Global Warming

[Rat Faced]

Is this the UK of the future? :cry:

http://images.scotsman.com/2005/06/28/ts28waterlevel.jpg

[bigboab]

You forgot the 'link' RF.:cry:
Did the Board 'Flood Control' prevent you posting it?:lol:

[lynx]

That picture is what would happen if sea level rose by 83 metres. That's if the antarctic icecap melts and the whole of the water in the ocean expands as it heats up. Presumably just before it comes to the boil. I believe the next picture in the series is what happens if sea level rose by a "more likely" 7 metres.

It's an old trick. Produce a prediction which is clearly preposterous and it makes your alternatively seem much more believable. While tactics like this may have an impact on the gullible, they do little to promote their ideas among those who have access to reasonable scientific data.

As long as garbage like this continues to be churned out it is hardly surprising when some people respond by saying that the whole idea of global warming is rubbish.

[Rat Faced]

84 meters, and if all three ice caps melt ;)

7 meters is if only Greenlands melts

and i think its 13 meters if Greenland and one of the Antarctic caps melts (cant remember which one though, and im late for work now so it'll have to wait until this evening ;) )


Boab, its copied from The Scotsman newspaper..

As Lynx says though, its only one of a series of possible senarios, and the news jumped on the last one ;)

Much more likely and would happen much sooner is the Gulf Stream "Turning Off" because of all the extra fresh water in the North Atlantic... this would give the UK the climate of Alaska :P

[manker]

one of the Antarctic caps meltsThere's more than one :huh:

Perhaps you meant sheets. Anyway, I finally found the source (http://news.scotsman.com/archive.cfm?id=710322005) which you may have to sign up to see. It's actually rather reasurring, less the attention grabbing picture of a submerged UK.

I like the way that The Scotsman reports that it's possible Peterhead and Ullapool will be lost to the waves but makes no mention of low lying foreign settlements ... like London :D

[lynx]

I'm afraid some of these people haven't done their sums.

The most "likely" thing to occur is the melting of the arctic ice sheet. But since it is composed of fresh water ice and is currently floating on top of salt water, if it melts the resulting fresh water will occupy less space than the salt water the ice is displacing.

The result would be a drop in sea level. I don't have enough information about how much ice there is and therefore how much the drop would be, but simple physics shows that this would be the result.

The people who make these forecasts work out how much ice there is and assume it will all go into the sea, yet they neglect some significant facts:

Ice is much bulkier than water, so the volume of the water will be much less than that of the ice it comes from.
When you combine salt water and fresh water, the resulting volume is less than the total of the original volumes when separate.
The land under the antarctic and greenland ice caps isn't flat. If we assume it is typical of land that has been under ice for a long time it will be covered in large hollows. It would be quite likely for extensive lakes to form.
It isn't quite as easy to melt ice as seems to be suggested.


Apply the same amount of energy required to melt a block of ice to the water produced after it had been melted. You will raise it's temperature to 80C. Once the ice caps have gone there will be nothing to absorb the heat we are supposedly producing, and global temperatures will rocket. Since there isn't already a dramatic rise in temperatures we have to assume that the ice caps are already absorbing most of the excess energy.

But that isn't a reasonable assumption. Ice is a relatively poor conductor of heat. It is extremely unlikely that the temperature of the ice more than a few feet below the surface is being affected. What is really important to these calculations is the change in core temperature in the ice caps, and that is unlikely to have been affected. More significantly, no-one even seems to have bothered to go and measure it. I wonder why not. :dry:

[Rat Faced]

one of the Antarctic caps meltsThere's more than one :huh:

Perhaps you meant sheets. Anyway, I finally found the source (http://news.scotsman.com/archive.cfm?id=710322005) which you may have to sign up to see. It's actually rather reasurring, less the attention grabbing picture of a submerged UK.

I like the way that The Scotsman reports that it's possible Peterhead and Ullapool will be lost to the waves but makes no mention of low lying foreign settlements ... like London :D

:blink:


The latest paper suggests this new, fast-melt scenario would lead to a rise of six to seven metres in sea levels that would drown the centre of London and leave cities and towns including Edinburgh, Newcastle, Scunthorpe, Bristol, Plymouth, Norwich, Peterborough and Bournemouth waterlogged.

