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Earth Growing Due to Melting Glaciers
Dr. Shim writes "Some interesting (and rather frightening) news over at Space.com tells that the Earth is growing around the equator due to the fact that ice in the Antarctic (and other areas) is melting at an alarming rate."
Wow, people complain when the US thinks its responsible for the entire world. And complain when it doesn't.
Is it just me, or does anyone else get the feeling that this is a sensationalistic, alarmist write-up of a marginally interesting phenomena?
So, the earth has gained 0.3 percent around the equator, and the glaciers are still retreating. This is in my eyes neither "rather frightening" nor "an alarming rate".
Something to keep an eye on, certainly, and something to look into the reasons why, of course, but let's not press the big red panic button just yet, ok?
Scientists -- or as the case may be, reporters -- out for a quick 15 minutes of fame is my take on this "rather frightening" story.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
It's not "just him", either. Nice way to try to marginalize his viewpoint, which is, by the way, shared by more than just a "niche". There are a lot of scientists (and not just ordinary citizens) that are going "ok, slow down, it's not neccessarily a catastrophe". As many people have pointed out in the past, the Earth frequently goes through changes like this for reasons that are unknown, and that predate the industrial revolution. And lets face it, this whole piece was about pointing a finger at mankind's evil technological ways and saying "see what we're doing to the Earth?"
The Earth's sea level has risen and fallen over the centuries many times, without any input from man. The previous poster was just pointing out that this happens, and that the article might be just a tad sensationlistic in order to promote an agenda (and we know THAT nevers happens in science or anywhere else, right?).
If you agree with that agenda, fine, say so. But when you try to make opposing views look like fringe nuts because it suits your purposes, you just end up looking like an ass.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
This is for all the people who are crying for action against this rise in sea level.
Without a better understanding of the full dynamics of the geology, climatology and biology involved in this thing, any attempts to reverse it might have unintended and unpredictable side effects.
Cut CO2 output? Sounds good but even though CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas, it's also one of the weakest. Lower levels of CO2 could also be problems for the plant biosphere being the CO2 breathing, carbon fixers that they are.
Cut CFC and PFC output? Also sounds nice since they are thousands of times more efficient at trapping heat. Is there any well agreed upon data that says that this melting is a result of man made greenhouse gasses and not something completely out of our control?
Rapid and drastic environmental changes can be caused by natural phenomena. Without a better understanding of the root cause of climate change, regulating our activity is at best a shot in the dark. At worst it could cause bigger problems.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Ah, I got it. The articles doesn't say that the bulge has risen by .3%. The equatorial bulge has always been about 0.3% How much has the bulge increased recently? They don't give figures. But they do say that gravitational field changes usually attributed to the "post-glacial rebound" (the geological adjustment to their being less weight at the poles since the end of the last ice age) is twice what it was in 1998.
That's scary. Why? Well, sea level has been rising for the last 10,000 years, since the end of the last ice age. That rise isn't notice during a human lifetime, of course. But now it appears that the rate of melting has doubled in just the last five years. Still not a lot, but we're pouring greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere faster than ever. Even if we could slow our rate of increase (and Dubya doesn't even want to do that), we'd still be looking at a big change in the ocean configuration.
Which could lead, ironically enough, to another ice age. If that happens the "junk science" pundits will doubtless insist that the whole greenhouse effect was just a myth. Oh well, I think I'll go fix a cold drink.
Think of the earth as a computer.
On this computer, there are many files (matter) which are used by programs (natural processes) which all work under the operating system (natural "laws"). We (humans) were clueless newbies who started putzing around on this computer. In the process we have edited files (built things). Now when one of the programs reads a file we have edited it does something different than it did before. Quite often we don't like the results.
Now that we have become fairly good computer users, we have realized that we have messed up our computer. Although we know what most of the programs do, we still don't know HOW most of the programs work (we're not programmers yet). Since we didn't make a backup before we started messing around (we were newbies then, remember?) we have very little knowledge of what our computer was like before we started changing things.
Sadly, we don't know any computer geeks who can come fix our computer, so we have to deal with the problem ourselves. We could try to fix the files we've edited, but since we don't understand the programs we don't know exactly what our changes will do. They might even make things worse. We could try not to mess things up any more while we study programming, but our computer might stop working before we learn enough. So we have to do what we can to keep our computer running by making only small changes to files while we study. In the process we'll probably make some mistakes, but hopefully we won't cause a BSOD.
If God had had a computer it would have taken him 7 months to create the earth...if he even bothered to do it at all.
there's a difference, ya know! :)
Yes, but a shift in mass alters the moment of inertia, so, for a given amount of rotational kinetic energy, the length of our day can change. The effect is probably small, but I'm sure there would be a handful of scientists out there who really care about such things (studying whether a 0.01% change in the day/night cycle affects plants or whatever).
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
No, but us humans might :D
Don't mind me, I'm just carping the diem...
The most salient question regarding any redistribution of water to areas near the equator would involve low lying land (coral atolls) in that area. Folks living in places like that could be very concerned indeed, since a small rise in the water translates directly into a large decrease in the land area upon which they're living.
Is it fascism yet?
You're missing the point.
No, you are missing the point. The point -- and it's a sharp point indeed -- is that we have no idea. You're saying it takes longer than a day to clear the pond, I say it might take less than a day. None of us knows, since we don't know the size of the pond, the effectiveness of the cleaning method, the availability of alternative cleaning methods, or even if we really should clean it. We just don't know.
That is why your analogy was silly.
for a[ny?] given climatic/environmental issue, we know it's not an easily solvable problem.
No, we do not know that. This is what I have been trying to tell several people in this thread and in other threads. The heart of the matter is, we do not even know that the issue at hand is a problem. There's just too little research done.
I'm all for doing more research on the climate, I've stated as much on several occasions in this thread alone. I am not, however, willing to accept that every hiccup on the charts mean that we're doomed.
You, according to your last paragraph, seem to be willing to do just that.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley