Quote:
Originally posted by thrown_hammer
Here’s a little experiment for you. Fill a glass with ice. Next fill it with water. Measure the level of the water. Now sit and watch the ice melt. Wait until all the ice melts, every last bit of it. Now measure the water level again. Now compare the levels. Did the water level go up? Down? Stay the same?
Maybe I am simple but could someone explain how the world is going to flood when the ice caps melt based on this experiment?
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Shawn, what you a proposing is a classic example of answering a question that wasn't asked. I suspect that you were being ironic and this was your intention.
1) Your example has nothing to do with the level of the oceans and glacial melting. Why? Because glaciers are over land. The Glaciers which are melting which are expected to cause the oceans to rise are over the land masses of Greenland, Europe and Asia, and potentially Antartica. This water in it's current state has no influence on the level of the ocean, but when they melt and flow into the ocean, they are expected to increase the sea level.
2) The discussion of cold ocean water and warm ocean water mixing on this thread is a gross simplification of the process. A slightly less simplified mental model looks like this...
Cold Water:
1) Cold waters from the polar regions becomes heavier and sinks.
2) As it sinks, it is it is displaced towards the equatorial regions by the water cooling behind it.
3) It is not a linear flow to the equatorial zone due to the disruptions caused by land masses and things like the corrialous (sp?) effect.
This process takes decades if not hundreds of years at best. Water which cools and sinks off the coast of Greenland may not surface again as warm water until it reaches the North Pacific -- by way of the Antarctic ocean!
Warmer surface water has it's own patterns.
1) In the equatorial zones, the water warms and starts a roundabout trip back to the polar regions.
2) Everyone's familiar with the Gulf Stream and how it warms the Northeast US and Western Europe.
So the influence that this has on, and how it is influenced by climate (as opposed to weather) is still being discovered.
Some "Global Warming" questions that I haven't seen tackled yet that I'd like to see scientists answer are...
A) Given the millions and millions of years that Earth has had a fairly habitable climate, what are the mechanism which preceeded the onset of ice ages after warm spells. why?
B) The earth has had cyclical climate patterns (warm/cold/warm/cold) over the long term without spiraling out of control. What are the mechanisms which caused warm periods to turn cold? For example an increase in reflectivity as a result of the increase or redistribution of ocean surfaces?
C) For some reason, there tend to be more volcanic eruptions during the Northern Hemisphere's winter then during other times of the year. This is thought (but not proven) to be the result of the weight winter snow-pack on the Earth's crust. So if Northern winters become milder, will there be fewer eruptions thus causing less CO2 to be released into the atmosphere.
D) As more moister is released in the air, will the earth gain more airable land or less. Will the additional vegitation growing as a result of the retreat of he ice-caps take more CO2 out of the atmosphere? How about plankton blooms in the oceans?
Those are the types of questions I'm not seeing addressed.
