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Global Warming To Leave North Pole Ice-Free
cwolfsheep writes "Tonight, Yahoo & AFP news are
reporting on a study, further backing up a
previous report, that suggests the North Pole will be ice-free in the summer by the next century. Oddly enough, they say the melting will not
add to the sea-level of the ocean (since the ice is already in the ocean) and that the extra water will help absorb more greenhouse gases. Maybe we need to start using more
aerosols."
Sure thing melting northern polar cap doesn't affect sea level, it's floating already.
;)
But melting Greenland ice will affect it. Probably also permafrost in Siberia and Canada would start melting, which will potentially release a lot of methane from the northern marshes.
And I have hard time believing that if northern ice cap melts, also southern ice cap won't get smaller (and that will rise sea level)...
Better watch out if you live by the sea... Lease the land for your new house for 50-100 years, don't buy it, and you should be fine
how at one point africa was a very fertile land. Was it because there was more or less ice at the poles. I cant remember but over a millenium or two wasnt egypt and the surrounding areas (including ethiopia and ethrate) the bread basket of the world? Would the melting of the ice caps help or hurt the countries in africa?
later,
epic
"Im drowning here, and you're describing the water!"
Mod me down as a troll if you like but I declare cwolfsheep the stupidest Slashdot article submitter EVER and he needs to know it!
"Let's climb mt Everest because it exists. Let's also melt the north pole because it exists."
I wonder if he considerer one second about what happens to the Antarctic and Greenland (and let's not forget all the ice covered mountain regions around the world, can you say "mud slide") while he is busy spraying CFC in the air (yeah, aerosols no longer contain CFC's, so he was wrong about that too).
Antti S. Brax - Old school - http://www.iki.fi/asb/
I'm just a backseat environmental scientist, but what is the effect of losing the temperature-buffer that is the ice-cap? I mean, while it's melting, it will retain a temperature of 0 degrees, at least if I recall my physics/chemistry correctly. That means the icecaps provide a nice energy buffer for rises and falls in temperature. If they MELT, they obviously no longer do that. So, will global temperatures rise faster when the icecaps are gone?
Boy howdy. Did you read the CNN Article?:
"...Johannessen works at the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in Norway. 'This will make it easier to explore for oil, it could open the Northern Sea Route (between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans)," he said of the report, dubbed the Arctic Ice Cover Simulation Experiment. '"
I dunno, its theoretically possible (though pretty improbable) that there's absolutely nothing to worry about when our polar ice caps melt completely, but I'm of the mind that when the article is more concerned about the new oil drilling prospects and trade routes than climate instability, cancer-causing UV rays, and so on, maybe its time to get a second opinion.
I think the scientific consensus these days is: "We don't know what's going to happen, it might go either way and in both cases we are fucked."
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
Generally the cold (gas absorbing) waters of the poles, sink to the ocean floor carrying large amounts of CO2 and O2. This dissolved oxygen is critical in keeping aerobic conditions in the deep sea (several early mass extinctions have been attributed to anaerobic organisms flourishing in oxygen depleted waters) and the dissolved carbon dioxide is attributed to the lower than expected climatic changes from greenhouse gas emmissions.
Why are we not freaking out about this??
This is the great engine of Earth (forget Deep Thought). It is responsible for the majority of heat storage and transfer in our environment, allowing disparate areas to acheive a modicum of energy equilibrium.
Without this "smoothing" force to even out the bumps - storms will become more violent as the coriolis effect is reinforced by the increasing density of the atmosphere as you travel towards the poles - sea currents will alter drastically, causing mass extinctions - seasons will be more extreme hot or cold.
All in all, this issue in no way deserves the (more than usual) flippant, offhand and dismissive treatment it is receiving.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
You also forget some details.
1: greenland isn't likely to stay as icy if the north pole doesn't.
