mph). Upper atmosphere winds circling the planet approximately every 4 days help distribute the heat to other areas on the surface. The solar irradiance is so much lower at the surface of Venus because the planet's thick cloud cover reflects the majority of the sunlight back into space. This prevents most of the sunlight from ever heating the surface. Venus's bolometric albedo is approximately 60%, and its visual light albedo is even greater. Thus, despite being closer to the Sun than Earth, the surface of Venus is not as well heated and even less well lit by the Sun. In the absence of any greenhouse effect, the temperature at the surface of Venus would be quite similar to Earth. A common conceptual misunderstanding regarding Venus is the mistaken belief that its thick cloud cover traps heat, as the opposite is actually true. The cloud cover keeps the planet much cooler than it would be otherwise. The immense quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere is what traps the heat by the greenhouse mechanism. "

Quote :

"The degree of the greenhouse effect is dependent primarily on the concentration of greenhouse gases in the planetary atmosphere. The deep and carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere of Venus causes a runaway greenhouse effect with surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead, the atmosphere of Earth creates habitable temperatures, and the thin atmosphere of Mars causes a minimal greenhouse effect. The use of the term runaway greenhouse effect to describe the effect as it occurs on Venus emphasises the interaction of the greenhouse effect with other processes in feedback cycles. Venus is sufficiently strongly heated by the Sun that water is vaporised and so carbon dioxide is not reabsorbed by the planetary crust. As a result, the greenhouse effect has been progressively intensified by positive feedback. "

[Edited on March 29, 2006 at 1:08 PM. Reason : .]

3/29/2006 1:02:42 PM

^ interesting ...good read

3/29/2006 1:15:37 PM

I love these "earth goes through cycles" arguements

It's basically saying "Well nothing bad has happened before, obviously nothing bad will ever happen".

3/29/2006 1:32:53 PM

not that there's a reason to respond to this thread really, but i have to respond to this

Quote :

"For those that say it is all the US's fault on greenhouse gas, what about China, India, and Russia too....they are bad also"

NOBODY, unless they're mentally retarded, says that only the us is to blame.

3/29/2006 1:36:45 PM

as can be seen from this thread, however, Borka is mentally retarded....

3/29/2006 1:55:13 PM

i didn't read all this shit

but there's a lot of fucking glaciers and a lot of snow and ice that's situated over land

particularly antarctica, which when melted isn't just going to hang out right there on land

3/29/2006 2:05:33 PM

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question473.htm

Quote :

"This higher temperature may be causing some floating icebergs to melt, but this will not make the oceans rise. Icebergs are large floating chunks of ice. In order to float, the iceberg displaces a volume of water that has a weight equal to that of the iceberg. Submarines use this principle to rise and sink in the water by changing their weight. But the rising temperature and icebergs could play a small role in the rising ocean level. Icebergs are chunks of frozen glaciers that break off from landmasses and fall into the ocean. The rising temperature may be causing more icebergs to form by weakening the glaciers, causing more cracks and making ice more likely to break off. As soon as the ice falls into the ocean, the ocean rises a little. If the rising temperature affects glaciers and icebergs, could the polar ice caps be in danger of melting and causing the oceans to rise? This could happen, but no one knows when it might happen. "

3/29/2006 2:06:33 PM

A floating ice-burg displaces, in water, a volume equal to its mass. A melted ice-burg displaces, in water, a volume equal to its mass. As such, sheer melting of floating ice-burgs cannot raise the ocean-level. Only ice, currently resting on land, can raise the ocean-level by just melting.

However, what most people think of when they see rising sea levels is water expansion due to the water, that was never frozen, expanding due to it being warmed up.

It bears mentioning, water does not expand much at all. Global warming nuts proclaim a warming of 3 degrees as an upper bound. Water, according to once site I found, increases in volume less than 1% when it is heated 63 degrees F, (just above freezing to 35 degrees C). Thus, warming 3 degrees, the ocean would expand .048%, choosing the high number from estimates that generally range from 1 to 3 degrees F. So, given an average ocean depth of 12,200 feet, it would rise 5.8 feet. Of course, it bares mentioning, thanks to evaperation action, actual ocean temperatures, which are far more influenced by polar temperatures, would rise much less than atmospheric temperatures.

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-thermal-properties-d_162.html
http://www.mos.org/oceans/planet/features.html

And it also ignores increased snow-fall in antarctica thanks to warmer, and therefore wetter, weather.

3/29/2006 2:17:07 PM

Quote :

"However, what most people think of when they see rising sea levels is water expansion due to the water, that was never frozen, expanding due to it being warmed up"

WHO, exactly, are these "most people," because that's not what I think of

3/29/2006 2:21:20 PM

^people who have had a basic chemistry class where you learn about the density of water.

3/29/2006 2:27:31 PM

Here's another fun fact.

Ice reflects the heat of the sun. It's white, and shiny, and when sun rays hit it, most of them go right back into space.

Ocean water absorbs the heat of the sun. It absorbs a much higher percentage of the heat from light than the ice does.

