Global Warming: What You Need to Know [Archive]

Java

Jul 29th, 2006, 11:27 PM

While on this topic: A few related references

From: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=19170

"Scientists were able to conduct the first-ever gravity survey of the entire Antarctic ice sheet using data from the joint NASA/German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). This comprehensive study found the ice sheet's mass has decreased significantly from 2002 to 2005.

Isabella Velicogna and John Wahr, both from the University of Colorado, Boulder, conducted the study. They demonstrated for the first time that Antarctica's ice sheet lost a significant amount of mass since the launch of GRACE in 2002. The estimated mass loss was enough to raise global sea level about 1.2 millimeters (0.05 inches) during the survey period; about 13 percent of the overall observed sea level rise for the same period. The researchers found Antarctica's ice sheet decreased by 152 (plus or minus 80) cubic kilometers of ice annually between April 2002 and August 2005.

That is about how much water the United States consumes in three months (a cubic kilometer is one trillion liters; approximately 264 billion gallons of water). This represents a change of about 0.4 millimeters (.016 inches) per year to global sea level rise. Most of the mass loss came from the West Antarctic ice sheet."

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Does anybody realize how many BTUs it takes to melt 152 cubic kilometers of ice?

If when there is no ice left to melt, and one puts these BTUs directly into heating the atmosphere instead... (remember this is only about 13 percent)

Do the math for just this 13 percent and if that doesn't scare you, try looking at 100 percent.

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From: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=19206

This was quoted from near the bottom of the article...

"The study indicates that the contribution of the ice sheets to sea-level rise during the decade studied was much smaller than expected, just two percent of the recent increase of nearly three millimeters (0.12 inches) a year," Zwally said. "Current estimates of the other major sources of sea-level rise - expansion of the ocean by warming temperatures and runoff from low-latitude glaciers - do not make up the difference, so we have a mystery on our hands as to where the water is coming from. Continuing research using NASA satellites and other data will narrow the uncertainties in this important issue and help solve the mystery."

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Perhaps they overlooked how sea level can rise due to isostatic rebound after the weight of all this ice is removed from the earth's crust, and this rising land mass can displace a lot of water too, and thus cause sea levels to rise even more than just the water from the runoff alone?

My personal thoughts are that these specialist scientists desperately need to look at the bigger picture and incorporate multi-disciplined research into their work... like hire some geologists to work alongside them in this case? This would supply one of the parts to this mystery - the other would be the centrifugal force of the earth's rotation making sea levels rise higher towards the equator than at the poles (just as the atmophere is thicker near the equator than at the poles). One thing is for certain, a much larger budget needs to be directed towards NASA so these people can have the adequate resources available to work with and arrive at answers to puzzling questions without wasteful spending searching for these answers due to not having access to the full capacity of resources to work with in order to find these answers. If this under-budgeting for NASA continues we just may discover that we are already well on our way to becoming toast well after anything could have possibly been done to prevent it. Who knows, maybe we are...already. *sigh*

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From: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=19357

Arctic, Antarctic Melting May Raise Sea Levels Faster than Expected

PRESS RELEASE
Date Released: Thursday, March 23, 2006
Source: National Science Foundation

"Ice sheets covering both the Arctic and Antarctic could melt more quickly than expected this century, according to two studies that blend computer modeling with paleoclimate records. Led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Arizona, the studies show that by 2100, Arctic summers may be as warm as they were nearly 130,000 years ago when sea levels rose to 20 feet (6 meters) higher than they are today."

Cont...

...and...

From: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=19360

NASA Scientist Claims Warmer Ocean Waters Reducing Ice Worldwide

PRESS RELEASE
Date Released: Friday, March 24, 2006
Source: Goddard Space Flight Center

"According to a NASA scientist, the pieces to a years-old scientific puzzle have come together to confirm warmer water temperatures are creeping into the Earth's colder areas. Those warm waters are increasing melting and accelerating ice flow in polar areas."

Cont...

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My thoughts are that this looks quite conclusive even without looking at the BTUs being exchanged. Now if the global BTU exchanges were to be formally recognized there would be no need for further questioning and the estimated acceleration of future melting would be in need of even further increases. Add to this the fact that once all this mass of ice starts leaving the earth's surface, isostatic rebound (the land mass rising upwards in response to decreased weight) will displace even more water than just the runoff alone, causing the sea levels to rise even farther than estimated.

Can society as a whole respond to this effectively since for the past few thousand years people have built port cities with expectations of permanence when in reality sea levels have been known and documented through geologic records to have risen and fallen in the past? There's not enough money or resources available to move one large port city, much less all the major port cities on the planet.

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Something else probably not many have thought about:

It is a known fact that the rotation of the Earth is gradually slowing. For four and one half billion years, its entire life, it has been slowing down. Ever since 1972 scientists have been adding "leap" seconds to keep the atomic clocks in sync with the earth's rotation. Between 1972 and 1997 they have added an astounding 21 leap seconds (all positive) to the earth's daily rotation. A problem arises if you do the math working backwards into time using that current rate and it creates an impossible senario well before reaching the four and one half billion year mark. Also, the constant struggle between gravitational force and the weakening angular momentum caused by the slowing of the Earth's rotation has had a profound effect on the shape of the Earth as well and thus its slightly oblate spheroid shape. Looking back in time, a 5% increase in the equatorial circumference of the Earth would produce approximately 1200 more miles of surface around the equatorial zone. As the Earth's rotation slows and its equitorial circumference becomes smaller, this produces the tectonic stresses which are responsible for earthquakes and volcanic activity to occur. Now back to the 21 leap seconds which were recorded to have been added between 1972 and 1997; I have a suspicion that if one plotted these upon a graph, a pattern would arise, and if this pattern were to be compared to the known melting rates of polar ice caps combined with glaciers, one will begin to see how the effects of global warming are all tied into this as the ice from the poles melts and flows towards the equator but at the same time has to pick up speed in doing so in order to match the Earth surface rotation speed as these massive volumes of water approach the equator. The only way possible for this incoming water to gain speed as it approaches the equator would be to borrow energy from the Earth's angular momentum and thus slowing its rotation speed. Now adding another dimension to this, if we can take a full account of the incoming BTUs from ALL sources into the Earth's ecosystem, including the BTUs produced as a final end product of the work being done by such things as petrol and electicity and see how much of these total incoming BTUs are being used to convert 32 F degree ice into 32 F degree water, one can only wonder how quickly global warming will accelerate once the available ice becomes more depleted...

Yes, there is indeed a problem, a very huge problem. Do the math if you dare.