2: northern canada
3: alaska
4: siberia
5: scandinavia
I'll stop there but you get the picture.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
If Seatlle gets submerged then maybe the US will finally realize that they have a responsibility to the environment just as all the other nations in the world. Doing nothing to protect the environment because it hurts the economy (as Dr. Shrub claims) is plain stupid and will backfire eventually.
-- Cheers!
In particular it would probably mean the disappearence of snow from the alps and possibly some other mountain ranges, possibly including the resorts in the US and Canada. Essentially, it means if I want to ski, then I had better do it on water!!!
Seriously, there are many alpine valleys which do not make enough from farming, so instead they rely on an influx of winter sports enthusiasts. The summer hikers don't seem to come in the same quantities and many don't spend as much.
See my journal, I write things there
Is it just me or are we getting dumber and dumber? We used to have great leaders who led us to great achievements and great hights. Now we have these rich politicians who do not have enough balls to go against the will of their stupid voters.
How does their thinking go? "Hmmm.... the professors are telling me that we are damaging the environment and that I should tax gasoline heavily and ban SUVs. LOL! I would lose the re-election, are they stupid or what?"
We are too stupid to survive. Stupid stupid stupid. Vote.
No, I am not placing blame... anyone would run the AC at 116 degrees. The problem is that you had to... not that you did.
As our climate goes out of control, we expend more and more resources trying to maintain localized habitable spots. Which necessitates burning more fossil fuel, which exacerbates the situation.
I guess its moot in a way cause our generation won't have to worry about it. But in a way I feel partly responsible for the situations I am setting up for those coming later if I don't choose wisely. I am quite concerned over what I perceive to be a rather lackadaisical attitude over the consumption of our earthly resources... especially here in the United States, where it appears there is so much wealth that conservation is not only completely uncalled for, its actually discouraged so as to encourage economic growth based on production of frivolous things.
We have more than enough things to go around, but we arrange things so that no-one has time to spend with family.. I became an engineer in the hopes that I could contribute to the demise of the mandatory two-incomes needed to maintain today's social status... and I have spent near my whole life and have not made a dent. We spend our lives in a hurried rush burning our environment and making junk. I'm sad to be so cynical, but from my seat, I perceive humanity as behaving like so many rats, eating and defecating over their environment, until its spent, then there will be the day of large quantities of rotting rat when the system is exhausted. I am just hoping we are smart enough to control our demands on our support physics to avoid that scenario.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
The bulk of the earths water not contained in the oceans is hold up in the glaciers. Antartica's being the bigest by far, with the greenland ice sheet still being substantial.
These glaciers would substantially add to the earth's sea levels but are more stable than the sea ice. Current projections give the greenland glaciers around 300 years before they become totally unstable, whilst the model simulations suggest that the antartic sheets will remain stable (and my even grow abit, due to increased percipitation). Cryosphere (ice) models are perhaps the lest well understood, and these projections may well change as our models improve.
Let me help clue some people in here.
i me des'+principle
Because Me so smart.
come off it dude.
Better than throwing about your half understandings as truth, you could actually look at your notes from first year physics and understand the wonder of Archimedes' principle for yourself, THEN try to explain it.
href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Arch
As others have noted, if you melt the north pole, you're probably melting Greenland & co. as well, which does add to sea-level rise++. Also your ice melted becuase the oceans are a little warmer (latent heat of liquification, yea, yea. it still gets warmer after the ice is all gone) thus the oceans are less dense, and expand (ie upwards).
The bit about all the added fresh water being less dense is interesting, but doesn't make up for the "it isn't just the sea ice melting" problem.
The bit that really scares me: Antarctica. The ice in the center is several miles thick. Around the edges along the coast you have sea ice.
The sea ice melts quite fast due to the thermal conductivity of the ocean water around it. That melting is going on now (eg the Larsen B ice shelf collapsed last year to the shock & awe of many ice-ologists). If you remove those buttresses, the center collapses outwards to the sea. This could happen over the course of a few hundred years(!!!). That's where the vast majority of land-locked water is, and that's what'll do the serious 75' rise if it happens.
