Amongst what the other reply to your post said, there are other reasons, whether or not most people think they are good or bad is a different issue.
Let's just consider a simple scenario, a very simple scenario that doesn't deal with many of the issues facing this problem. You are a voter who has decided to vote based on the opinions of 10 random people. You believe that this is a good representation of the public and want to vote the way the public does. If there are no lobbyists, then your vote will be based on the majority oppinion of the 10 people you talk to. If we add lobbyists to the scenario, then you can no longer say that about your vote. If one of your 10 people is a lobbyist, then you have essentially lost an opinion and have handicapped the other candidate. This obviously scales as you get more than one lobbyist. Now consider two cases: you don't know who the lobbyist is or you know who the lobbyist is. If you don't know which person is a lobbyist (or don't even know that you picked a lobbyist), then your vote is skewed in favor of the lobbyist. If you know which person is the lobbyist, then you can take that into consideration when forming your vote by discarding that opinion or getting a new one. If you then knew who paid that lobbyist, you might treat that vote differently by giving it more importance than the other votes if you agree with the organization or by counting against the candidate if you strongly disagree with the organization.
I think that part of what you were talking about is that more political speech means more information, which I agree is a good thing. But to get the most information, you need to know who is talking, along with why they are talking and whether or not they are paid to say the things they say. In another example that isn't completely related, consider being sued for something you do while working at a company. The company provides you with a lawyer. It would be in your best interest to know whether the company hired the lawyer for you or whether they gave you a lawyer that is on their payroll who might be acting in the company's best interest instead of yours (not that this is always the case by any means). Again, knowing who a person works for can give you insight into their motivation. This isn't about silencing voices, its about informing the people who are listening to the voices (not the ones in their heads).
i've seen some things from other friends at state school
And I've actually been in classes from a school like Princeton, and I can say that it isn't 10 times harder. But who am I to tell you that Princeton isn't better than every state school in the country.
That makes a lot of sense, and can be scaled up or down. In my case, scaling up from departments to universities shows a similar trend. As another example, you could scale down to classrooms where most students have experienced that they get more attention in small classes compared to larger ones. I have to admit that I have had a few CS classes at UIUC with teachers that are very available and helpful. Usually those are small classes, although occasionally its just because the teacher is really really good.
If everyone is reporting this wrong, which seems to be the case, it would have been nice if you had said that you got the information from reading the actual bill/bills instead of just making a claim without any references, in which case I wouldn't have made a comment because I didn't/don't have time to read the bill. It would be great if we could all take that extra step, but time doesn't permit it for every case.
C+ average at Princeton = daddy was an alum and donated a lot of money while his son/daughter partied/sat around all through college.
Top engineering schools in the US (in '05 cuz it was the first I found): #5 University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (public state school), #18 Princeton. If an A average at UIUC is worth a C+ average at Princeton, why is the ranking higher? Actually, don't answer that because I know about all the complications with school rankings.
I went to Pomona College and took computer science classes at Harvey Mudd, which is consistently ranked as one of the top non-graduate engineering programs. I didn't like the atmosphere out there and transferred to UIUC which is near my home. I have gotten good grades at both schools and can honestly say that it is more difficult to get an A at UIUC compared to the smaller private Harvey Mudd. The main reason for this is that the teachers are much more available and willing to help at smaller schools, while you generally have to figure everything out on your own at large schools. Larger schools are also much more likely to have classes that are intended to kill off the weaker students, usually by making the class very difficult, which again makes it hard to get an A.
That really doesn't matter that much though. The point is that you sounded like a jack ass. Troll me if you want, I just have a problem with people who think they are better because they go to a private school.
Umm, no? I can't really tell from the article, but they are discussing two such laws in it.
FTA, the first law mandates the creation of an "Adults Only" section in your local game store, where any game containing the above is kept under lock and key, accessible only to people over 30. I haven't read the actual law, but that is how the article descirbes it, and only 30-year-olds would be allowed in the section. The other law is about banning the sale of violent games to minors (under 18). The summary of the article, along with the grandparent, were both talking about the first law, as far as I could tell.