In the highly populated London area, it would mean a massive relocation project, with much of the boroughs of Southwark, Lewisham, Greenwich, Tower Hamlets, Bexley and Barking under water, along with large areas of south Essex and north Kent.

:P


Lynx, the whole point of Geo-Thermal electricity production is that its a constant temperature just a few meters under the ground, which is largely unaffected by the Air Temperature... I would assume this to be the case in the Antarctic too? (I dont know, just assuming)


As to the large volume of Fresh Water... thats why i said that we're more likely to have an Alaskan Climate, as the Salinity of the North Atlantic is what keeps the North Atlantic Drift Current moving. The Fresh water could stop that circulation, and if that happens it will happen virtually overnight in real terms, and there will be nothing anyone could do about it.

The amount of energy in the form of heat, that is carried from the Carribean to the North Atlantic (inc the shores of Britain) has been put at the equivalent of 1 Billion Power Stations and is the reason our winters are so mild in comparison to cities of a similar Latitude around the world.

eg: Irkutsk, Moscow, Calgary, Edmonton and Juneau (Alaska) ... all these Cities are in the same Latitude as British Cities.

[manker]

There's more than one :huh:

Perhaps you meant sheets. Anyway, I finally found the source (http://news.scotsman.com/archive.cfm?id=710322005) which you may have to sign up to see. It's actually rather reasurring, less the attention grabbing picture of a submerged UK.

I like the way that The Scotsman reports that it's possible Peterhead and Ullapool will be lost to the waves but makes no mention of low lying foreign settlements ... like London :D

:blink:


The latest paper suggests this new, fast-melt scenario would lead to a rise of six to seven metres in sea levels that would drown the centre of London and leave cities and towns including Edinburgh, Newcastle, Scunthorpe, Bristol, Plymouth, Norwich, Peterborough and Bournemouth waterlogged.

In the highly populated London area, it would mean a massive relocation project, with much of the boroughs of Southwark, Lewisham, Greenwich, Tower Hamlets, Bexley and Barking under water, along with large areas of south Essex and north Kent.

:P:D

Of course, I was referring to this part:
In a doomsday scenario ... Edinburgh, Dundee and Inverness, and smaller settlements such as Peterhead and Ullapool, could be wiped off the map completely.A doomsday scenario, but we're only mentioning the bits that may affect Scots :snooty:

It put me in mind of the famous (at least if you live near me) headline in the Western Mail circa 1912:

Two Welshmen Killed at Sea - SS Titanic sinks.

[Rat Faced]

Theres another way of showing that headline? :blink:

[manker]

I agree, we're pretty damn important.

[lynx]

Rat Faced, I think you've missed my point (though I admit I didn't put it very clearly).

Let's assume their "likely" event of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet melting, leading to a 7 metre rise in sea level. This ice sheet covers less than 1/250th of the earth's oceans' surface, yet it will have absorbed the same amount of energy equivalent to heating water 80C to a depth of 7 metres across all the oceans, or 7C to a depth of 80 metres. Even though the greenhouse effect doesn't have an effect down to anything like this level, I'll use that as a basis. Of course, this assumes that the ice is already at 0C, but it is much colder than that.

If we assume that the energy distrubution is constant around the world, energy would be being absorbed by the sea at exactly the same rate. So the same amount of water would actually heat up 250 times as fast. Since this scenario is supposed to take place over the next 200 years, this warming would have to take place at a rate of 7*250/200C per year. Take into account the fact that the ice is NOT at 0C and you would have to have warming at a rate of around 12C per annum, at least.

Sea level rises of about 50cm over the next 200 years would require surface warming (to a depth of 80m) of about 1C per annum, which would most certainly be detectable. But actual temperature rises approaching 1C per decade have not been reliably reported, and that wouldn't produce a rise of more than 5cm.

Therer are some areas of the world which would be threatened by a 5cm rise so it isn't desirable, but that report is simply nonsense. As I said earlier, some people just haven't done their sums.

