Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Foxy wrote-

Quote:

Does anybody know?

I don't.

I just take it as it comes and hope that not much **** sticks to me.

Ideally none.

But I gave up on utopias a long while ago.

I do my bit.

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Steve 41oo wrote:

Are you seriously suggesting sea levels are rising because the earth is shrinking? That's theory from desperation.

No, but I do know that over eons land rises, sinks, and shifts as the plates that form the foundation of the Earth move around. The Sandia Mountains, 10,600+' that form the Eastern boundary of Albuquerque have sea fossils embedded in the rock at the top. That strongly suggests that those rocks were once at a much lower level than they are now.

We know that the ground under much of New Orleans is sinking--at least one area by as much as 1 inch per year. This says to me that it is a fool's mission to rebuild New Orleans as it isn't a matter of if it will flood again, but simply when given its location that will sooner or later put it in the path of other strong hurricanes. I read somewhere that Venice Italy is also sinking little by little even as most of Scandinavia is rising.

So........given that ocean experts report that the oceans are not appreciably rising, but some islanders report that the water is rising where they are, I just wondered if it might be possible that the islands themselves are actually sinking?

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Some are. Some are emerging.

The west coast of Scotland goes up and down with the tides. I don't know by how much but it's measureable according to scientists.

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spendius wrote:

Some are. Some are emerging.

The west coast of Scotland goes up and down with the tides. I don't know by how much but it's measureable according to scientists.

Really? I was taught that all the continents float around on the liquid stuff in the Earth, but I didn't think about the tides having much effect on the land masses.

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Steve 41oo wrote:

Are you seriously suggesting sea levels are rising because the earth is shrinking? That's theory from desperation.

No! Foxfyre is seriously suggesting that when the shoreline sinks, and the sea level stays relatively constant, sea water moves farther inland; when the shoreline rises and the sea level stays relatively constant, sea water moves less far inland.

This phenomenon is not unusual in the geological history of North America since before and after 1776.

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The thing I read was talking about the weight of water when the tide comes in each time pushing the land down a bit, which is independent of land rising and falling for other reasons.

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I really am pretty uneducated on such phenomena. For me it is simple logic that water seeks its own level. Does an ocean behave differently than the water in my bathtub? I mean if I add water at the north end, the water rises equally as much at the south end. If the water level is rising along Scotland or Greenland or around an Atlantic Island, would it not logically follow that it would also be rising along America's eastern coast? Can the water levels rise in the Pacific without the water levels also rising in the Atlantic? Can water levels rise in the Northern hemisphere without them also rising in the Southern Hemisphere?

And should they all melt, do those ice packs at the poles and on Greenland and in the glaciers etc. contain enough water to increase all that water volume sufficiently to make it rise by several meters as predicted by Al Gore et al?

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Foxfyre wrote:

I really am pretty uneducated on such phenomena. For me it is simple logic that water seeks its own level. Does an ocean behave differently than the water in my bathtub? I mean if I add water at the north end, the water rises equally as much at the south end. If the water level is rising along Scotland or Greenland or around an Atlantic Island, would it not logically follow that it would also be rising along America's eastern coast? Can the water levels rise in the Pacific without the water levels also rising in the Atlantic? Can water levels rise in the Northern hemisphere without them also rising in the Southern Hemisphere?

Something like: when there's low tide at the German North Sea cost - it must be high tide in Australia? :wink:

All about 'sea level' etc

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Yes I can make the water slosh around in my bathtub too and the water line will be higher on one side than the other during such sloshing. So yes there are the predictable tides and the less predictable but inevitable storm surges and tsumanis.

We aren't talking about those, however. We are talking about land being 'permanently' lost to rising seas. I'm still waiting for somebody with more expertise than I have on the subject to chime in on that.

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There ssems to be a finite amount of water on earth. Much of it is tied up in the oceans and trapped in ice. One of the things GWA's are concerned about is the release of the water trapped by ice due to melting. That water has to go somewhere and there is a lot of it.

I am sure Gore has a map showing what the simple elevation of the ocean would do to coastal area's somewhere but I am not going to look for it.

I doubt that the land is sinking so much as the ocean's would rise. But the continental plates are dynamic so who know's.

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As long as the ice that's locked up in the South Pole doesn't catastrophically slide into the sea, we won't have too much of a problem.

However, if it does, we will have a BIG problem as as little as a 2-foot rise in sea level will reshape pretty much every coast on the planet.

Cycloptichorn

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Well any frozen sea water should not be a problem. The ice in my glass raises the level of the diet Coke in the glass and, if I allow the ice to melt without drinking any, the level of the combined liquid goes way down in the glass. So........another question for whatever expert shows up:

Is there more ice on the surface of land to melt that there is frozen sea water at the poles? And if it ALL melts, would the declining water levels from the melted sea water offset the increased liquid from ice melting off of land surfaces?