I finally understand what is going on. We've had it all wrong this whole time. The RIAA is actually an anti-copyright group pretending to be a greedy organization. The last decade or so of ridiculousness has all been an elaborate plan to destroy copyrights. This latest attack on DJ Drama takes everything to a new level, which the RIAA knows cannot be tolerated.
You see, their goal has been to screw over consumers and content creators to the point where everyone is so fed up that they revolt against the whole system. They want massive reform to take place and are showing how necessary it is by sueing and arresting people for things that are technically illegal (or the civil equivalent) but that most people would recognize are totally irrational, therefore exposing the problems with the system. This will all end soon when the RIAA sues itself for disrupting its abilities to distribute its artists music, or something more clever than that. I mean, this must be the motivation behind their crazy actions because at this point, what other logical explanation is there?
Can you point to a part of the article that says anything about that being illegal? FTA, they are trying to trap people into downloading fake torrents, so they can collect IP addresses, and send copyright infringement letters to ISPs. They aren't prosecuting the people they catch (or at least the article doesn't mention anything of the sort), and I don't know that they need any solid evidence to send a copyright infringement letter to an ISP. According to the article, this is basically a tactic used to identify people who are downloading pirated material by catching them when they download fake pirated material.
It isn't always true, but if someone downloads an illegal copy of Miami Vice, that same person has probably downloaded other pirated movies. The MPAA uses the fake torrents to find out who is downloading movies and uses that information as leverage against ISPs. The legality of the MPAA's (or whoever is doing this) actions aren't really relavent in this case because this isn't being taken to court.
You are assuming that just because there isn't a report about it, that something hasn't happened.
You just missed the point and changed the subject. The original post by the grandparent said: The danger of sexual predators has been blown way the hell out of proportion... The key word there is "proportion". There is a lot of talk in the media about how social networking cites are filled with sexual predators and that it is exceptionally dangerous for kids, but there isn't any evidence to support that claim. The evidence is completely the opposite and shows that your kids have a better chance of being molested by someone that they know as opposed to someone they meet on MySpace (or other social networking cites, but I'll just refer to them all with MySpace).
For the case of MySpace vs. People You Know, there are two good figures to look at: the number of sexual abuse victims abused by someone they know or someone on MySpace, and the percentage of sexually abused MySpace users versus the percentage of sexually abused people a country or other region (MySpace numbers might have to be sliced to get a certain region as well). You'll find that neither of these figures support the Media's view on Social Networking cites.
(which is tough since your house is not the only portal to these places [libraries, schools, friends, etc...])
I guess you'd like this law. Takes care of the problem that people have with their kids getting access to things at school... of course, it also prevents them from using a lot of useful sites (wikipedia can be lumped into that law). Instead of blocking information from your kids, it might be a better idea to teach them about what is right and wrong and how to act properly on such sites. People (that includes kids) always find ways to get to the other side of a wall.
I am aware of that and am not trying to contradict you, but that wasn't my point. My point was that when referring to video game content as a free speech issue, the argument tends to boil down to being about whether or not you can yell fire in a crowded theater. There are a intermediate steps before reaching that argument, but that is what I have noticed in the past.
Doesn't matter what anyone thinks, the text is quite clear.
Just because the text is clear, or any idea is clear for that matter, doesn't stop people from arguing about it.
I was wrong, I misunderstood the bill based on the horrible write up in both the summary, linked article, and the summary of the other linked slashdot story, which all referred to it as a gaming ban. After I posting, I googled the bill to find a better explanation. I was not aware that this was a "ban" of selling violent games to minors, not a gan on selling violent games. As you can see, parts of my post no longer apply.
It was much easier to argue for freedom of expression against a ban on a type of game then it is to argue against a ban for minors, which is why I said I wasn't necessarily against making it illegal for stores to sell them to minors. I didn't think I would have to get into that issue, so I left it out.