It is estimated that a 100 year storm on the East Coast of the US (read NYC) will be a 3-5 year storm in 50 years. Add to that the east coast is natuarally sinking (the continental plate), and you really don't want any extra sea level rise if you can help it. And we can help it, we're just being selfish lazy fucks. Don't deny it.
Even if things are warming up naturally, we shouldn't help it along to make it go faster.
We aren't fucking the planet, it'll survive, were fucking ourselves. All but a few of the world's major cities lie along the coast. ALL of the great port cities..
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
"Here in the Uk (where ia m living at the mo) we just had the hottest day on record"
And the coldest day on record in the UK was in 1995. Therefore we must have had Global Cooling, like they were warning us about in the 70s. Right?
Hint: localised temperatures tell you nothing about global trends, and the global trend since 1979 as measured by the satellites is tiny. Not to mention that the theory predicts that most of the warming will occur at the poles, since the CO2 bands are already pretty much saturated in warmer areas. But I'm sure you know that, right?
"and 6 of the hottest years have been in then 90s."
A lot of which is due to bogus measurements and urban warming: Britain, particularly the south-east, is so densely populated that little of it escapes such warming effects, but they're nothing to do with CO2 or global changes.
I was reading, for example, a news article about a >38C temperature record at... Heathrow Airport (not the official record, which was in Kent, and is probably less bogus). Hmm, an airport, with 747s taking off every couple of minutes, with huge amounts of concrete to reflect heat around, with vast numbers of cars, taxis and buses driving in and out stuck in often stationary traffic. Yes, I'm sure that's really representative of Global Warming temperature changes!
I'd also add that, having had the misfortune to live through the 70s in the UK, that while the current year may have broken the odd record, some of the warm summers in the 70s were much worse than this. And that was when Global Cooling was going to kill us with a new Ice Age!
Of course you are right, and I need a new brain.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
"Many people died"
Yeah, it's awful. A while back I was reading about more than a dozen people dying of summer heat about twenty miles from where I live in the UK.
_In the 1840s_.
This is nothing new: the only reason people think it's new is because it's something _they_ haven't experienced before.
"Even tar on the road melted because of the heat"
You mean you've never noticed tar melting before because of the heat? I remember it happening regularly in the summer when I was a kid walking to school: maybe people should try walking sometime, they might actually notice these things.
"This is to avoid the overheated rail tracks to bend and causing the trains to crash."
Again, that's because British railways suck and are designed to only run at 3pm one Thursday in March each year while being out of spec the rest of the time, it's no evidence of Global Warming(tm).
This was a jornal entry I made two months back that relates to this topic.
I saw a story on CNN this morning about Greenpeace saying the polar ice caps have melted and that the water levels in the oceans have risen 2.5 - 2.75 inches in the last 25 years. This is supposedly beyond normal and clear evidence that the polar ice caps are melting.
I had two "seemingly absurd" at first glance explanations for water, or tide levels rising, but possibly peaking right about now. (Now being the year 2000+)
First, what sort of water displacement has occurred due to cruise ships, barges, subs, oil tankers, oil rigs, and other man made water craft? I know the ocean is huge and it's not like my bathtub, but it HAS to be at least a minute amount!
Second, if the theory of plate techtonics is true, couldn't our land masses have shifted/grown substantially (in the case of Hawaii) also causing significant water displacement?
Third, hasn't some sediment/diatomation/oceanic (organic/volcanic) growth also occurred & also caused water displacement
I have seen a Canadian study (forget where) that there's more ice in the upper regions of the country than ever. So rather than the poles melting, is ice just shifting a little? As glaciers move and "ice masses" float, won't they melt anyway?
In a way, this relates to my earlier "statistics, shmatistics" post below. It just really annoys me for business's and especially charity/non profits to use "Beyond FUD" to scare up money.
