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Global Freezing?

Mr. Anderson

Mr. Anderson

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Nov 1, 2001
22,568
7
VA
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/05/10/gulfstream/index.html

So all of the members up north and across the pond - you might want to think about heading south permanently in the next decade or so. You might even want to sell your house soon before the market drops out of sight....

Strange how the global warming ends up totally messing the whole system and causing more change than anything else.


D
 
MongoTheGeek said:
I'm about 50 miles south of the furthest extent of glacier advance. Just need to plan ahead.
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During what glacial epoch? And where exactly?

I just think we're all going to get a rude awakening and theres not anything we can do to stop it at this point. The paleoclimate's historical record shows that the Earth has had warm eras where there were no polar ice caps. If all the ice melts in the Arctic, that will be pretty bad, but if it lets the Greenland Icesheet melt, then we'll see sea level rise. Florida, Venice, Bangladesh and many atolls and islands around the world are going to have very difficult times ahead....

I'm going to have to go visit Venice soon, I think.

D
 
wow, first thought was the movie: The Day After Tomorrow

scary to think about it, but it could happen, obviously not that fast though...
 
PlaceofDis said:
wow, first thought was the movie: The Day After Tomorrow

scary to think about it, but it could happen, obviously not that fast though...
Click to expand...


No, they're talking in terms of decades - which, scary enough, is a blink of the eye in geologic time scales. Its events like these that could cause mass extinctions on a global scale. Imagine there not being any polar bears in the wild in 2040.....

D
 
Mr. Anderson said:
No, they're talking in terms of decades - which, scary enough, is a blink of the eye in geologic time scales. Its events like these that could cause mass extinctions on a global scale. Imagine there not being any polar bears in the wild in 2040.....

D
Click to expand...

i know, its going to happen in my lifetime and i'm terrified of it too. Rising sea levels are an obvious danger, but the climate slowly getting colder is hazardous as well. Not to mention the other extinctions that would occur. The change to the wildlife would be dramatic, and the plantlife would never be the same. I suppose that this is one way that the earth works to 'reset' itself in some ways.
 
I hope the world wakes up a little here but we all still seem to have a blinkered view on this.

America is almost totally blind to the problem and everyone else is shuffling around it like a bunch of old folk trying to learn to dance the twist.
 
This is interesting to me, not because I live in an area directly affected (I used to, though), but because my part of Ohio seems to be noticeably colder than usual - at least it was until a few days ago, when we shifted to a warm pattern. However, we'll soon be turning cold again, thanks to another powerful Canadian cold front. This one will bring 2+ foot (61+ cm), heavy, wet snows to the northern Rocky Mountain area and the Black Hills in the Dakotas, as well as a significant outbreak of severe thunderstorms at its southern extent. I'll just be getting rain and some rumbles of thunder, though.
 
I HATE the cold...hate it!!! I truly hope that this is not true. If it is i will seriously back up and move back south, i couldn't care less what i am studying as long as i am warm. And who can study when it is cold anyway???
 
Mr. Anderson said:
No, they're talking in terms of decades - which, scary enough, is a blink of the eye in geologic time scales. Its events like these that could cause mass extinctions on a global scale. Imagine there not being any polar bears in the wild in 2040.....

D
Click to expand...

I'm quite sure were already going through a mass extinction period, and it should only get faster with warming and other human activity induced changes...

As for sea level rise, the biggest problem isn't the input of molten ice (a relatively small volume) but ocean expansion due to its warming: as water gets warmer, its density decreases and it takes up more space :eek:
 
I think one of the biggest mistakes was calling the problems of climate change 'global warming' in the first place. Many people in the industrialised north thought 'great, we'll have warmer summers' and ignored it.

And because everyone was still talking centuries rather than decades, we've all buried our heads in the sand. Even meeting the Kyoto agreement would just be the tip of the iceberg (if they're not melted by then!). Councils offer recycling because they're legally obliged to do it; and get a few people who actually do it because then they feel like they're doing their bit. Chances are they are the same people with a TV on standby in each room burning power all day.

Then again, this might be the only way for Equatorial Africa to get any decent level of investment from the developed world; if the fat cats here decide they want to live there...
 
whocares said:
As for sea level rise, the biggest problem isn't the input of molten ice (a relatively small volume) but ocean expansion due to its warming: as water gets warmer, its density decreases and it takes up more space :eek:
Click to expand...

I think you have your facts a little off here. Ice has more volume than water - but the surface ice displaces the same amount, just as if it was water. The large impact is the land locked ice in Greenland and the Antarctic - if all the ice melts on both poles it could raise the sea level 100s of feet - 100s means that there will be a lot of places that will be underwater - think of all the coastal towns around the world.....

D
 
Primitive man migrated out of those same areas when they got too cold.