However, I'm still against this law, and the root of the problem still isn't about selling games to kids. This comes down to a variety of issues. Should parents be responsible for their kids (at least as far as this is concerned)? If you don't want your kid playing violent games, don't buy them the game system or provide them with the money to buy the games. How can you stop kids from playing games anyway? Even if you don't give your kids access to violent games, they will still play them at their friends houses whose parents bought them violent games. I watched R-rated movies at my friends house all the time and found his dad's playboys when I was 9 years old. As a more extreme example, alcohol is illegal until your 21, but that didn't stop me from drinking when I was 16. Should the state be wasting its time making laws against games when it could be doing better things? Should the state continue to find new ways to control our lives? Where does state responsibility stop and personal responsibility (also your responsibility for your kids) begin? Should the state be censoring us? Should the state be censoring our children? Should the state decide what are children can and can't see, and if they can, what's to stop them from banning evolution in schools?
All of those topics are arguable to great lengths, and I really don't want to argue about them since there isn't an easy answer (which is why I didn't say much in my original post when I thought it was just about banning violent games). IMO, this bill is a form of censorship, and off the top of my head, I can't think of a single form of state censorship that I would support.
(though I think if I told my friends I was an advocate of free expression they'd shun me. Honest to god shun me...)
I chose the phrase "freedom of expression" to avoid the "but do you think people should be able to yell FIRE in a crowded theatre" argument that follows when someone compares video game content to free speech. As for your friends, I hope you see the humor in not being allowed to use that phrase around them.
but are WE really against selling violent games to minors? I know I'm not.As most people do, you have twisted the point. It isn't about being for or against selling violent video games to children, it is about banning a game (or other creation) based on people's judgement of the game.
I'm not necessarily against making it illegal for stores to sell adult rated games to minors, but that wasn't what this bill was about.
I was outraged... which is why part of me is glad that they lost. I also sent an email to Blagojevich to let him know I thought he was making a mistake, but I didn't find that information to be relevant to how I feel about the outcome of the situation.
As an Illinois resident, I'm sad to see the state have to pay such a fine when we, along with most other states, are having budget problems (some caused by the mismanagement, some caused by other factors, but that's not the point).
However, as a gamer and advocate of freedom of expression, I'm glad to see a win for our side. Hopefully this will discourage other states from trying the same thing.
I've been thinking about that for a while too, but the question is how the two events will handle each other and how frequently one leads to another. Assuming all of antarctica melted, how long would it take to start the ice age? Would the ice age be colder than global warming? Lots of questions for that one, too bad we might find out the answers.
Because the articles submitted are of low quality or because you don't like the subject matter? For the latter, you always have the option of not reading them.
For the benefit of anyone thinking of responding to the parent post, allow me to save you some time and frustration. Think about how the conversation will go and what purpose it will serve, then take a deep breath. Then another. Think about something fun that you could be doing right now. Now, decide whether it is worth responding.
Again, you seem to be missing the point. It isn't just about melting ice. As the ice melts, the glaciers break off and fall into the water, or slide down from mountains into the water. These chunks of glaciers are like ice cubes being dropped into a glass of water, not like ice cubes floating in the water. You originally claimed that all the ice on land would not raise the ocean levels, and then in subsequent posts have gone on to explain why icebergs floating in the water will not raise the level without discussing how the ice on land will affect things.
However I said that in my original post that melting ice from land will increase the water level, but only slightly. However, to melt all that ice in the polar regions and high altitudes would require a huge average increase of temperatures on the entire planet.
Since you are going to quote your original post, here it is Much of the world's ice is already floating on the oceans and is therefore displacing the water. All that floating ice melting would not raise the oceans even a millimeter. All the ice on land melting would not make much of a rise either. Just get yourself a globe and look how much ice area on land there is compared to the vastness of the oceans.
Now, I may be reading that wrong, but you said that the oceans would not rise "much" if "all" the ice on land melted. From some simple calculations done in other parts of this thread, all the ice on the West Antarctic shelf would raise the average sea level by about 83 meters. That is only a portion of ALL the ice on land. You're right that it would take a large increase of temperature to melt ALL the ice, but we don't need to melt ALL of it to get significant rises in the sea level. And again, ice that falls off of the land will also contribute to such rises in sea level, much like dropping ice cubes in a glass and observing the water level (since the ice wasn't in the ocean before, you can't start with the ice in the glass).
I'll be happy to address the other issues in your post when you address that one.
Yes, I was trying to do too many calculations too quickly, and didn't watch my units. I also don't have time to find another good past example, but you can see some in my other posts in this thread (where I also make at least one mistake in calculations which was corrected). I do not think that the mistake invalidates my point, only that it fails to support it the way I wanted it to.
You are completely missing my point. I'm not trying to simulate sea ice, neither was "my experiement" if you read it (since it was an adaptation of yours, I'm guessing you just glanced and thougth they were the same). To simulate the ice that I was describing, that being the West Antarctic ice sheet which is on land, you do not put the ice in water. You do realize that the Antarctica is on land and not a floating ice berg right? Most of the ice on Antarctica is not floating in the water, and if you have some reference that says otherwise, please present it. The simulation I described entailed taking a glass of water (ocean) and dropping ice cubes into the glass (ice shelves) from above the glass (simulating, above water; not in water; on land), then measuring the difference. If you really want to claim that adding ice cubes to a glass of water will decrease the level of the water (unless you leave it out long enough for the water to evaporate), well, then I really don't know what to say.
certainly possible. We have what? 140,000,000 square miles of ocean? To raise the sea level by 1 foot suddenly means an event involving 28,000 cubic miles of surface ice falling into the ocean in a short timespan (a year or less, perhaps). Assuming a 100 foot thick ice sheet, we're talking 1,400,000 square miles. Somehow, I don't see that as a reasonable event, GIVEN CURRENT CONDITIONS.
Yes, the conditions will change. But they are unlikely to change in such as a way that a piece of ice 100 feet thick and half the area of CONUS (CONtinental US == USA minus Alaska and Hawaii) might fall from land to sea without a significant warning - decades, most likely. Which gives us the decades needed to do the planning required to deal with it. (Bold emphasis mine)
In 2002, 3250 square km fell off the Larsen B Ice shelf over a 35 day period. That converts to about 1255 square miles while the thickness is hard to determine. Assuming there are 100 feet of ice above sea level, thats a little over half an inch in 35 days from a single ice shelf. Also, that article goes on to explain how the most likely cause of the break is climate change. There are other articles about the Ross Ice Shelf and its possibility of sudden collapse. As I'm sure you know, current conditions aren't the only factors that influence the ice. The 2005 deterioration of the B-15 iceberg off the Ross Ice Shelf is suspected to have been caused by a storm near Alaska that produced waves strong enough to break up the ice. The faster icebergs deteriorate, the faster the their ice is turned to water and added to the ocean's volume. I'm not trying to say that this iceberg could raise the sea level by a foot, I'm just trying to demonstrate how it is surely possible for these things to happen relatively quickly compared to decades or a century, and that 2 billion more industrialized people are not needed to cause it.
Even more so, these icebergs are similar to ice or snow on a roof (think 10 inches). As they melt, the edges fall off first. As the edges melt, due to a variety of reasons including internal temperature, mass, gravity and surface area , the rest of the snow melts and falls off at increasing speeds. The icebergs will not melt at a constant rate.
I'm much more concerned that the changes in salinity caused by massive amounts of land-ice going into the oceans will cause - shutdown of the thermohaline conveyer is not totally impossible.
I agree with you, this is a serious concern. Its also hard to know what the effects would be of combining global warming with a potential ice age due to the conveyer shutting down, or any other effects that might come from that.
Now, do you have a solution?
No, and I don't claim to have one. Again, I was just trying to show why I don't think that an increase in global temperature will produce more habitable and fertile land.
