Slashdot Mirror
Arctic Ice Holds Much CO2
scottie2shoes writes "The Edmonton Journal is reporting fascinating research on the role of arctic ice in absorbing carbon dioxide. It seems that (contrary to what was previously thought) arctic ice actually absorbs significant quantites of CO2 and is thus a key player in the 'greenhouse gas game'. So melting the ice caps won't just flood thousands of square miles of land and wipe out thousands of species, now it is is starting to sound serious..."
So greenhouse gases cause global warming which melt the ice caps and then releases greenhouse gases?
"Anything is possible with enough programmers, time and pizza." (Substitute caffeine for time as needed.)
Unless people are actually dying at an alarming rate, no amount of evidence is going to change anything. The US is not focused on being "earth happy" is any way. Be superpower, stay superpower, alone. Through economic and military might now, but perhaps scientific or educational might on a better day.
However, until the Atlantic currents slow to a crawl and we have another Ice Age, we're going to have to just deal with freakish weather and high insurance premiums.
I wasn going to post and say the same thing. I remember reading how Arctic ice (which is floating) obviously won't alter sea levels if it melts, and there was an explanation of why Greenland ice melting wouldn't make a big difference. The big concern in one section of Antarctica.
But that isn't all exactly true, because the Earth is spinning. As ice melts at the North Pole, the Earth will become slightly less spherical, resulting in higher sea levels at the equator, and possibly making a slight difference in the need for leap seconds.
Now whether that effect is significant or not, I have no idea.
I'm more worried about ANTARCTIC ice. You know, the big ice cap stuck on top of a field of active volcanoes, down South? A little bit of extra activity could really ruin our millennium.
Here is where today's science becomes guesswork, however. Less ice could actually be better. Scientists still know very little about how the Arctic Ocean processes carbon, and a competing theory holds that open water could actually pick up more greenhouse gases.
If human activity is turning "much of the Arctic into a polynya (a body of water that doesn't freeze in winter), then the Arctic or polar seas may become much more effective at removing the atmospheric carbon than they currently are," Papakyriakou said.
The poster of this article (and those discussing the potential positive feedback mechanism that kicks in if ice is a greater sink than open water) are really smudging the issue here, and smudging it for political effect without regard either for the necessarily tentative nature of science at the margins (here, the untested margins of modelling an entire planetary ecosystem) or for the consequences of making scientists look like ridiculous Chicken Littles.
I ride a bicycle to work, take the train, and am generally supportive of environmentally friendly living and governance. But, as a scientist, I am severely disappointed when other scientists (let alone journalists or Greenpeace) take an unfinished scientific debate and use it to propose sweeping changes in our lives -- changes that woud plunge a huge number of people into poverty (I live an environmentally sustainable life, but it does cost a lot more and I wouldn't demand that a single mother of two do it as well -- hey, you driving that pickup! shell out $50,000 for an electric car.)
This is turning into a bit of a rant, but if you want to learn what other enivronmentalists -- who are also scientists -- think about the current fights over the greenhouse effect, GMOs, etc, you should read Patrick Moore's recent article (Moore was the cofounder of Greenpeace.)
Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU
Your posts while definitely factually correct were worded very condescendingly, don't you think? Not everybody is well versed in chemistry as you or I.
I think you'll find that as you progress through college that your depth of knowledge is actually quite small and that you can never know as much as you want too. The breadth of human discovery is just too large for any one person to know everything. It is actually quite interesting to see how specialized some Doctoral thesis are. Someday soon you will find yourself on the other side of the knowledge gap. Hopefully they will not treat you as disrespectfully.
Veramocor
You'll find any study that espouses global warming to be light on the details and any empirical numbers.
No one ever compares the actual amounts of energy or chemicals, nor do they estimate the CO2 sinks in the world that are natural.
It's kind of like the traffic studies that say "If we build another lane, people will just fill it up, so why do it?" rather than "Building one more lane will increase traffic flow by X0 and decrease travel time by X1, which is estimated to increase the economy by Y, and it will cost Z to build it."
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
The earth is a tremendously complicated system and anyone that pretends to understand it completely is lying. We only understand very small bits of it, and we're like the blind men trying to ascertain what an elephant is. Some see a small part of it and get worried that we're turning the planet into an ice world. Others worry about a water world. Others say we are going to turn it into a tropical paradise. There were people running around in the 70's claiming that the world would be so full of people that there wouldn't be enough food in 2000!
If you look around, you will find plenty of examples of CO2 "sinks". One popular example is limestone deposits at the bottom of the ocean. A little research will turn up several others.
But otherwise, pay these "prophets" no mind. They are out there to stir up controversy and profit from it.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.