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299 Comments
- doctorfungi, on 10/10/2007, -10/+46Don't worry, surges don't work anyway.
- AirRaven, on 10/10/2007, -0/+35Your point's true as far as Ice being less dense than Water goes- seaborne ice melting is no real problem for humanity sea level-wise.
The problem's *landborne* ice- Antarctica and Greenland's Ice Sheets sit on Land- not water. If they melt, it'd have the effect of putting water into the ocean that wasn't previously there, raising the sea level. - Bhima, on 10/10/2007, -0/+19Most of the ice in Greenland and Antarctica is sitting on ground above sea level.
- spearce, on 10/10/2007, -2/+18worthless without pictures...i'm to busy driving my SUV and throwing styrofoam cups out the windows as i come home from the grocery store with all my groceries in plastic bags. where are my cigarettes?
- mcool119, on 10/10/2007, -7/+20I don't understand the concept of the ocean surging up due to ice caps melting... Since the structure of ice is less dense than that of liquid water, the ice caps are displacing the ocean. If the ice caps melt, wouldn't they logically recede, causing the oceans to shrink slightly?
Can anyone explain? I don't really have any bias on this. - greekfood, on 10/10/2007, -6/+17Let's not forget the fact that last week NASA admitted that it had made a mistake in calculating the temperature figures that have been the mainstay of the alarmist camp's platform... Turns out that scientists at NASA now admit that 1934, not 1998, was the warmest year in the United States since records began. They also admit that five of the ten warmest years on record for the US occurred prior to 1939, and that only one was in the 21st Century. Of course, the mainstream media tried to bury this piece of news and only gave it passing mention...
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -4/+14Hmmm but if you think about it, this will benefit all the people that live an hour or so from the beach. I'd like to have a beach here in PA. Who lives in NJ anyway?
- monsterofNone, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10you're essentially right in describing the effect of the melting of the northern polar ice cap. the Arctic is a massive floating island. but the Antarctic is ice and snow covered land. as it melts it would run off and add to the ocean's volume. same goes for large land masses such as greenland... and other galciers.
- atomic811, on 10/10/2007, -6/+16I use to believe in all the global warming hype but I just don't anymore. I think there is warming but I do not feel humans have a large part in it. I also know taxing things will not fix the problem..history has shown me that. Soon there will be a war on global warming just like we have a war of cancer and a war on drugs...it never stops the problem. I do think we should cut things not because of global warming but the polution we put into our breathing air. I could be wrong but I just no longer believe all this hype. I am a liberal so what does that say?? lol
- komodovaraan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9But a more important factor for rising sea levels seems to me the expansion of the sea volume.
Because of the global temperature rise the oceans also warm up (maybe a couple of degrees?).
Water has the highest density at 4 deg Celsius, so it would seem that increasing its temperature would make it expand.
Even the tiniest expansion of the huge volume of all the oceans added up would make for a pretty spectacular rise of water level.
but I'm no scientist, i'd love to hear a sensible comment to this idea - cygnus2112, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9Look guys. Regardless of the bad science, alarmists and doomsdaysayers like Al Gore, Hansen and Suzuki... there is a real concern with water and air pollution. We should live responsibly while we're on this tiny little planet. We need to treat it with respect so that our children and grandchildren can safely swim in the water. We need to wean ourselves off of middle eastern oil so those countries can devolve back to biblical barbarism like they seem to want to. All initiatives for boutique oils for lower emissions have been utter failures. What can you personally do? Create an organic garden.. compost... and conserve your energy use. Don't do it for liars like Al Gore and Hansen.. do it for yourself and the well-being of your children. This global warming trend will face an ice age soon, according to the ice age cycles. Do what you can so that you and yours can survive. Don't buy into the sensationalism and fear-mongering of the media.
- jbenson2, on 10/10/2007, -9/+17Weathermen can't predict the weather in 10 days... I'm certainly not going to trust one that is trying to predict information in 100 years.
- L0C0loco, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8The final review of the IPCC report was done by the governments - not scientific peers - but rather the politicians or political appointees. Since I work in the field, I heard what happened in the final review process. Let's just say that some findings and projections were modified to be more palatable to all involved. One draft had the sea level rise this century at a couple of meters, but that is not how the final report reads.
I live at 2 meters elevation in a coastal area. I'm looking into buying some land at 25 meter elevation about 20 miles inland. - jbenson2, on 10/10/2007, -7/+15Over the next 100 years, the oceans will rise 59 centimeters (less than 2 feet)
Over the next 100 years, the oceans will rise 25 meters (82 feet)
This is the sort of screwed up confusion that has given the Global Warming nutcakes their reputation! - JonGalt, on 10/10/2007, -6/+14allow me to explain:
Using the "If we follow 'business-as-usual' growth of greenhouse gas emissions," that means the not even theoretical but science fiction science of the current global warming religion run by Alfred gore we get all kinds of terrible things.