I think its important to again point out how this thread started. I'm not saying that I'm completely right on all of this. My goal to show that he was wrong. If you look at the initial post, I don't think you'll agree with that much of what he said anymore, or at least you won't say that he is right with high certainty.
Slashdot Mirror
Amongst what the other reply to your post said, there are other reasons, whether or not most people think they are good or bad is a different issue.
Let's just consider a simple scenario, a very simple scenario that doesn't deal with many of the issues facing this problem. You are a voter who has decided to vote based on the opinions of 10 random people. You believe that this is a good representation of the public and want to vote the way the public does. If there are no lobbyists, then your vote will be based on the majority oppinion of the 10 people you talk to. If we add lobbyists to the scenario, then you can no longer say that about your vote. If one of your 10 people is a lobbyist, then you have essentially lost an opinion and have handicapped the other candidate. This obviously scales as you get more than one lobbyist. Now consider two cases: you don't know who the lobbyist is or you know who the lobbyist is. If you don't know which person is a lobbyist (or don't even know that you picked a lobbyist), then your vote is skewed in favor of the lobbyist. If you know which person is the lobbyist, then you can take that into consideration when forming your vote by discarding that opinion or getting a new one. If you then knew who paid that lobbyist, you might treat that vote differently by giving it more importance than the other votes if you agree with the organization or by counting against the candidate if you strongly disagree with the organization.
I think that part of what you were talking about is that more political speech means more information, which I agree is a good thing. But to get the most information, you need to know who is talking, along with why they are talking and whether or not they are paid to say the things they say. In another example that isn't completely related, consider being sued for something you do while working at a company. The company provides you with a lawyer. It would be in your best interest to know whether the company hired the lawyer for you or whether they gave you a lawyer that is on their payroll who might be acting in the company's best interest instead of yours (not that this is always the case by any means). Again, knowing who a person works for can give you insight into their motivation. This isn't about silencing voices, its about informing the people who are listening to the voices (not the ones in their heads).
I must have missed something, what does UC Berkeley have to do with what I said?
i've seen some things from other friends at state school
And I've actually been in classes from a school like Princeton, and I can say that it isn't 10 times harder. But who am I to tell you that Princeton isn't better than every state school in the country.
That makes a lot of sense, and can be scaled up or down. In my case, scaling up from departments to universities shows a similar trend. As another example, you could scale down to classrooms where most students have experienced that they get more attention in small classes compared to larger ones. I have to admit that I have had a few CS classes at UIUC with teachers that are very available and helpful. Usually those are small classes, although occasionally its just because the teacher is really really good.
If everyone is reporting this wrong, which seems to be the case, it would have been nice if you had said that you got the information from reading the actual bill/bills instead of just making a claim without any references, in which case I wouldn't have made a comment because I didn't/don't have time to read the bill. It would be great if we could all take that extra step, but time doesn't permit it for every case.
thanks for the clarification and references
C+ average at Princeton = daddy was an alum and donated a lot of money while his son/daughter partied/sat around all through college.
Top engineering schools in the US (in '05 cuz it was the first I found): #5 University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (public state school), #18 Princeton. If an A average at UIUC is worth a C+ average at Princeton, why is the ranking higher? Actually, don't answer that because I know about all the complications with school rankings.
I went to Pomona College and took computer science classes at Harvey Mudd, which is consistently ranked as one of the top non-graduate engineering programs. I didn't like the atmosphere out there and transferred to UIUC which is near my home. I have gotten good grades at both schools and can honestly say that it is more difficult to get an A at UIUC compared to the smaller private Harvey Mudd. The main reason for this is that the teachers are much more available and willing to help at smaller schools, while you generally have to figure everything out on your own at large schools. Larger schools are also much more likely to have classes that are intended to kill off the weaker students, usually by making the class very difficult, which again makes it hard to get an A.
That really doesn't matter that much though. The point is that you sounded like a jack ass. Troll me if you want, I just have a problem with people who think they are better because they go to a private school.
Umm, no? I can't really tell from the article, but they are discussing two such laws in it.