Edit: earth's oceans'

[bigboab]

84 meters, and if all three ice caps melt ;)

7 meters is if only Greenlands melts

and i think its 13 meters if Greenland and one of the Antarctic caps melts (cant remember which one though, and im late for work now so it'll have to wait until this evening ;) )


Boab, its copied from The Scotsman newspaper..

As Lynx says though, its only one of a series of possible senarios, and the news jumped on the last one ;)

Much more likely and would happen much sooner is the Gulf Stream "Turning Off" because of all the extra fresh water in the North Atlantic... this would give the UK the climate of Alaska :P

We have been through all this scenario before.
Think of the Arctic as an ice cube and that all but negates any perceptible rise in the ocean levels from that source.

As for the rest, every inch of the land mass of the world would require to be covered by about 20 foot of snow(Or the equivalent if you take into account impactation) and for that snow to melt completely for the Worlds oceans levels to rise about 12 inches. I dont have the exact figures but if you work them out for yourself. Land mass is about one third of the Ocean mass.:) Add this to what Lynx has said and it all looks like sensationalism by that particular paper.

[Rat Faced]

Much more likely and would happen much sooner is the Gulf Stream "Turning Off" because of all the extra fresh water in the North Atlantic... this would give the UK the climate of Alaska

There is already evidence this will happen, which is why i mentioned it.

The extra fresh water from rivers is already making a perceptable change.


So, we have a choice of senerios to look out for:

Flooded, Palm Trees or Ice Storms...


My bet is the Ice Storms, but not before a couple more bloody scorching summers and bloody mild winters.

[bigboab]

I hope hell freezes over. This would mean I have a chance with a certain 'young' lady.:blushing:

[Biggles]

Nice to see most of Scotland remains intact though. If (notwithstanding Lynx's trashing of teh science) this happens will all this warm water make Scotland the new Caribbean?

I have this sneaking suspicion that whatever happens we will get all the remaining ice on the planet. :frusty:

[Rat Faced]

Didnt know you were a highlander Biggles :rolleyes:

What do you wear under that skirt? :w00t:

[bigboab]

Didnt know you were a highlander Biggles :rolleyes:

What do you wear under that skirt? :w00t:

Nothing is worn under the skirt:angry: kilt. It's all in perfect working order.

[Biggles]

Didnt know you were a highlander Biggles :rolleyes:

What do you wear under that skirt? :w00t:

Nothing is worn under the skirt:angry: kilt. It's all in perfect working order.


:lol:

:( You beat me to it.

I fear I am indeed a bit of a teuchter.

[DanB]

Its called global warming and apparently its started, so why has summer only just started? :unsure:

Surely there is some room for legal action under the Trade Descriptions Act?


RF are you sure it was The Scotsman and not The Sun? They had the same map and similar story too :shifty:

[manker]

My bet is the Ice Storms, but not before a couple more bloody scorching summers and bloody mild winters.So in about 3 years.

These fecking doom-mongers have gotten all precise on us :(

[Rat Faced]

RF are you sure it was The Scotsman and not The Sun? They had the same map and similar story too :shifty:

Wouldnt know what the Sun says, im too old for Comics :P

I saw the report on Channel 4 News and looked for a copy of the map, The Scotsman was the 1st one i saw. :lol:

[Rat Faced]

Im confused now..

Even the US Government has admitted theres a problem with Global Warming.. :P

As to eugenics, although what it was used for (ie: calling different races inferior and later attempts to create a super race (allegedly)) is appalling, its underlining science remains.. ie: Genetics

Are you calling Genetics a false science?

Any Dog or Cat breeder, or Botanist can tell you that you can develop things through Breeding for specifics, so the question is a moral one not a scientific one.

[bigboab]

Science is often the pole used to leap the gap of credibility and/or ignorance between some observable circumstance and a desired/feared result.

When certain aggressive misapplications of science occur, we end up with nightmares like the Kyoto Protocols.

It's a dynamic similar to that of your nascent (and abortive) European Union, which is dying the death that Kyoto deserves. ;)

Could you run that by me one more time?:unsure:

[GepperRankins]

Science is often the pole used to leap the gap of credibility and/or ignorance between some observable circumstance and a desired/feared result.

