Global Warming

[bigboab]

During the recent heat wave, I am sure, like me, you have heard the following wherever you went:-
"This is the start of the global warming", "All the icecaps are going to melt and we will all be flooded" and so on. I have also read in all the papers over the last decade of the various things that global warming is going to cause.

1. A rise in global temperature of so many degrees, creating drought and all things associated with it.

2. The melting of all the icecaps creating vast floods all over the world and raising the sea levels by anything from six inches to 10 feet.

Excuse my complete ignorance (I know you have&#33. I find all these predictions a lot of rubbish. Unless I am completely stupid (O.K&#33 and my education of over 50 years ago was uninformed or not properly digested. As an old man, (Some of you will say ancient&#33, I appeal to the younger generation to tell me where I m going wrong.

My Theories:-

GLOBAL WARMING: How come we are having this global warming,"0wing to the hole in the ozone layer"?
Yet we are only producing temperatures equal to the ones they had over a 100 years ago?

RISE IN SEA LEVELS: In order for the sea levels to rise 1 inch, it would require about 12 inches of snow covering the whole of the earths land mass to melt, or, 2 inches of rain (Where is that going to come from?) over the entire land mass of the earth. Any extra rainfall is taken out of the seas therefore it must reduce there level proportionately. (Without being pedantic, JP note! The above is based on a 1 to 2 land ratio to sea.)

MELTING of the ICECAPS: The South Pole and southern regions and other icecaps except the North Pole, as I will explain later. If all of this were to melt, which I cant see happening, because, surely the extra rainfall would fall as snow in these regions, because the earth tilt would still produce these cold regions. Most of the other icecaps are created because of height and this would continue.

The NORTH POLE: As far as I am aware the North Pole is one giant ice cube. If you fill a glass with ice cubes and then topped it with water to the level of the glass, when the ice cubes melt the water in the glass remains level with the top without any spillage(Except on a Saturday night&#33. So how can the North Pole melting affect the sea level?

I expect that you will discount all of the above as the rambling of an old man. All I am asking is for you to tell me where I am basically wrong. If I am not wrong we may see this theory appearing in some college like Cardonald or some such place in the near future with a new author.

Hope I have not bored you for a few minutes.

[titey]

Pffffft....

Old news, "old man"

I heard all this same crap 10 years ago when we were having an uncharacteristically warm spell.

Pure

[thewizeard]

No I have not been bored!

It would be the melting of land based ice masses which will cause the oceans to rise.

There is evidence that the antartic climate is warming.

Some scientists (still) believe we are at the beginning of a new iceage.

We will just have to wait and see....

Edit: Many of the glaciers are retreating.

[bigboab]

Dont forget! TITEY I have Alzheimers so it is news to me every day.

[titey]

Originally posted by bigboab@14 August 2003 - 15:28
Dont forget! TITEY I have Alzheimers so it is news to me every day.

I wasn't saying that you should've heard it before... I was speaking of stories going around here in the US a decade ago.

[bigboab]

And what was the definitive answer 10 years ago?

[Ron]

Originally posted by titey@14 August 2003 - 22:23
Pure  

Is that the same as



???

[titey]

Originally posted by bigboab@14 August 2003 - 15:36
And what was the definitive answer 10 years ago?

They were "definitely" stupid!

It was only 10 or 15 years earlier that they were predicting the onset of a new ice-age.
(We'd had a couple of blizzards in the mid '70s)

Just a bunch of paranoid doomsdayers... nuthin real to get worked up about.


@ Ron - yes it is essentially the same as the turtle crap (TC), but balamm was so offended by the posting of images of feces, that I thought it best to use a cartoon drawing instead to soothe his mind.

[Biggles]

Global warming (or cooling) is a simple fact. The climate varies considerably over any period of time. In the 11th century it was extremely warm and vineyards grew as far north as York and Greenland was .. well a lot greener. In the 6th and 17th centuries there were mini ice-ages and thousands starved in northern Europe as crops failed and winters were brutally cold (lots of lovely paintings of Thames frozen over etc., from the latter period though)

So the question is not whether there is global warming, one only needs to look at the records to see that average temperatures have been higher over the last 10 years than at any point over the last 150 years, but rather are we causing the global warming. That is, are we are experiencing something outwith normal weather patterns? On this the jury is still out. Whilst some believe we may helped to kick-start a natural warming process others believe our contribution is minimal and that we are simply along for the ride - good or bad. The down side of any warming is that Mother Nature tends to self regulate with a bout of cooling. Global warming may be a pain but it is an ice-age that would actually cause us real problems, even if it was only a mini one as in the 17th century. So if we are contributing to a mechanism that could result in a premature ice-age then perhaps we might be wise to consider stopping and taking stock.

Regardless of the actual causes, climate change does occur on a regular basis and it would be prudent to plan accordingly rather than pretend it will all go away if we ridicule the tree huggers. Whilst, the various mechanisms may not yet be correctly identified by the redoubtable eco-warriors it would be something of a hollow victory to point this out as we chisel through a 100 feet of ice to get to our front doors.

[Ron]

I think he'll let it slide this once though.

What's that?


Why?