Environmental Science

[Sheepy]

As I'm sure you are really completely aware, the melting of polar ice caps is hardly a factor. If you put an ice cube in your gin and tonic and refrain from drinking any until it melts the level in the glass will remain unchanged. The north pole is floating on the sea, and even the mass of ice in Antarctica which sits atop a land mass would have negligible impact on sea levels worldwide if it all melted.


The true issue is the increase in volume of the sea water that is already above four degrees as a result of any air temperature increase. (Below four degrees,  water shrinks as it warms up, it's a hydrogen bonding thing and it's why there is life on earth)

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/weather/topstories/a-forgotten-cold-war-experiment-has-revealed-its-icy-secret-it-s-bad-news-for-the-planet/ar-BB1eCgLc?ocid=msedgntp
In the English language code, this be known as an up yours. The English language is deeply coded and by far the most sophiscated on the planet for a reason.

[Sheepy]

there are no "proofs" in this business

Mmmm well what can one say, a lot people believe it is all cut and dried.

[grumzed]

PP, if you read JoG's post again, he does address the difference between the North and South poles and he also, correctly, says that the main contribution is from the oceans themselves warming. Anyway, I know he can defend himself :-).

[grumzed]

Nick, there are no "proofs" in this business, only reasonable assumptions based on the data. At no time in the past record (as measured from ice core samples) has the CO2 level risen so fast as in the last 150 years or so and there is good reason that this, along with some methane, is as a result from man made emissions. We have been (and still are, cutting down forests at a remarkable rate and burning carboniferous  materials that have trapped carbon for many milennia. This rate of increase tracks strongly with the temperature level rise and this is no record in the ice samples that match either this rate of CO2 increase nor this rate of temperature increase.

Even if there is no convincing you that this is a slam dunk proof surely you should believe the consequence of ignoring that it may be true is a dangerous risk. The consequences are somewhat dire for the planet and its people and likely to be much more costly than the minor inconveniences of avoiding burning fossil fuels, which are bad for humans for other (health) reasons also.

[patman post]

^^^
You are correct in your observations about the Arctic pole, but JoG and I were discussing polar ice caps, plural...

[grumzed]

PP, JoG was right in what he said. The North polar ice is floating on water so when it melts it has no effect on the sea level (Archimedes Principle). The South polar ice, and the ice places like Greenland, will because the ice is over a land mass. But the biggest effect would be from the expansion of the mass of water in oceans.

[patman post]

As I'm sure you are really completely aware, the melting of polar ice caps is hardly a factor. If you put an ice cube in your gin and tonic and refrain from drinking any until it melts the level in the glass will remain unchanged. The north pole is floating on the sea, and even the mass of ice in Antarctica which sits atop a land mass would have negligible impact on sea levels worldwide if it all melted.


The true issue is the increase in volume of the sea water that is already above four degrees as a result of any air temperature increase. (Below four degrees,  water shrinks as it warms up, it's a hydrogen bonding thing and it's why there is life on earth)

Perhaps you should leave off with the gin.
The ice cube in your gin is floating. Vast areas of the ice caps are on land — not gin, or even sea water!
Once snow had fallen on the land and frozen over, it formed a stable sheet on which further snow would and does build. As the ice caps spreads out over the sea, they still mostly remain at land level, until the weight of some portions break off. The warming seas push that breaking point back towards the land.   
The volume of ice is only 9-10% greater than the water that forms it. So as ice caps melt, there is more water. Some countries are already seeing sea level rising and land disappearing...

[Nick]

Bu**er! Picked the wrong graph. Here is the right one which is not dissimilar in principle. And I'm sure you realise the correlation is outstanding:

https://zfacts.com/zfacts.com/p/226.html

The link you provided states exactly what I said, they cannot prove the warning is anthropogenic, it says it in the article. It even states the only thing they know is that temperature and C02 have increased, it conveniently misses out the 800 year lag.

[Borchester]

You mean Ducky, you were a rank amateur in opposition with little knowledge and now you are a rank amateur believer, figures.