When certain aggressive misapplications of science occur, we end up with nightmares like the Kyoto Protocols.

It's a dynamic similar to that of your nascent (and abortive) European Union, which is dying the death that Kyoto deserves. ;)
i hope you mean science as in the word "science" like when they use "science" as a handle to sell us things we don't need like sunglasses and shampoo.


or are you one of those bible literalists who fear science? :fear:

[manker]

Eugenics, global warming, terrorism.

All peas from the same pod. I agree with j2 - these are all public concerns, with varying degrees of validity, manipulated by politicians for their own ends. There are distinct similarities.

There is concern about pollution but the map at the start of the thread was chosen carefully - not for scientific validity, not to depict what's going to happen - but to grab the attention and veneer the truth, which is that there is a less than 1 in twenty chance of even a 7 metre oceanic rise in the next two centuries, let alone an 84 metre rise.

I'm not necessarily talking about RF; more The Sun, Ch4 News and The Scotsman.

OMG! Vote Bush or we'll be targeted by terrorists.
OMG! Support eugenics or the human race will become feeble minded.
OMG! Stop pollution or your home will be under water.

That there is what I can't stomach, the political spin on scientific facts. Please, if you're going to present a concern; do it with a degree of impartiality, rather than use sensationalist attention grabbing drivel.

[Rat Faced]

European Union was never alive.. the politicians just didnt realise that they wanted something the public did not. (Or did, but didnt care)

However, im sure that countries can leave the European Union without the rest of them invading said states... unlike some. :rolleyes:

[GepperRankins]

i don't see how this can be such a foofaraw. sure everyone knows terrorism is a joke, but who gets any monetery benefits from saving the envoirenment?

[lynx]

i don't see how this can be such a foofaraw. sure everyone knows terrorism is a joke, but who gets any monetery benefits from saving the envoirenment?
The people who sell environment-saving equipment. The only reason it hasn't caught on yet is because the oil companies haven't quite worked out which country to invade in order to get in on the act.

[Money Fist]

i read in the paper today that pollution is actully helping us from being burned up
the pollution particals in the air are weakening the suns rays

here is an artical i found online
http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=717532005

so stopping pollution is only gonna make us hotter :S

OPPS
already mentioned in this topic

[Rat Faced]

i don't see how this can be such a foofaraw. sure everyone knows terrorism is a joke, but who gets any monetery benefits from saving the envoirenment?

You get grants to install micro-generation in this country eg: £1000 for every KW a wind powered generator can output at 12m/s windspeed, upto a max of £5000.

As they start at £950 to buy (plus installation), and you also get an ongoing £60 per KW cheque off the government.. they pay for themselves very quickly..

1KW is about 33% of an average household electricity usage in the UK, so you'd also save around 1/3 of your electricity bill...

ie: There is money to be made out of it :P


J2K4, you are under the same misapprehension the Governments are... that the European peoples wish to be united as one nation.

We dont.

We dont need, or want, a constitution.

The "Constitution" as proposed, was nothing more than the joining together of a lot of existing treaties, there was not one new thing in there except... not all countries have signed up to all Treaties. Each has their own veto, which has been used by various Governments in the past.

The "Constitution" would have implemented all treaties on all countries if ratified.


I am not saying this is a good or a bad thing.. there are certainly some that I think the UK should have signed up for and vetoed, and others that I think we should have vetoed and did (also some i think we should have vetoed and didnt :P )

However, the "No" votes were not "No" votes on the "Constitution".. in both cases the analysis has shown that the vote was no simply because an unpopular Government wanted a "Yes" vote, so they voted the other way.

I believe the UK would have done the same thing, and so think the UK Government chicken for not having our referendum...but it makes no difference, just means carry on as before. No new rights or changes to existing legislation.


Or, if your talking about the EU budget.. well, that only covers stuff the Politicians are interested in anyway. It in no way affects our own free trade or free access to EU countries.. ie: the stuff most business and the populations are interested in.

The only reason its in the news at all is Chirac suddenly calling for a freeze to the UK rebate (£3 Billion), in order to deflect the French from his own defeat. The UK has responded by taking the advantage in saying they wish to scrap or modernise the Common Agracultural Policy, which pays French farmers a lot more than £3 Billion.