Whether global warming or erosion of the atmosphere is happening or not, conservation and world health organizations should be worried about just that and focusing their funds on research rather than paying for stupid studies to be run in the liberal media. The study about tides rising cost 15 million dollars to Greenpeace! Do you know how much that would have advanced solar energy research or subsidized solar home construction? Or how many wind mill and turbine powered generators that could have built?
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Since the ice at the north pole is floating, it's melting won't affect sea level, but what about the glaciers covering Greenland, or Antarctica? That water will flow off land, and into the ocean, raising sea level.
Eat at Joe's.
While it may well be that the ice in the arctic ocean will melt, I find this study highly suspect.
First, it assumes that a rise in temperatures since 1978's constitute a trend. There has only been two and a half decades since, 2.5 datapoints, that is not enough to establish a trend IMHO.
Second, it makes a direct correlation of rise in temperature to CO2 emissions. But to the best of my knowledge we don't know for certain that CO2 indeed plays a direct role in Earth's temperature, and I think that to assume that human population can single-handedly affect amount of CO2 being emitted on the planet, much less have any control over climate is incorrect.
I think the main thing about studies such as this, is not to "freak-out" as someone suggested. The scientists are working on learning more about our planet, and that is a good thing. The the press and politicians signle out studies that can help them push their agenda and publish them as if it's the absolute truth, and that's a bad thing.
Why is it, for example, that any climate change is percieved as something to be fearful of? What if it's only going to be for the better?
I also wish that the environmental powers that be focused more on pollution in large metropolitan areas. More and more people are sick because of terrible air and water quality as well as improper disposal of all kinds of waste, especially in countries with weaker economies (e.g. eastern europe), but because it is not something of global proportions, we don't get to hear about it.
grisha.org
Why arent I freaking out? I think the human effects might be large, but the earth is a dynamic thing. Climates changed abruptly and dramatically WAY before we showed up, and they will continue to do so well alfer we are gone. I'm not worried about temperature changes or sea levels, I'm worried about straight-up toxic pollution, because that's what'll end up being our demise. Already fertility rates are down and indicative diseases of long-term toxicity are up (obesity, cancer, and diabetes anyone?). If the sea levels go up we can move inland or adapt, if it gets got or cold we can move more indoors. If the rains burn the soil and make it so plants can't grow and the ocean is devoid of all but jellyfish bacause we filled it with poison, we're really done for!
Seriously, this global warming shit is a distraction from the real enemy, it's something we CAN'T do anything about in the long term; WE might stop our part, but the earth will make it's own rules. Meanwhile, why we all sit around trying to figure out how to burn coal without putting up 'greenhouse gasses' the farms are dumping tons of poisons into our GROUNDWATER!
I'm not saying we should all drive SUVs and leave the lights on, but there's only so much we can do about the climate. Trying to keep everything the way it is would be the most expensive, destructive, and futile effort mankind has ever assumed. Do your part to live 'green', but not to prevent global warming, do it to reduce the poisons you put into the earth and to help us be less energy-dependant.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Oh please! If I were to point a gun at your head, would you wait for true solid evidence that it were loaded before you ducked? Of course not - the only truly solid evidence is your brains splattered on the wall, by which time it's too late. Same with global climate change.
The scientific consensus is strong. Perfect, no, but outside of right-wing talk show hosts and oil company shills, there is no real doubt that human activity is altering the climate.
We don't have an "experimental Earth" and a "control Earth" to compare. There's only one, and we need it. We're fucking with the spaceship's life support system here. This is not intelligent survivial-oriented behavior.
RTFA. The melting of the ice cap won't cause ocean levels to rise, but it will mess with the Gulf Stream - very, very bad. And melting of glaciers will cause sea level rises; you don't think that if the polar ice melts, some glaciers will melt too? (Antarctic melting would also cause sea levels to rise.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I have to wonder, what about all the studies showing that the ice cap is getting thicker?
Check out an article on Greenland and on the ice pack itself. There are others about the antarctic ice thickening too. Can't we, the /. community, perform a basic reality check before spreading chicken little stories? ( I also found it funny/sad that google is prejudiced against the idea that the pole ice is thickening. )
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
Solution: Build more nuclear plants.
