Posted on 03/11/2002 2:30:53 PM PST by ex-Texan
Edited on 07/07/2004 4:48:16 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The polar ice cap has been shrinking so fast that regular ships may be steaming through the Northwest Passage each summer by 2015, and along northern Russia even sooner, according to a new U.S. Navy report.
Global warming will open the Arctic Ocean to unprecedented commercial activity. The seasonal expansion of open water may draw commercial fishing fleets into the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska within a few decades. The summer ice cover could even disappear entirely by 2050 -- or be concentrated around northern Greenland and Ellesmere Island.For the U.S. Navy, this presents an unprecedented challenge: a new ocean. The nation's maritime military does not yet have the ships, training, technology and logistics in place to patrol or police a wide-open polar sea, according to the final report from a symposium on Naval Operations in an Ice-Free Arctic.
(Excerpt) Read more at adn.com ...
Hutchison Whampoa has to be kicking themselves for paying all that money to manage the Panama Canal.
Tinfoil alert!
Climate models can't even predict what already happened fer crying out loud!!
Those that can do do, those that can't teach!
However, the southern icecap is far more massive and sits mostly on land, on Antartica - osme of it is BELOW sea level. Melting it all would cause an enormous rise in sea level - I am hazy on the exact details here, but, trust me, we don't wan't to do it! Meanwhile the continent of Antartica would rise, freed of all the icecap's weight.
If it means anything, I have a Ph.D. in Physics.
As for Canada claiming such waters as their own territory, I don't see that as much more of a problem than Col. Khadaffi's "Line of Death" across the Gulf of Sidra.
wait a minute, slow down, the debate is not about whether global warming is real - the fact that global mean surface temperartures have been rising for a century is incontrovertable.
The debate is about what causes the rise in temp., and whether that cause is natural or man-made. So don't imply that the Northwest passage opens up each Spring - it doesn't. This is truly and astonishing development. Now that the fact of global warming is once again proven beyond any reasonable doubt, the question is do we need to do anything about it, or is this something we should learn to deal with because it is a completely natural phenomena.
"Incontrovertable", you say? Oh, reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally?
Earth to clamboat: It's HUGELY "controvertable", my friend.
I suggest you keep up with current events and give up that ridiculous Sierra Club membership. They'll rot your brain with "pseudo-science".
...which proves absolutely nothing, and you know it (or at least you should). Have you measured temperatures across Washington state for the last 40 years? Do you have written records of those observations? Can you tell me the average temperature for the last decade? I mean you can't all be that dense.
We are talking about a global phenomena here. The fact that there has been unusually warm temperatures in California this year, or that you got a little snow in Washington means very little to the global picture. I haven't collected worldwide temperature data and neither have you, but I tend to believe the scientists who have collected such data. Those who report the facts should be distinguished from those who interpret what those facts mean.
For my own local evidence (which is also meaningless in isolation), I've seen pictures of the glaciars on Mt. Killamanjaro from two decades ago and from only two years ago (my fiance climbed it then). There is no question that the glaciers on that mountain, and in fact glaciers all over the world, are receding. Polar icebergs are breaking off into the sea in ever larger chunks. That is not to say it has never happened before - maybe it is all part of a cycle. But it is not something you need to be afraid of and deny in the face of so much evidence.
Those who report the facts should be distinguished from those who interpret what those facts mean. Everybody is not lying just to convince you that global temperatures are rising. It is perfectly legitimate to debate the causes, but to deny the facts when you have no contrary evidence to back it up only makes you sound nutty.
Ice is expanded water (so to speak), it displaces exactly the same amount of water after it melts in the glass.
Now if you overfill the glass with crushed ice and then fill it with water to the brim you may see spillage upon melting.
You are right, it can't. It's only the prospect of melting landlocked glaciers that can cause sea level to rise. Problem there is glaciers melt from the bottom, and the bottom of a one mile thick chunk of ice is completely insensitive to temperature changes at the surface.
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