Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Global warming = rising sea levels because of melting ice caps - or does it?


The ice caps mostly cover the sea, in solid form they have greater volume than in liquid. Thus the icecaps displace a signficantly greater volume of water than they create when they melt.Thus melting ice caps will cause the sea levels to stay the same - least, they may cause the sea levels to fall as themassive displacement effect the ice caps reduces.


We have for some time been in an inter-glatial period - ie we are actually still in an ice age, we are just experiencing a short warm intermission of a few hundreds of thousands of years. The plunge back into the ice age is inevitable.


Ghia will be free of us pesky humans and a bunch of other unfit creatures and will continue spinning in her own sweet way.

Michael P, you are wrong - most of the ice at the poles is on land. If (when?) the ice of Greenland and Antarctica melt, sea levels will rise by around 65 METERS. I'm afraid the whole of ED will be under the sea in that case. I guess parts of Crystal Palace might just be above water. Makes you wonder why you bothered having children...

So when we had a supercontinent with no polar land masses at all, I take it the seas were alot higher? Mind you the alps were at the bottom of the sea back then so i guess any sort of comparison's a bit daft.


But as the ruler of byzantium points out, gaia (or whatever) has witnessed alot of changes of the millionennia, our pesky fag breath will be but a temporary blight.

Now I'm a little confussed. When we had a super continent, there would be no gland under the artic/antartica, but would there not have been ice caps on the earths poles? Reducing sea levels? Though maybe not at today's level. Does that make sense? I can't tell.

My head can't cope with this, it's far to much for a pre midday conversation! However - I think I'm getting all muddled between Mike's comment that global warming is the ice melting and others comments on rising sea levels. I'm no expert bu, a quick glance at this website suggests that most of the polar ice caps (in antarctica at least) have always been coupled with land, so I'm not sure Piers' comment would be right.


Secondly - the melting of the ice isn't global warming, but a result of it. This will raise sea levels, wont it (more water in the sea), but isn't the worse effect the affect this will have on the planets weather? You know, destroying the gulf stream etc?


If I'm talking twaddle, feel free to ignore, but if you know and feel like, please explain!

I recycle and do all that other good stuff - its the right thing to do. We have a duty of care.


I believe in global warming but am agnostic on the range of likely impacts that tend to get trumpeted.


I think that alot of the "unusual" weather that we see is quite normal in a long term historical context i.e. tens of thousands of years. So the fact that its the hottest/wettest/whateverest weather in recorded history is but a nanosecond in climatic and geological time.

Depends what you mean by always FnB. If you mean always as in the last million years, then you're quite right.

If you mean always as in the last 200 million years then absolutely not.

have a look at the animation and see how it wanders south

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangea


Unless of course you are a conservative christian (see our new transport secretary) then of course continental drift is merely a divine joke put there to give scientists something to do, and (two) kangaroos got to australia after the flood on floating mats of vegetation that they could nibble on during the journey.

Of course I believe. Tsk. Anyway, that animation's a little lacking in detail, this map, by Geology.dotty.com, seems to sugest that the continent spent a lot of time down that way. Am a tad upset my last site had a Pennsylvanian and Mississippian continental age, find that a bit much.


btw - did you (or anyone) listen to in our time this morning? It was on mass distiction during the Pangaea period (global warming seemed to be a factor). You can listen to it on the beeb website.

Just to depress you all even more, did you know the Gulf Stream stopped a few times last month, that was why the weather was so bad, and it's been slowing down over the last couple of decades, so we are facing a possible ice age too!


Couldn't find anything more up to date, but check this


http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8398

Some further information on the early geology of the world.


Pre Gulf Stream I'm fairly sure most of northern Europe was iced up, along with North America. The great lakes are what's left after glacial retreat [though I may have to google check this]. No idea how much of Europe was frozen though.

Southern edge was heading toward the south coast, hence so much of london, herts etc being clay, it's where the glaciers dumped all that nasty gunk.

What's now the channel was all land and recent sonar surveys have spotted signs loads of settlements down there. Would have been good fishing in the super river fed by the tributaries of the rhine, oder, somme, meuse and the seine!!!

I know, they've been digging around my parents/I.o.W, the whole area up round the north sea was land too (fishermen occasionaly fish out artifacts. So you could walk to France, Germany, Denmark, Holland etc (well, I think that might be it). I also think the river that carved out the channel, and became the North Sea was the Rhine.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Latest Discussions

    • Hi, my daughter has a basic electric keyboard she really should clear out of her old room. It's a classic beginners one. Are you interested?  If so, I'll photograph it and find the name.    Lottie 
    • I don’t think Reform will withstand the heat of any election.  Finding enough people to stand will be bad enough. Finding credible ones quite a bid tougher  I think yes this government is lacking in a long term plan and has not had a good first year. Today the least.   but the speed with which this was dealt with is a notable shift compared to last 14 years where months would drag by and we would constantly be told to draw a line under  if Labour called an election tomorrow, there is not a single party that could present a better alternative with any credibility. And that’s a low bar Reform are dangerous lunatics but more worrying is the descent of the Tories into the same swamp i also worry that England voters have contracted some melodrama virus after the Tories where we had 5 PMs in almost as many years  it’s ok for governments to be unpopular without needing to have an election every 1-2 years       Looks like Lucy Connolly will me one of those Reform candidates at next election tells you everything you need to know about that party and where the country would be headed 
    • Well, I made £50 out of it and Alice owes me another bullseye, so I had a good day Clearly the thread has moved on, but just a final few words on Rayner (from me, at least). If she hadn't gone like this (with a chance to revive her career at some point in the future) there's plenty of other stuff loaded up and ready to be fired at her about the motivation, finances and machinations of her move down South. It's not pretty reading. Tawdry doesn't come close. I was born in Ashton Hospital and grew up in Tameside, I've got a lot of friends and family who weren't as lucky as me and didn't make it out, some close to her constituency party, and there's been a lot of bad feeling around 'Our Ange' for a long time. My favourite quote was: 'She should fuck off back to Stockport.' And that was from a party member. The writing was on the wall for her. Moving from Ashton (majority c6.5k, large Pakistani minority, but predominantly white working class and targeted by both the Independent Alliance and Reform) to Hove (majority c20k, neither of these issues with the electorate) was a pretty cynical move, and she's fucked it royally. 'The Honourable Member for Hove and Portslade' will be sleeping a lot easier in their bed tonight. This thread was never supposed to about Labour bashing, and I'm not sure it is. It's definitely descended into 'Whataboutery', and that seems to be the problem, in my mind at least, with British politics. It's playground stuff, he said/she said, blame-game bollocks. Watch PMQs and ask yourself if you'd accept this sort of behaviour amongst toddlers, let alone in an elected parliament. One thing that does stand out is the opposition to Reform across the board, and yet we seem to be sleepwalking towards a likely scenario where Farage could head up a minority Reform government. I've 'followed' politics since the late Seventies - mainly because the BBC News came on right after 'Roobard and Custard' or 'The Magic Roundabout' - and I can't remember an era where both major parties are so bereft of leadership, direction or ideas. There's a certain irony that we'll all be getting a test text on Sunday to warn us of an impending 'National Emergency'. Seems quite prescient.
    • But not old enough to remember the highest unemployment rate, inflation and interest rates in history in the early eighties under the Tories? A rather selective memory you have. There has never been a four-day week: it was a three-day week imposed by the Conservative government under the Blasted Heath.
Home
Events
Sign In

Sign In



Or sign in with one of these services

Search
×
    Search In
×
×
  • Create New...