Just curious.

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Foxfyre wrote:

The ice in my glass raises the level of the diet Coke in the glass and, if I allow the ice to melt without drinking any, the level of the combined liquid goes way down in the glass.

try the experiment without the prior double vodkas.

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There is enough ice in Antartica, should it al melt , to raise sea level 60 meters.

Of course that's only if it should all melt. 90% of all the ice in the world is there. 70% of all the fresh water.

It would take quite a calamity for that to happen though. It would be a global catastrophe if it did.

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Steve 41oo wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:
The ice in my glass raises the level of the diet Coke in the glass and, if I allow the ice to melt without drinking any, the level of the combined liquid goes way down in the glass.
try the experiment without the prior double vodkas.

Wow, I've never had a double vodka, but since you obviously have, are you saying that if there is vodka in the glass, the phenomenon I described doesn't occur?

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McGentrix wrote:

There is enough ice in Antartica, should it al melt , to raise sea level 60 meters.

Of course that's only if it should all melt. 90% of all the ice in the world is there. 70% of all the fresh water.

It would take quite a calamity for that to happen though. It would be a global catastrophe if it did.

Okay, you made me curious enough to go hunting myself, and I found this which I thought interesting:

Quote:

As long as we understand that the polar ice caps are not going to melt in the foreseeable future, we can proceed to imagine what the world would be like if they did melt.

Using the ice volume figures from above it is straightforward to estimate the effect on sea level were all this ice melted. Melting the 29,300,000 km3 of grounded ice would produce 26,100,000 km3 of water. Note that melting of floating ice has no effect on sea level. Also, about 2,100,000 km3 of the grounded ice in Antarctica is below sea level [19] and would be replaced by water. Thus, the net addition to the world's oceans would be about 24,000,000 km3 of water spread over the 361,000,000 km2 area of the world's oceans, giving a depth of 67 meters. The new ocean area would be slightly larger, of course, since some areas now land would be covered with water. The final result would be around 66 meters (current estimates range between 63 and 75 meters).

What would the Earth look like as a result? If sea level were 66 meters higher than today, the result would be as illustrated below (for the map I used below see this page):
LINK

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/environment/earthnoice.jpg

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Foxfyre wrote:

Well any frozen sea water should not be a problem. The ice in my glass raises the level of the diet Coke in the glass and, if I allow the ice to melt without drinking any, the level of the combined liquid goes way down in the glass. So........another question for whatever expert shows up:

Is there more ice on the surface of land to melt that there is frozen sea water at the poles? And if it ALL melts, would the declining water levels from the melted sea water offset the increased liquid from ice melting off of land surfaces?

Just curious.

The problem is that much of the Antarctic ice isn't currently IN the sea. It sits on top of a solid land mass. If the ice that's on it melts, it adds to the overall level of the sea.

Actually, the ice doesn't even have to melt. If the ice shelves start to slip off into the ocean, the sea level would rise immediately - imagine a 6-10 ft. rise in sea level, everywhere in the world, over the period of a day or two. It would be Bad.

It's one of the reasons the environmentalists get so worked up; things could go from perfectly fine to Very Bad with rapidity, and there wouldn't necessarily be a whole lot of warning beforehand.

Cycloptichorn

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Well, and there's a significant amount of ice covering Greenland.

Besides that: density of water decreases above and below 4°C.
So, if the overall temperature of the water increases ...

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Foxfyre wrote:

Steve 41oo wrote:
Foxfyre wrote:
The ice in my glass raises the level of the diet Coke in the glass and, if I allow the ice to melt without drinking any, the level of the combined liquid goes way down in the glass.
try the experiment without the prior double vodkas.

Wow, I've never had a double vodka, but since you obviously have, are you saying that if there is vodka in the glass, the phenomenon I described doesn't occur?

I think Steve is merely pointing out that reality is quite different from what you just related. Unless you leave the glass long enough for water to evaporate the melting of the ice won't make the water level go way down. There will be more water in the glass but as long as the ice floats in the glass when you start the water level on the glass won't change. (except for expansion as it warms up.)

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Foxfyre wrote:

Yes I can make the water slosh around in my bathtub too and the water line will be higher on one side than the other during such sloshing. So yes there are the predictable tides and the less predictable but inevitable storm surges and tsumanis.

We aren't talking about those, however. We are talking about land being 'permanently' lost to rising seas. I'm still waiting for somebody with more expertise than I have on the subject to chime in on that.

You do that to the water in your bathtub and the moon does that to the water in the earth's oceans. Also storms over the oceans do the same thing. Some intense hurricanes have sucked up the level of ocean water underneath their centers about 50 feet.

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Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

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