In 2000, there were 9351 plants producing power levels of 604,514MW in the summer and 615,030MW in the winter. (I'll use the summer numbers since those are the lowest and arguably the most important.) Of those 9351 plants, 91 were nuclear, representing 0.97% of the power plants by number but producing 86,163MW in the summer -- about 14% of overall output.
Of the remaining, there were 1024 coal plants, 3007 petroleum (oil) plants, and 2068 gas (methane) plants, combining to produce 419,852MW. Taking the average output of 947MW per nuclear plant, it would take 444 plants to take up the slack, though I suspect plants being designed now are more powerful than that. Westinghouse believes their new AP1000 1000MW reactors can be built for $1400 per KW for the first few, and $1000 per KW starting around the seventh plant. The total construction cost is about $447 billion, which, if spaced over 20 years, is a bit more than $22 billion per year. In 2000, the US burned 995 million tons of coal, 195 million barrels of petroleum, and 6.2 billion MMBtu of gas. The costs of these fuels? In today's terms, it would be, at $25 per ton, $30 per barrel of undistilled petroleum, and $5 per MMBtu (all approximations, but close to current prices), $24.9 billion, $5.9 billion, and $31 billion, or a total of about $61.8 billion. The cost for those plants, spaced out, would be a little more than a third of what we pay for fuels as it is.
Aside from the virtual end of power plant-produced carbon dioxide emissions, and that some of these reactors could be breeder reactors, helping to make better use of nuclear fuel (of which we have centuries of supply in the United States alone), this would shut down much of the incredibly damaging coal mining in the country, drop natural gas prices to reasonable levels so that people can pay for their homes, and slash oil consumption drastically.
The construction of these plants would also create thousands of jobs at each site for two to three years, spurring the local economies. Even if there were only 1500 jobs created per site, that's 33,000 jobs if 23 plants were built at a time. There would probably be enough to offset job losses at conventional power plants, and my understanding is that nuclear construction work carries higher paychecks than standard construction work.
Nuclear reactors are fairly close to terrorist-proof. In California, they've survived earthquakes, and they're designed to handle most airliners crashing straight into them. Their common dome housings also would help to deflect anything larger than they were designed for, and the lessons learned from Three Mile Island have gone a long way in improving responses and designs.
I want a nuclear reactor in my backyard. I don't see why the fears about them are so prevalent. I almost wish the planes had hit a reactor instead of the WTC just so that people could see how they wouldn't crack, though part of me fears that it would heighten the fears of others attacking such plants.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I'm also a global warming skeptic and that's the only argument I buy. Hedge on the side of assuming it's our fault, because by the time we're sure it's going to be way too late.
The scientific consensus is strong. Perfect, no, but outside of right-wing talk show hosts and oil company shills, there is no real doubt that human activity is altering the climate.
Having studied this issue intensely, that is flat wrong. There are two effects going on. First, modeling climate is exceptionally difficult, and the most difficult aspect is predicting the activity of clouds. On one hand, they reflect light (cooling), but on the other hand, they act as a blanket (warming). Depending on the thickness and density of the clouds, these parameters are traded off. So scientists have to predict more than the levels of CO2 produced. And it ain't easy.
The second effect is the "grant effect." All grants are peer-reviewed - that is, when you apply for money, people in your field decide if your current and prior work makes you a valid candidate for getting $$$. Now, obviously, this gets very cliqueish, and if you consistently advocate a contrarian position (ie, global cooling or stasis), you will have a very hard time getting money. In other words, if you are a climatologist and you don't predict warming, have fun getting funding. In this way, the "answer" in the global warming debate is shaped by who can still get funding, and this is a very dogmatic, polarized field. And on this, the liberals are every bit as biased as the oil company asshats. The people I would listen to are the ones not blustering on either side, but who consider cooling/stasis to at least be a possibility. They're rare, but they exist.