FTA, the first law mandates the creation of an "Adults Only" section in your local game store, where any game containing the above is kept under lock and key, accessible only to people over 30. I haven't read the actual law, but that is how the article descirbes it, and only 30-year-olds would be allowed in the section. The other law is about banning the sale of violent games to minors (under 18). The summary of the article, along with the grandparent, were both talking about the first law, as far as I could tell.
I finally understand what is going on. We've had it all wrong this whole time. The RIAA is actually an anti-copyright group pretending to be a greedy organization. The last decade or so of ridiculousness has all been an elaborate plan to destroy copyrights. This latest attack on DJ Drama takes everything to a new level, which the RIAA knows cannot be tolerated.
You see, their goal has been to screw over consumers and content creators to the point where everyone is so fed up that they revolt against the whole system. They want massive reform to take place and are showing how necessary it is by sueing and arresting people for things that are technically illegal (or the civil equivalent) but that most people would recognize are totally irrational, therefore exposing the problems with the system. This will all end soon when the RIAA sues itself for disrupting its abilities to distribute its artists music, or something more clever than that. I mean, this must be the motivation behind their crazy actions because at this point, what other logical explanation is there?
Can you point to a part of the article that says anything about that being illegal? FTA, they are trying to trap people into downloading fake torrents, so they can collect IP addresses, and send copyright infringement letters to ISPs. They aren't prosecuting the people they catch (or at least the article doesn't mention anything of the sort), and I don't know that they need any solid evidence to send a copyright infringement letter to an ISP. According to the article, this is basically a tactic used to identify people who are downloading pirated material by catching them when they download fake pirated material.
It isn't always true, but if someone downloads an illegal copy of Miami Vice, that same person has probably downloaded other pirated movies. The MPAA uses the fake torrents to find out who is downloading movies and uses that information as leverage against ISPs. The legality of the MPAA's (or whoever is doing this) actions aren't really relavent in this case because this isn't being taken to court.
Or at least that's how I read the article.
For the case of MySpace vs. People You Know, there are two good figures to look at: the number of sexual abuse victims abused by someone they know or someone on MySpace, and the percentage of sexually abused MySpace users versus the percentage of sexually abused people a country or other region (MySpace numbers might have to be sliced to get a certain region as well). You'll find that neither of these figures support the Media's view on Social Networking cites.
(which is tough since your house is not the only portal to these places [libraries, schools, friends, etc...])
I guess you'd like this law. Takes care of the problem that people have with their kids getting access to things at school... of course, it also prevents them from using a lot of useful sites (wikipedia can be lumped into that law). Instead of blocking information from your kids, it might be a better idea to teach them about what is right and wrong and how to act properly on such sites. People (that includes kids) always find ways to get to the other side of a wall.
I am aware of that and am not trying to contradict you, but that wasn't my point. My point was that when referring to video game content as a free speech issue, the argument tends to boil down to being about whether or not you can yell fire in a crowded theater. There are a intermediate steps before reaching that argument, but that is what I have noticed in the past.
Doesn't matter what anyone thinks, the text is quite clear.
Just because the text is clear, or any idea is clear for that matter, doesn't stop people from arguing about it.
I was wrong, I misunderstood the bill based on the horrible write up in both the summary, linked article, and the summary of the other linked slashdot story, which all referred to it as a gaming ban. After I posting, I googled the bill to find a better explanation. I was not aware that this was a "ban" of selling violent games to minors, not a gan on selling violent games. As you can see, parts of my post no longer apply.
It was much easier to argue for freedom of expression against a ban on a type of game then it is to argue against a ban for minors, which is why I said I wasn't necessarily against making it illegal for stores to sell them to minors. I didn't think I would have to get into that issue, so I left it out.