Its basically done like this:
Take a small increase in temp over a short 50-100 year time span and conclude that temperatures are rising uncontrollably AND due to human causes, instead of it just being naturally occurring bump or warming trend in the larger climate.
What does this religion predict will happen:
Terrible weather such as tornadoes and hurricanes everywhere, they will be massive in scale and strength destroying everything around them, all life on earth will most likely suffer due to droughts wiping out all tillable land!!! The ice caps at either pole will melt causing new york, San Fransisco and Florida, and many other human habitations to be totally sunken under the sea!!! Oh and don't forget their favorite, the global temperature will rise and we will all die of thirst...it really sucks dude.
Well that sounds bad...what should i do?:
Ignore them, they are scaremongering socialists and tree huggers that want the government to control every aspect of their lives because that way they will feel safe and comfortable. Using this religion they are able to do two things:Scare ignorant voters into voting for politicians willing to jump on this bandwagon THEREBY lieing in order to beat other politicians that have principles AND scare other countries from working with the US, China and many other countries in areas like unrestricted trade because their unwillingness to jump on the band wagon will cause them to have a less likable image, and they see these things as bad things because forcing their government controlled states to have to work in a free market basically causes them to either collapse or have to go capitalist, which is evil...(seriously no) as an example please see china which is on its way slowly but steadily.
http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speeches.html - cygnus2112, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8Whether humans play a tiny role or not, it will still happen regardless. It's happened approximately every 100,000 years as far back as we can track. What we have is human disregard for the environment being blamed as the main reason for a natural event of our planet.
- rrainist, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Oceans... Yes... The terrorists of the sea.
- fatfreddyscat, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7A big problem would be more Californians move here!
- dissident, on 10/10/2007, -4/+11water displacement would mean that all floating ice would not effect ocean levels either way, only ice that is frozen on land would effect the sea levels... personally I think they're blowing this way out of proportion and even if the ocean levels rise it will occur very slowly and there will be time to take the necessary precautions.
- redwire, on 10/10/2007, -4/+10So buy your home on a hill, worst case you suddenly have ocean front property :)
- cygnus2112, on 10/10/2007, -4/+10Hansen who got calculations wrong at NASA and refused to release the algorithm used. He's the leading activist ***** out there. Unless you count Al "I invented the Internet" Gore.
- rolf, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8Let's hope so.
- achoo5000, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6Also thermal expansion of the water already in the ocean will increase the volume.
- felyduw, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6Didn't know Bangladesh was a city either...
Oh ignorance, what would digg be without thee. - glowfood, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6What, no pictures?
- VitriolAndAngst, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7I hear a lot of hopeful thought about a gradual change.
Wishful thinking seems to be coming most from people who denied Global Warming existed. Basically, the one thing we do know -- is that there will be unintended consequences. A few years ago, nobody was talking about "feedback loops." The process of ice sliding into the ocean rather than melting, the change of heat absorbtion due to ice cover, and the release of methane from melting permafrost are just now being understood.
What we don't know can kill us people. This is reckless and stupid. We have a gold mine of change an opportunity in creating an industry to get us off of fossil fuels -- it can be done.The prudent and "conservative" approach would be to embrace the concept of keeping our atmosphere the same -- not taking a wild leap into a dramatically different climate.
We are talking about a few pathetic points of profit for a few politically connected companies -- vs. potential end of life as we know it, or at the very least radical weather change. I don't hold much faith in the concept of listening to the Global Warming deniers latest theory -- they've been wrong about everything else so far.
Did you notice the weather banding this year? Drought in one area and too much rain in another. A very weird weather pattern nobody predicted. Not very good for our economy and we are just getting into this frying pan. - jorkk, on 10/10/2007, -8/+12yo momma will get bigger
- Junkyarddawg, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7Well, for some values of 'we' that's true - humanity as a species, however, is not threatened.
- JHW539, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Interesting new science, but it's new - until qualified folks have a chance to rip it apart, look over its base assumptions, put it back together and come to the same conclusion, it has no useful place in the public debate. I tend to dismiss both deniers and alarmists who raise unsubstantiated disagreements with the conclusions in the IPCC report, which have been developed over decades and withstood the testing above. Check it out - http://www.ipcc-wg2.org/ . Plenty of grist there to smack down both alarmists and deniers. The IPCC report is based on thousands of studies. This article is just a single study. Not being a scientist, I am content to let the Greenpeace and Exxon/Shell/BP/Coal/etc. funded scientists do their job to run down the facts a bit before I toss out very well established and tested data.
- cygnus2112, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4As the former inhabitants of Atlantis and New Orleans would tell you, "Move Inland." Those who move back to New Orleans, well.. Darwin will teach them a final lesson... again.
