Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Clarksterh who wrote (1104)	11/21/1999 3:11:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12247

Clark, we seem to agree on why floating ice doesn't raise sea levels when it melts. Almost word for word in our explanations of filling the hole. Mine at: Message 12007852 Good point you made on the salinity - the dense sea water will mean more sea level rise when the less dense fresh water ice melts into it. As you say, the effect on sea levels is minuscule. But the main point on sea level rise [other than the fun floating effect] is that the total amount of ice floating is trivial - it is just too thin to be significant compared with the kilometres thick ice on land masses. The Antarctic only melts on the edge where there is some heat source to pick at the fringe. The enormous ice islands which break off and drift north to melt are fascinating. The land-based ice on Antarctic won't melt until the rest of the world gets really warm. It has to get from -40 deg or so to 0 deg before ANY melt starts. Not counting ablation which is small. As you say, the important point is the 'flip' effect. Once the process is under way, either way, towards or away from an ice-age, it becomes relentless and in the case of towards an ice-age, I suspect a very, very quick process. Like a decade or two to cover the huge ice-age areas with snow and start the ice sheet buildup. I'm more happy about warming. Which will be a slower process [in my book anyway]. I disagree with the oceanc current theory [flipping to a new flow process]. The ocean flows are driven not by temperature differences as hurricanes are, but by Coriolis forces resulting from earth's rotation. The shape of the ocean bottom and continental confines define those flows. The temperature caused flows are small. There are no ocean 'hurricanes'. The same Coriolis circulation happens in air, but we don't notice it much [other than jet streams which are temperature and Coriolis driven - making this up as I go now] because local storms dominate our thinking on weather and those are due to regional temperature effects rather than earth's rotation. [Just commenting in general because I'm sure you know all this stuff - hoping readers are interested.] I'm pretty sure that insolation changes are the dominant effect and the expansion and shrinkage of forests [light absorbing greenery], ice cover and cloud cover. I think the natural state of the earth [given the current atmospheric content, with much of the C deposited in the ground] is an ice-age. We are having a happy hiatus. Imagine a sudden flip over and 10 year or 20 year evacuation south from Russia, Europe, Northern China, Japan, Canada and USA. I'm okay because we have a LOT of ocean and we can live in the north and on the coast. The south of NZ, which is bleak enough already [though many prefer it] would get seriously unpleasant. Africa could sell citizenship for a LOT of money. Or, probably just be invaded given the nature of these things. There would be a brand new landscape to be filled with 3G base stations and towers! Cities with none of the legacy narrow streets and cobble stones would spring up all over. Africans would no longer be poor [compared with how they live now]. Egypt would get a big revival. Libya's desert would bloom [after a bit of irrigation to help refoliation get under way - it would take too long otherwise]. Mqurice