However, I'm still against this law, and the root of the problem still isn't about selling games to kids. This comes down to a variety of issues. Should parents be responsible for their kids (at least as far as this is concerned)? If you don't want your kid playing violent games, don't buy them the game system or provide them with the money to buy the games. How can you stop kids from playing games anyway? Even if you don't give your kids access to violent games, they will still play them at their friends houses whose parents bought them violent games. I watched R-rated movies at my friends house all the time and found his dad's playboys when I was 9 years old. As a more extreme example, alcohol is illegal until your 21, but that didn't stop me from drinking when I was 16. Should the state be wasting its time making laws against games when it could be doing better things? Should the state continue to find new ways to control our lives? Where does state responsibility stop and personal responsibility (also your responsibility for your kids) begin? Should the state be censoring us? Should the state be censoring our children? Should the state decide what are children can and can't see, and if they can, what's to stop them from banning evolution in schools?
All of those topics are arguable to great lengths, and I really don't want to argue about them since there isn't an easy answer (which is why I didn't say much in my original post when I thought it was just about banning violent games). IMO, this bill is a form of censorship, and off the top of my head, I can't think of a single form of state censorship that I would support.
(though I think if I told my friends I was an advocate of free expression they'd shun me. Honest to god shun me...)
I chose the phrase "freedom of expression" to avoid the "but do you think people should be able to yell FIRE in a crowded theatre" argument that follows when someone compares video game content to free speech. As for your friends, I hope you see the humor in not being allowed to use that phrase around them.
but are WE really against selling violent games to minors? I know I'm not.As most people do, you have twisted the point. It isn't about being for or against selling violent video games to children, it is about banning a game (or other creation) based on people's judgement of the game.
I'm not necessarily against making it illegal for stores to sell adult rated games to minors, but that wasn't what this bill was about.
I was outraged... which is why part of me is glad that they lost. I also sent an email to Blagojevich to let him know I thought he was making a mistake, but I didn't find that information to be relevant to how I feel about the outcome of the situation.
As an Illinois resident, I'm sad to see the state have to pay such a fine when we, along with most other states, are having budget problems (some caused by the mismanagement, some caused by other factors, but that's not the point).
However, as a gamer and advocate of freedom of expression, I'm glad to see a win for our side. Hopefully this will discourage other states from trying the same thing.
I've been thinking about that for a while too, but the question is how the two events will handle each other and how frequently one leads to another. Assuming all of antarctica melted, how long would it take to start the ice age? Would the ice age be colder than global warming? Lots of questions for that one, too bad we might find out the answers.
Because the articles submitted are of low quality or because you don't like the subject matter? For the latter, you always have the option of not reading them.
For the benefit of anyone thinking of responding to the parent post, allow me to save you some time and frustration. Think about how the conversation will go and what purpose it will serve, then take a deep breath. Then another. Think about something fun that you could be doing right now. Now, decide whether it is worth responding.
Again, you seem to be missing the point. It isn't just about melting ice. As the ice melts, the glaciers break off and fall into the water, or slide down from mountains into the water. These chunks of glaciers are like ice cubes being dropped into a glass of water, not like ice cubes floating in the water. You originally claimed that all the ice on land would not raise the ocean levels, and then in subsequent posts have gone on to explain why icebergs floating in the water will not raise the level without discussing how the ice on land will affect things.
However I said that in my original post that melting ice from land will increase the water level, but only slightly. However, to melt all that ice in the polar regions and high altitudes would require a huge average increase of temperatures on the entire planet.
Since you are going to quote your original post, here it is Much of the world's ice is already floating on the oceans and is therefore displacing the water. All that floating ice melting would not raise the oceans even a millimeter. All the ice on land melting would not make much of a rise either. Just get yourself a globe and look how much ice area on land there is compared to the vastness of the oceans.
Now, I may be reading that wrong, but you said that the oceans would not rise "much" if "all" the ice on land melted. From some simple calculations done in other parts of this thread, all the ice on the West Antarctic shelf would raise the average sea level by about 83 meters. That is only a portion of ALL the ice on land. You're right that it would take a large increase of temperature to melt ALL the ice, but we don't need to melt ALL of it to get significant rises in the sea level. And again, ice that falls off of the land will also contribute to such rises in sea level, much like dropping ice cubes in a glass and observing the water level (since the ice wasn't in the ocean before, you can't start with the ice in the glass).