So basically you have an ever-increasing warming of the ocean that, like Supplanter was describing, will at some time reach a tipping point, kind of like how deforesting a jungle can irrevocably turn it to desert.

I mean, the earth's weather system is basically a huge chain of ridiculously complex differential equations. It's pretty stable, in our experiences, over long (to us) periods of time, but small changes (geologically speaking) over a very short amount of time (100-200 years) is enough to cause a drastic, fast-moving shift.

3/29/2006 2:35:42 PM

It's also worth mentioning that nearly 97% of all ice on the earth is contained in Antarctica and Greenland - 2 gigantic grounded blocks of ice packs, ice sheets, ice caps and glaciers. "Grounded" means this ice rests on solid ground - it doesn't float in the ocean like an ice berg. Therefore, if it starts melting, or breaking off into icebergs which then melt, yes, that could make a huge difference. All in all, 97.9% of all the ice on the earth is grounded.

The Arctic ice pack is floating - therefore, if it melts, we won't see much difference. It, though, only accounts for 1 one-hundreth of one percent (0.01%) of the ice on the earth. Overall, only 2.1% of the earth's ice is floating.
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/environment/waterworld.html

3/29/2006 2:48:04 PM

BUT IT'S LIEK A CUP OF WATER
DON'T YOU UNDESTAND?!?!?

BORKA UNDERSTANDS.

3/29/2006 2:55:43 PM

^^ and if the "grounded" ice melt it will def raise the sea levels

but to say that the icebergs there are now, if melted, would increase the sea level by 9 ft, it's absurd

3/29/2006 2:59:00 PM

im glad you can call out all these fancy pants scientists who are too busy scaring us to do actual research on the subject.

3/29/2006 3:03:30 PM

^^ ok... so who says that?
if you've read that somewhere, it's most likely a result of bad reporting or a journalist who doesn't understand what the scientists are talking about, thinking they can interchange the words "ice float" and "ice cap" or "glacier", or hell, lots of journalists reporting on this shit probably couldn't tell you the difference between the Arctic and the Antarctic.

[Edited on March 29, 2006 at 3:05 PM. Reason : .]

3/29/2006 3:03:46 PM

Quote :

"I love these "earth goes through cycles" arguements It's basically saying "Well nothing bad has happened before, obviously nothing bad will ever happen"."

Yea, those arguments crack me up.
"Hey, it's natural! It happened before, lots of times! And the earth still here from the last time it happened; animals survived the last time; I don't think we have anything to worry about."

Yea, the earth survived - it's a big rock that keeps on spinning.
Yea, animals survived - they walked 50 miles inland and started munching on grass in a new location.

Sure, a lot of people will survive. They'll just have to pack up the SUV and drive inland a little.

But Wall Street might care. Ship yards might care. The entire financial infrastructure of the US might care. Naval bases might care. These things can't just pack up and move inland. (very easily, at least.)

3/29/2006 3:06:09 PM

who cares?

let our children worry about it

3/29/2006 3:07:32 PM

Quote :

"if you've read that somewhere, it's most likely a result of bad reporting or a journalist who doesn't understand what the scientists are talking about, thinking they can interchange the words "ice float" and "ice cap" or "glacier", or hell, lots of journalists reporting on this shit probably couldn't tell you the difference between the Arctic and the Antarctic."

yeah, i'd like to see a scientist who says that the melting floating icebergs are going to cause a large rise in sea levels

even though, as frosh pointed out, they probably would.

3/29/2006 3:20:27 PM

Quote :

"but to say that the icebergs there are now, if melted, would increase the sea level by 9 ft, it's absurd"

you are the only one implying that scientists think that, dooood.

3/29/2006 3:42:15 PM

that's what i'm sayin. this is a total straw man

3/29/2006 3:48:54 PM

omg ad hominem

3/29/2006 4:06:50 PM

I'm pretty sure that if the polar caps melt, we'd have bigger issues then high tide.

3/29/2006 5:13:39 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming

3/29/2006 8:36:04 PM

Bottom line is there's not enough long term information to say difinitively one way or the other what the longterm out come will be. It's also quite absurd for people to say that an extremly active year of hurricanes is due to global warming. Records on storms have been kept for about 155 years, which we all know is a mere nanosecond when looked at on a geologic scale. FUCK YOU WEATHER CHANNEL for being a ratings hoar.

4/4/2006 1:34:34 AM

Quote :

"but there's a lot of fucking glaciers and a lot of snow and ice that's situated over land"

yep, that's the reason this argument is dumb

and

Quote :

"I'm pretty sure that if the polar caps melt, we'd have bigger issues then high tide."

4/4/2006 1:39:04 AM

Quote :

"It's also quite absurd for people to say that an extremly active year of hurricanes is due to global warming."

yeah, you're right. what do trained climatologists know?

Quote :

"Records on storms have been kept for about 155 years, which we all know is a mere nanosecond when looked at on a geologic scale."

records have been kept BY HUMANS for that long, but core ice samples, etc have been kept SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE PLANET

4/4/2006 7:30:10 AM