Hot - Cold - Hot - Cold. The Earth just does that. Where did people get this assumption that it is supposed to be constant? Bad assumption.
 
Very interesting article. I always wonder how much of this is "doom and gloom" and how much is real stuff to be worried about.

One comment that really caught my eye:

Such a dramatic climate change would not take place in five days, but rather several years, said Joyce.
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Just the fact that this could conceivably happen over the course of only a few years is frightening, if true.

Edit: Then again, maybe we just need more blankets.
 
Mr. Anderson said:
I'm going to have to go visit Venice soon, I think.
Click to expand...

the absolute height between the waterline in venice/adria/mediterran sea is different from those in the atlantic though .. AFAIK the difference is 5-7 meter or more between Holland and Triest

that aside: Venice ( in a lagoon(sp?) after all is very aware of the problem and considering building dams who will provide water exchange but prevent the town going under

edit: on the news: it's not really news anymore... rather old story: my geography teacher told us about that what ? 8-9 years ago ? something like that
 
Mr. Anderson said:
I think you have your facts a little off here. Ice has more volume than water - but the surface ice displaces the same amount, just as if it was water. The large impact is the land locked ice in Greenland and the Antarctic - if all the ice melts on both poles it could raise the sea level 100s of feet - 100s means that there will be a lot of places that will be underwater - think of all the coastal towns around the world.....

D
Click to expand...

He's right that much of the sea level rise is liquid expansion, not just the melting of ice packs on land. The oceans are so enormous that even a tiny heat expansion will produce noticeable changes in sea levels. AFAIK, no one is predicting a sea level change of hundreds of feet any time soon. Even the darkest predictions I've heard are talking about 20 feet within our lifetimes.

Really thick ice like in Antarctica takes millenia to react to atmospheric temperature changes. There's some reason to believe that the current melting is really a reaction to the end of the last ice age, not warming that's going on now. It's like thawing a turkey. The outside can be thawed while the inside is still frozen. If indeed humans are causing major climate change, then the distant future might be even worse than the next 50 years.
 
I agree with the comment that this is a complex issue. The good news is that research is being done
 
This is why its been great to see gas prices going up, even if its still only $2.00-$2.50 a gallon, its still better than $1.50. For the first time in years, SUV and trucks sales are supposedly going down. Still, its only a drop in the bucket, and I doubt that our species is smart enough (as a whole) to do anything in time.

As a little note of daily irony....here in Pennsylvania, we have several specialty licence plates (DARE, preserve our heritage, preserve our wildlife, etc.) The reason I mention them is the sheer irony of seeing the "preserve our wildlife" plate on a Chevy Suburban. (notto worry, the wildlife plates are still infinantly outnumbered by "god bless America" ribbons on SUVs)
 
In my opinion, it's not the prospect of global warming or our contribution to it that is the most disturbing part. The worrisome thing is that we don't know how the system works, what (or if) we're changing anything, or whether we could reverse any bad trends even if we were willing and able to do so.

Many scientists agree that climate change has had "tipping points" in the past, when a trend starts and leads in some inevitable direction for a long period of time. We have only a vague idea of what the next tipping point might be and we don't know if we could detect it while it's happening. It's possible that such a point has already happened and we won't realize it until long afterward.

I'm not worried about the planet. The Earth and much of the life on it will be around long after our species is gone. But no major climate shift (hotter or colder) has ever occurred during the span of human civilization. It's not clear at all whether we would adapt well if it happened.
 
I was watching the news the other day and we almost broke a high temperature mark that was set in 1929. Hmmm, I guess it got hot back then, too. And I recall winter record lows that were set around the turn of the century. So it was hot and cold in those days?

We humans are a paltry, tiny party of this ecosystem. Consider the amount of "pollution" like CO2 and SO2 that volcanoes spew into the atmosphere every day. The Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Network estimates that there are 50 to 60 eruption each month. Levels of CO2 in the Cretaceous were many times what they are now? I guess Excursions were popular back then, too.
 
if I understood it correctly aren't we suppose to see much more voliatile weather. Like El ninjio a couple of years ago. It raised the water temperature a couple of degrees. I went diving outside kenya the year after. More or less all the coral was dead. Just a grey mess under water. Apperently, all it took was small increase of water temperture. Same with southern Florida, how many hurricanes passed? 6? We have had snow fall in greece, which is a bit odd. In southern Sweden, where I live we see snow very selldom nowdays. :confused:
IMHO, I think we have f**ed around with mother nature a bit too much and now she is striking back at us. You guys from US should seriously reconsider signing the Kyoto protocol. Just my 2c.
 
takao said:
the absolute height between the waterline in venice/adria/mediterran sea is different from those in the atlantic though .. AFAIK the difference is 5-7 meter or more between Holland and Triest
Click to expand...
Isn't sea level just that - level?
 
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