I'll be happy to address the other issues in your post when you address that one.
Yes, I was trying to do too many calculations too quickly, and didn't watch my units. I also don't have time to find another good past example, but you can see some in my other posts in this thread (where I also make at least one mistake in calculations which was corrected). I do not think that the mistake invalidates my point, only that it fails to support it the way I wanted it to.
You are completely missing my point. I'm not trying to simulate sea ice, neither was "my experiement" if you read it (since it was an adaptation of yours, I'm guessing you just glanced and thougth they were the same). To simulate the ice that I was describing, that being the West Antarctic ice sheet which is on land, you do not put the ice in water. You do realize that the Antarctica is on land and not a floating ice berg right? Most of the ice on Antarctica is not floating in the water, and if you have some reference that says otherwise, please present it. The simulation I described entailed taking a glass of water (ocean) and dropping ice cubes into the glass (ice shelves) from above the glass (simulating, above water; not in water; on land), then measuring the difference. If you really want to claim that adding ice cubes to a glass of water will decrease the level of the water (unless you leave it out long enough for the water to evaporate), well, then I really don't know what to say.
certainly possible. We have what? 140,000,000 square miles of ocean? To raise the sea level by 1 foot suddenly means an event involving 28,000 cubic miles of surface ice falling into the ocean in a short timespan (a year or less, perhaps). Assuming a 100 foot thick ice sheet, we're talking 1,400,000 square miles. Somehow, I don't see that as a reasonable event, GIVEN CURRENT CONDITIONS.
Yes, the conditions will change. But they are unlikely to change in such as a way that a piece of ice 100 feet thick and half the area of CONUS (CONtinental US == USA minus Alaska and Hawaii) might fall from land to sea without a significant warning - decades, most likely. Which gives us the decades needed to do the planning required to deal with it. (Bold emphasis mine)
In 2002, 3250 square km fell off the Larsen B Ice shelf over a 35 day period. That converts to about 1255 square miles while the thickness is hard to determine. Assuming there are 100 feet of ice above sea level, thats a little over half an inch in 35 days from a single ice shelf. Also, that article goes on to explain how the most likely cause of the break is climate change. There are other articles about the Ross Ice Shelf and its possibility of sudden collapse. As I'm sure you know, current conditions aren't the only factors that influence the ice. The 2005 deterioration of the B-15 iceberg off the Ross Ice Shelf is suspected to have been caused by a storm near Alaska that produced waves strong enough to break up the ice. The faster icebergs deteriorate, the faster the their ice is turned to water and added to the ocean's volume. I'm not trying to say that this iceberg could raise the sea level by a foot, I'm just trying to demonstrate how it is surely possible for these things to happen relatively quickly compared to decades or a century, and that 2 billion more industrialized people are not needed to cause it.
Even more so, these icebergs are similar to ice or snow on a roof (think 10 inches). As they melt, the edges fall off first. As the edges melt, due to a variety of reasons including internal temperature, mass, gravity and surface area , the rest of the snow melts and falls off at increasing speeds. The icebergs will not melt at a constant rate.
I'm much more concerned that the changes in salinity caused by massive amounts of land-ice going into the oceans will cause - shutdown of the thermohaline conveyer is not totally impossible.
I agree with you, this is a serious concern. Its also hard to know what the effects would be of combining global warming with a potential ice age due to the conveyer shutting down, or any other effects that might come from that.
Now, do you have a solution?
No, and I don't claim to have one. Again, I was just trying to show why I don't think that an increase in global temperature will produce more habitable and fertile land.
I think its important to again point out how this thread started. I'm not saying that I'm completely right on all of this. My goal to show that he was wrong. If you look at the initial post, I don't think you'll agree with that much of what he said anymore, or at least you won't say that he is right with high certainty.
Ok, so how did your observation of my experiment go?