So bottom line, there is very much debate as to the origins tot the current warming trend. Especially when you consider that a single decent volcanic eruption releases more greenhouse gases than man does in a year. Like I said though, I'd rather not find out the hard way either.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Dunno, sounded like this was saying: Global warming causes ice to melt causing more water which is going to get rid of more of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Sounds like a problem that begat it's own solution to me.
You call this a signature?
Like George Carlin said...
"The Earth is going to be fine. It's the people who are fucked."
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
The increasing temperatures around the world are caused by something very simple: The Earth's orbit.
The Earth does not go in a circle around the sun. It goes in an elliptical orbit. This ellipse does not maintain its major and minor axes over time: It slowly but surely changes. Over many thousands of years, the ellipse becomes more like a circle, bringing the Earth closer to the sun for longer periods throughout the year, and then for a few thousands of years more, the orbit gets increasingly elliptical again, taking the Earth farther away from the sun for much of the year. This is quite natural and nothing you do with aerosol cans is going to change that.
Want to fight air pollution? Then just say that you want to breathe clean air and not a bunch of smoky grime. That's simple enough. But don't go around saying, "The water on the Earth is going to cover all the land and we're all gonna DIE!!!" That just makes you look like a wacko.
And if you really want to clean air pollution, then instead of going after something small and insignificant like an aerosol can, go after something big and polluting, like eliminating the use of fossil fuels to power cars, trucks, airplanes, trains and everything else out there. There MUST be another way to power these things and someone is gonna find it. But don't go around complaining about aerosol cans. Because by eliminating all the fossil fuels, you'll make a 95% difference (so that all other air pollution becomes insignificant enough that it can be completely ignored) but by eliminating all the aerosols in the world, you'll make less than 1% difference in the overall scheme of things.
Read some of the research and you'll find that one degree is an awful lot for just a single century. And in terms of half of that degree being before humans could have contributed to it, I suggest you look at US History, specifically the Industrial Revolution, which took place prior to the beginning of the last century. Many of the industries during that period contributed greatly to the atmosphere in terms of what we now know are greenhouse gases.
The rate of change is what scares me the most - I'm only 32 years old, yet I can easily see how our environment has degraded since I was a child. I remember swimming at local beaches without fear of infection or worse. Now most beaches are presumed closed all summer. I remember all the time I used to spend walking through the meadows and exploring the creeks at my grandfather's house, just on the perimeter of the city (he used to be a farmer, so most of his fields were already sold off by then). Now, this tract of land is commercial property, mostly concrete, lawn and sprinklers. Ironically, his house is now a local lawncare/pesticide/herbicide retail outlet.
It's easy to blame large corporations for their greed - they continue to destroy the ecosystem in their quest for coal/oil/trees/development all in the name of profit.
However, we have to start looking within as the source of the problem - our collective greed, apathy and ignorance is what feeds the profits of these large corporations. We buy the new houses in the developments that were once native meadows/wetlands/woodlands. In turn, we transform our properties from a diverse ecosystem to a non-native, monocultural lawn that requires excessive care, water, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides because it is beaten into our skulls by lawncare companies that a flawless, green lawn is the only acceptable look for our yards. Then we bitch and complain that the summers are hotter and muggier every year and that our hydro and water bills are rising. Meanwhile, we crank up our air conditioners and install wasteful irrigation systems in a vain effort to keep ourselves cool and our grass green.
Wake up! Trees keep you cool - plant some. Grow some gardens (preferably using native plants/trees/shrubs and grasses) instead of a monocultural lawn. Not only is it beneficial to the environment, but it is actually less time consuming once established. You won't need to join the local lawnmowers club every Saturday morning. Did you know that your lawnmower provides more pollution in one hour than your car does in a week? You can turn off your water sprinklers (native plants thrived where you live before you can along and installed an irrigation system). They need no fertilizers or pesticides (native plants are naturally resistent to pests and disease. The birds and other critters that will return once you provide them a habitat will also help keep the ecosystem in check.
