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Pastimes : The New Qualcomm - write what you like thread. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (1056)	11/17/1999 11:17:00 PM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12247

I think the real concern about the Arctic ice melting is that it could, counterintuitively, lead to a new Ice Age. The reasoning is this: Europe, in spite of its high latitude is relatively temperate due to the warming currents flowing on the Atlantic seaboard there. These currents make a big circle between the North and South Atlantic (it gets warmed in the South). I forget all the details (read this in an Atlantic Monthly article a couple years ago), but basically, the reason this water is abnormally warm (and hence the reason Europe is abnormally warm compared to like lattitudes in Canada and Russia!) is that the water has a higher than average salinity at some point in the circuit, thereby creating a buffer zone which segregates the warm water and allows it to continue to flow back to Europe. The fear is, a melting of Arctic ice could reduce the salinity of the water, causing the currents which are warm to become cold. This could result in a colder Europe and lead to an Ice Age. So the theory goes, global warming will actually freeze the world, not burn it up.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (1056)	11/18/1999 7:43:00 AM
From: John Dough	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 12247

Tim, if the Arctic ice has lost 40% of its volume, how come the sea level hasn't risen around the world? I've always wondered why melting ice would raise the level of the oceans at all, since ice cubes melting in a glass don't raise the water level at all as they melt. It must be because some of the Arctic Ice is not floating.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (1056)	11/18/1999 10:39:00 AM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 12247

Mq......re melting ice....most of the Warm Island Nations to the NNE of you are screaming Holy Terror about the loss of their ground...Im sure its in the news down your way.....they have been appealing the UN to take up their cause before they are Washed away......as to the poles being 100 ft thick....that would be news to me...and the crew of the Nautilus..(.1st US nuke sub)....which surfaced at the N. Pole in the late 50's....ice thickens on land...as you noted...but not on open seas......have read recent reports of dramatic melting in the High Himalayas...Greenland...and the Antarctica.......I dont discount the CO2 impact that we humans are making so readily Maurice....there is a dead sea of sorts growing (exponentially)...off of Louisiana...Nothing lives there...not algae....plankton....not waste eaters...( crabs...lobsters...ect).....herbicides and pesticides from the Mississippi R. drainage system has taken its toll.........the seas need life to trap CO2....look around the globe...Monsanto sells lots of these "products" to its Global customers...thus ...the" Louisiana Effect" will show itself in other places....We...the US...( not you Kiwis) refuse to sit down and discuss these issues...it would hamper the Bull Run of the 90's......This issue is hardly a sleeping Giant.........Take a look at the mistakes made by former inhabitants of Easter Island.......(opps...they ALL died off........)...We shall live to see interesting times.......Asteriods and comets ...most definitely THE HEAVY HITTERS as to environmental effects....but their impacts are somewhat infrequent.......not saying we are not over due...if we are impacted by an object 1/2 mile in diameter...its going to get very cold for a few years...the splash down..( if in water) will be considered a minor effect on world populations...Tim

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (1056)	11/19/1999 12:00:00 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 12247

Maurice ..more on asteroids and comets...Mike Baillie discusses this scenario in ' Exodus to Arthur'.....Tim... LONDON, Nov 17 (Reuters) - A vast methane firestorm ignited when a huge asteroid struck the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago could have hastened the demise of dinosaurs on earth, New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday. Such an impact, the theory goes, would have sent shockwaves around the planet, possibly unleashing methane trapped in seabed sediment and setting the atmosphere ablaze. "This could have contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs," Burton Hurdle of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, told the weekly science magazine. Hurdle and his colleagues believe lightning in the atmosphere could have ignited the gas. They suggest that vast quantities of rotting vegetation trapped in sediment far below sea level combined with water to form solid methane hydrates in the low temperature and high pressure environment. "As further evidence, the researchers point to an earlier discovery of disruption in late Cretaceous sediments (about 65 million years ago), possibly due to methane release at Black Ridge off the coast of Florida," the magazine added. Other scientists found the theory interesting but flawed. "I think this idea is very intriguing," said Peter Schultz of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. "But I'm not sure even an impact this big would have liberated that amount of methane." Evidence is mounting that it was an asteroid strike that led to the extinction of dinosaurs. One theory is that the impact of the asteroid kicked up dust clouds that blocked sunlight and plunged the planet into many years of continuous winter that the dinosaurs were physically unable to survive. .........

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (1056)	11/21/1999 1:47:00 PM
From: Clarksterh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12247

Maurice - if the Arctic ice has lost 40% of its volume, how come the sea level hasn't risen around the world? Because the Arctic Ice Sheet is floating already, whereas the Antarctic ice is not. And, the Antarctic is not melting nearly as fast, partly (largely?) because there is no high heat capacity convection to melt it. Clark PS The reason that melting ice does not raise the level of the water in which it floats is Archimedes Law - a floating object displaces exactly the same weight of liquid as the weight of the floating object. Thus, as the ice melts it exactly fills the hole that would be left if you removed the ice. So unless the ice gains mass as it melts, ... . (Note that there is probably some miniscule effect due to salinity - salt water is less dense than pure water - but it very small.) PPS FWIW, the best guess of archeologists is that the climate changes very fast when it changes and the best guess is that it appears to be driven largely by ocean currents flipping into a new mode in response to some comparatively small trigger. Given that our models for this are abysmal at this point, I agree that it is hard to predict the climate changes resulting from more CO2 - but it also means that the changes can be substantially larger than you might expect.