Climate Change used to be alright because it meant that my daughter would bring the grandchildren down to scream bollocks on demos and the wife could take the womenfolk shopping in Oxford Street. But these days the flu bug has put the kibosh on that and all we have now is bollocks written by academics desperate to get their names into the newspapers and thereby improve their job security.

It is a shame really. A really cold blooded investigation into weather patterns would do the world no harm at all. Imagine what would happen if we could actually control how wet or dry or hot or cold things are and can be? But that is not going to happen until I am made World Climate Czar and I can't take on the job for months because I have a lot of pruning to do and rough ground to turn.

[Sheepy]

Although I've always been an environmentalist and keen on moving to clean, renewable energy, I used to be a climate change skeptic. I used to think that a few years of rising temperatures coinciding with a rise in man-made CO2 emissions could well be no more than coincidence given that the global climate has always varied. Indeed, global temperatures did stop rising in the early 2000s but then they started going up again and the correlation with CO2 emissions looks more convincing with each hot year.

This graph sort of says it all:https://www.globalchange.gov/browse/multimedia/global-temperature-and-carbon-dioxide

I see that's pretty much the same as the graph in the previous post.

So if we are causing warming, the melting of that Antarctic and Greenland ice caps will cause sea levels to rise. A large proportion of the world's population lives in low-lying areas - e.g. a large part of London. A couple of metres rise in sea level and those areas will be uninhabitable or at serious risk of flooding. If temperatures continue to rise, the rate at which the ice caps melt will presumably accelerate too.

You mean Ducky, you were a rank amateur in opposition with little knowledge and now you are a rank amateur believer, figures.

[grumzed]

JoG is right of course. The bulk of water level rise is due to thermal expansion of the water plus some from melting water that is frozen and over land (glaciers, Greenland's ice and much antarctic ice). Ice that is floating at present does not contribute at all due to Archimedes principle.

[grumzed]

Bu**er! Picked the wrong graph. Here is the right one which is not dissimilar in principle. And I'm sure you realise the correlation is outstanding:

https://zfacts.com/zfacts.com/p/226.html

[Nick]

Nick, here is a graph of CO2 vs global temperature in recent times..

https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/global_temp_vs_carbon_dioxide_graph_lrg.gif

You will note the high correlation between CO2 and temperature. No 800 year delay here. That particular phenomenon you referred to does exist and may also be occurring but not really noticably over the short term as can be seen from the ice core data (takes several hundred years); but that has nothing to do with the rise in temperature in this sort of timeframe.

There is no lag because there is only 1 graph, there can't possibly be.

[johnofgwent]

Although I've always been an environmentalist and keen on moving to clean, renewable energy, I used to be a climate change skeptic. I used to think that a few years of rising temperatures coinciding with a rise in man-made CO2 emissions could well be no more than coincidence given that the global climate has always varied. Indeed, global temperatures did stop rising in the early 2000s but then they started going up again and the correlation with CO2 emissions looks more convincing with each hot year.

This graph sort of says it all:https://www.globalchange.gov/browse/multimedia/global-temperature-and-carbon-dioxide

I see that's pretty much the same as the graph in the previous post.

So if we are causing warming, the melting of that Antarctic and Greenland ice caps will cause sea levels to rise. A large proportion of the world's population lives in low-lying areas - e.g. a large part of London. A couple of metres rise in sea level and those areas will be uninhabitable or at serious risk of flooding. If temperatures continue to rise, the rate at which the ice caps melt will presumably accelerate too.

As I'm sure you are really completely aware, the melting of polar ice caps is hardly a factor. If you put an ice cube in your gin and tonic and refrain from drinking any until it melts the level in the glass will remain unchanged. The north pole is floating on the sea, and even the mass of ice in Antarctica which sits atop a land mass would have negligible impact on sea levels worldwide if it all melted.


The true issue is the increase in volume of the sea water that is already above four degrees as a result of any air temperature increase. (Below four degrees,  water shrinks as it warms up, it's a hydrogen bonding thing and it's why there is life on earth)

[HDQQ]

Correct, but the debate was how to stop the Earth entering an ice age. 'Global Warming' was a new invention.

People were talking about the next ice age but in the early 1970s I can clearly remember being taught about global warming and the greenhouse effect in science lessons at school.