We criticize countries such as Brazil for clearcutting their forests. Did you know that Canada has eliminated a larger percentage of it's natural environment through land development, most of which has been converted to either concrete, asphalt or lawn (the worst of the three because of the water and chemicals it feeds on to stay alive). Add to this all the forests that have been clearcut by the companies that feed such development.
As consumers, we can make the biggest difference. Make smarter and less selfish purchases. Make your next car a gas-saver or even a gas/electric hybrid instead of a V8 gas guzzling SUV. Adjust your thermostat a couple of degrees to save either on hydro or gas/oil. Most importantly, I strongly urge you to consider replacing your lawn and restoring all or part of your property with native plants. Help restore a small part of what used to be there before your environment was cut down, bulldozed and sodded.
Please, go to Google and do some research on Naturalized lawns or gardens. Check out some books by some well-known authors on the subject:
"Noah's Garden" and "Planting Noah's Garden" by Sara Stein are excellent, as are "Ontario Naturalized Garden" and "Grow Wild! Native Plant Gardening in Canada" by Lorraine Johnson.
Here, I'll even throw in a couple of interesting links:
The upper Great Lakes will be OK, since the Chicago river has already been turned around, draining Lake Michigan into the Illinois River. The Erie Canal might be used for draining Lake Ontario, so only relatively minor adjustments are needed.
At least until the glaciers start advancing.
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
You're kidding, right? There have been routine tests for years wherein 'assailants' attempt to overrun and take control of nuclear plants.
Every time they win. It got so embarassing that the nuclear industry asked the DoE to stop requiring them in the wake of 9/11, so that they could claim their plants were safe.
If you've got control of the plant, you can destroy it. No 747 required.
Geez, where to begin. First of all, IWAGP (I was a geophysicist), so I'm not purely talking out my behind here. Yes, you are correct, land DOES rebound after glaciers recede... after about 10^5 years. Formerly glaciated parts of North America and Europe are STILL rebounding from the last glacial period. If Greenland got de-glaciated tomorrow, I've got news for you... the sea level would rise, well, tomorrow, and the land under the former ice sheet wouldn't rebound for many, many years, and in the meantime, coastal areas would be inundated.
Name one place where this has happened. Provide references.
Yeah, over a timescale of about 10,000 years. A great comfort to our families whose houses may be flooding 50 years from now.
And?
The warming is echoing back on us? WTF does that mean?
Geez, what can I say. Watch out for black helicopters.
Sean
Anthropogenic Global Warming proponents have originated in the US. It is not solely a European/Asian phenomena.
Do you have sources (links etc) to back up your COAL EXPORTS stats?
I got so wound up before that I forgot the most important point. Say Greenland's icecap does melt, and the land rebounds due to isostatic adjustment. This does not compensate in any way for the additional volume of water in the ocean. This is because Greenland's crustal mass held down by the ice sheet isn't spread out underwater... it's down in the mantle. The volume of rock that displaces water won't change significantly as a result of the isostatic rebound... hence, once the sea level goes up from melting ice sheets over land, it stays up.
Sean
Floating arctic ice in general have lower salinity than the ocean. Iceburgs come from salt-free snow and glaciers. The ocean is salty, so the iceburgs will float higher than when in fresh water. In otherwords, iceburgs displace less volume than the volume of itself melted when floating in salty water. Hence, if all the iceburgs melted, *the sea level will actually rise*. I also RTFA and there were no mention of sea level not rising. As many others have pointed out, the point of whether or not the melting of iceburgs will directly cause sea level to rise is irrelevant anyway.
Maybe we (as humanity) stop thinking individually and start thinking globally. We need a Borg-like mentality to survive. If we don't, its bye bye human race.
Maybe we can one day forget religions and political differences and start behaving as we really should, i.e. as passengers on a spaceship with limited resources.
By the way, 3000 people died in France from the heat. Almost as many as they died on 9/11/01. My condolences to anyone that lost a relative.