- init100, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6Predicting the exact weather is much harder than predicting general trends, which is what climate is all about. Do you also distrust predictions about the positions of the planets in the solar system in 100 years?
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4As a practical matter one needs to factor rising sea levels and worsening weather conditions into the equation. Is it time to buy a home in New Orleans? Errr, probably not. I have a friend who owns a home near a place that floods and she tells me that the floods keep getting closer and closer to the house. I advise her to sell now before it is plainly obvious to everyone that sea levels are rising and no one will touch homes like that.
The cause of the warming of the globe are, in a lot of practical ways, irrelevant. You still need to make informed decisions (particularly about where you live). - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I wish that the debate would move from who caused it to how to deal with it. No one argues that the earth is warming and that there will be implications. We are all standing still paralyzed as though some government action will stop it in its tracks. We need to start acting as if the world will keep getting warmer and that sea levels will rise more and that weather will become more severe.
Practical...get practical. We're way too ***** good at partisan bickering as Rome burns. - Corrosionx, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4So what, all governments do is tax you, while you should be more worried about how people will survive their coming doom. Build better dams, better water systems, lower the costs of air conditionning... all concrete stuff that will make a difference in how good people's lives are in the apocalyptic future, instead of asking governments to tax us more and more thinking they'll make a difference.
"Did you notice the weather banding this year? Drought in one area and too much rain in another."
This year was an El Nino year. Look it up. - nihilite, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4You are probably one of those guys who believed the tobacco companies when they told you there is no proof cigarettes cause cancer. You are a sucker. Why would the president, an ex oil-company executive (he bankrupted them all, but still), or our VP, an ex oil-company exec, lie to us about global warming? People try to ignore the science because they don't like the answer. Why do they need to find a no-name whacko professor from some small college in montana to support their claims, and why do so many of the most prominent scientists support the idea that global warming is very real? I'd love to hear the answer.
What really pisses me off is they will act so !%*@ing surprised when these things come to pass. "We didn't know!" - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4that's called, evolution. grow a brain sea turtles.
- DontGiveADamn, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4You are not cute enough to talk like that.
- noahhoward, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3My plan was to buy all the land along the new coast, 25m rise later, boom billionaire. Land speculation at its finest.
- celerityfm, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3The polar ice cap of the South Pole (continent of Antarctica) is covered by thick chunks of ice (glaciers) that are resting on land. If the ice here melts then it will cause the sea level to rise. That's where it comes from. This could be catastrophic.
- speezer, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Waterworld - http://imdb.com/title/tt0114898/
- celerityfm, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I don't know lol lets see: http://www.kidsrgreen.org/lets_do_it/global%20warming.html - yep, it doesn't spill over the top. However, the polar ice cap of the South Pole (continent of Antarctica) is covered by thick chunks of ice (glaciers) that are resting on land. If the ice here melts then it will cause the sea level to rise. olo :(
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -6/+9Well, I watched "The Day After Tomorrow" and the next ice age seems like a piece of cake. JK. I will agree that the earth's climate is cyclic, but you can't say that humans have no part in changing it. There are billions of heat engines working away on earth, doing work and releasing heat into the atmosphere(consider even your air conditioner). People are defin9itely playing a role.
- Arrhenius, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4What you say about thermal expansion is true for today's sea rise. Although it hasn't been a "couple of degrees" - the oceans heat up more slowly than does the atmosphere.
Barring a dramatic reduction in CO2 emissions, the sea level rise contribution from Greenland and Antarctica is certain to get larger. Nobody really knows for sure if the melt will be a slow steady process or a faster non-linear breakup. What Hansen is saying is that we cannot exclude the possibility of the more pessimimstic scenario. - inhaler, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5Yeah, like New Orleans/Katrina precautions? Just admit it, if the oceans rise, every coastal city is probably *****.
- martin2968, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3how are they ignorant?
- ScottMaximus1, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3You're gonna be rich!
- cygnus2112, on 10/10/2007, -7/+10Fear. Sensationalism. Exaggeration. Lies. Propaganda. Hansen, who has been proven wrong by a simple blogger, spews as much bad science out of his diseased tonsils as Al "I invented the Internet" Gore with his mansion that uses power of 26+ houses, jetsets all over the world and creates concerts that cause more pollution. Yes, there is global warming, it's been happening for 100,000 years. Look at any scientific chart that marks ice age cycles and you'll find the answer. Humanity, at this point, can do nothing to stop it, start it or control it. But if you want to make a difference concerning pollution, start with megalomaniac power-consumers like Al Gore.
- cygnus2112, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Shhh.. don't speak common sense to people that adore Rosie O'Donnell. It takes away the fun of humiliating them.
- Railer, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2init100 your selective use of facts amazes me, regardless of What is melting, ocean levels are not rising above normal rates.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Good comments. I'd add that liquid water can move a lot more freely that water that is in the form of ice. Think tidal forces, hurricanes, etc.
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