This is just politics, nothing will happen to either and things will go on as before here too.. Its just politicians trying to make the public forget about the "Constitution", so they can bring the whole thing in anyway through the back door.


Sorry to disappoint J2... no change in the EU at all... same shit, different day.

And more and more people wanting to join it... not bad for something that isnt working huh?

[GepperRankins]

but for the government?

let me get this straight. i could have free electricity and £250 spending money at the expense of an eyesore or five in my garden?

[DanB]

So why is the Kyoto agreement bad when it aims to cut pollution outputted by countries? :unsure:

Or is cos the Pres says its bad and won't sign it that it must be? Tell me, is the Geneva Convention bad as well J2? :unsure:

[Rat Faced]

but for the government?

let me get this straight. i could have free electricity and £250 spending money at the expense of an eyesore or five in my garden?

In essence, yes... if you can figure a way of getting 5 windmills in your garden :P

The fact is, the smaller a wind powered generator.. the less economic it is.

One small enough for a house can only do 1KW max.

You can get grants towards all sorts of micro-generation in the UK though, from Solar to Geo-Thermal etc..

Go here (http://www.clear-skies.org/) to see what grants are available from Central Government for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Scotland has its own grant system.

Local Authorities also have them in some areas ;)

[Rat Faced]

So why is the Kyoto agreement bad when it aims to cut pollution outputted by countries? :unsure:

Or is cos the Pres says its bad and won't sign it that it must be? Tell me, is the Geneva Convention bad as well J2? :unsure:

The Kyoto Agreement is bad, in the eyes of the USA, because it excludes developing countries.

"Why should we pay, when those that cant dont have to"...

They seem to forget that those that do develop the technology willl be in the position of selling it to everyone else...

Its not all US industry though.. just the dirty ones ;)

Some US industries are pioneering alternative power sources, because individual States are implementing their own legislation, because the Federal wont.

You now have the contradictory nature of the US... they are the world leaders in Wind Turbine Technology, and produce more power than anyone else this way; are building more Coal Firing Power Stations and exempting old dirty ones from environmental legislation...at the same time.

Depending upon which State you talk about, they may be very "clean" or very "dirty" in the way they treat the Environment.

[DanB]

makes sense then

[Biggles]

I was somewhat bemused by GW's argument that because 2 billion have no access to electricity it would be wrong for the US to agree to be less wasteful.

At least that I think that was the gist of his point. :unsure:

[Rat Faced]

I like the new Energy Bill...

Tax incentives to produce Oil and Gas?

Isn't $60 a barrell enough? :blink:


Oh, wait a minute... just remembered who's family produces Oil and Gas... :rolleyes:

[Rat Faced]

Climate Change: tipping point

By Gwynne Dyer

"The debate is over. We know the science. We see the threat posed by changes in our climate. And we know the time for action is now." So wrote Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California, explaining his commitment last month to cut the state's greenhouse gas emissions below the 2000 level by 2010, and below the 1990 level by 2020.

Over one-tenth of Americans live in California. Another sixth live in other states and cities that have pledged to cut emissions back to 7 percent below 1990 levels over the next seven years -- a deeper reduction than the European Union has committed itself to. President Bush will once again say no to action on climate change at the G8 summit in Scotland this week, but it just doesn't matter as much as it used to.

Last month, the scientific academies of all the G8 countries, including the United States, issued a call for this year's summit to acknowledge that climate change is happening and to take action now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As host, Prime Minister Tony Blair has made action on climate change a high-priority issue on this year's G8 agenda, but President Bush will not be moved. Interviewed by British television last week, he said that his faithful British sidekick could expect no "quid pro quo" on the climate issue in return for having dragged Britain into the war in Iraq.

If the summit supported binding commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions like the curbs mandated by the Kyoto accord on climate change, said Mr Bush, "then the answer is no. (Kyoto) would have destroyed our economy." Oddly, none of the other big industrialized countries present at the G8 believes that Kyoto would destroy its economy, but they have all now accepted that the U.S. federal government will not be on board until 2009 at the earliest.

In response to this, the debate among the other seven countries has moved on: should they dodge the issue of global warming at the G8 entirely, or to make a strong statement in support of further measures to curb climate change and see the U.S. refuse to sign it. That argument will continue even after the leaders arrive at Gleneagles on Wednesday, but it hardly matters which way it comes out.

The real decision to proceed without the United States was taken when Kyoto went into effect four months ago, after Russia ratified it. All of the world's other industrialized countries except Australia are committed to proceed with the emission cuts mandated by Kyoto, to negotiate deeper cuts in a second round, and to find ways to include large developing countries like China and India in the process. And leaving the U.S. to catch up later is getting to be a habit.

A treaty of global scope that omitted the U.S. was once unthinkable, but it's now thirteen years since the first time that the rest of the world, in exasperation, just decided to get on with an international treaty, leaving America to sign up whenever some subsequent administration sorted out the politics in Washington. That was the Law of the Sea Treaty, rejected by the Reagan administration in 1982 but brought into effect in 1994 after 140 other countries ratified it. The U.S. Senate is still struggling to ratify it, but in the rest of the world it is already law, and in practice the U.S. usually goes along with it. It just has no say in how it is administered.

In the later 1990s it became increasingly common for international treaties to get around American roadblocks by simply leaving the U.S. out. The Land Mines Convention and the International Criminal Court were the most notable ones, and strenuous U.S. attempts to sabotage the working of the ICC came to naught. In a way, President George W. Bush's rejection of the Kyoto Accord and everybody else's decision to go ahead with it anyway were almost routine. They felt they had no choice -- but the fact that the United States alone accounts for some 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions did seriously impair the treaty's effectiveness.

That was the worry in 2001, when Mr. Bush "unsigned" Kyoto. It is much less of a worry in 2005. The extraordinary strength of special interest groups in Washington and the paralysis that so easily occurs in a political system built on a sharp division of powers make it hard for any U.S. administration to move at the same speed as the rest of the world, even with the best will in the world. But the American people do not live on a different planet from the rest of the human race, and they too are starting to notice that the climate is changing in worrisome ways.

American cities and entire states are already taking independent action to cut emissions, and American industry is gradually realizing how great a disadvantage it will face if its rivals elsewhere become more energy-efficient in a world where the cost of fossil fuels is soaring. The U.S. will be along sooner or later, and it is now generally agreed that it is not worth making major concessions to the Bush administration in the hope of getting its cooperation. Wait forty more months for the next presidential election, and by then events -- more and bigger hurricanes, floods, droughts and heat-waves -- will probably have convinced American voters that it is time to sign

[Tikibonbon]

American cities and entire states are already taking independent action to cut emissions.....Wait forty more months for the next presidential election, and by then events -- more and bigger hurricanes, floods, droughts and heat-waves -- will probably have convinced American voters that it is time to sign

In the same paragragraph, it states we are already doing something, then it is says after more natural disasters maybe we will do something.........

[Rat Faced]

As said earlier in this thread, and in the article...

Some States/Cities are really good (and go BEYOND Kyoto), and others are crap..

The article is talking about the Federal Government.. ie USA as a whole.

[Biggles]

I was somewhat bemused by GW's argument that because 2 billion have no access to electricity it would be wrong for the US to agree to be less wasteful.

At least that I think that was the gist of his point. :unsure:

Waste is often in the eye (or mind) of the beholder, Les; in any case, what have the two to do with each other?



That was what baffled me. I suspect I heard either an edited speech or GW did not notice his brief was double sided.

However, he has since said that Global warming is a fact and that man is partly responsible. Quite a step really. Personally, I have no issue with Bush's argument that new, clean energy technology is the way forward. I do not think the purpose of Kyoto is to don sackcloth and ashes and certainly in Europe a great deal of attention is being expended on exploring such technology.

Go the boffins :01:

[bigboab]

Waste is often in the eye (or mind) of the beholder, Les; in any case, what have the two to do with each other?

The eye beholds(As in sees) and the mind processes and deals with information recieved, if required(In most cases:)). With my obvious limited vocabulary and knowledge of biology that is all I can help you with on this problem.:cry: