Posted on 12/26/2011 9:15:48 PM PST by Wicket
A friend of mine watches the History Channel, because that's true information. Apparently she's seen a program twice about how global warming is causing the ice to melt and the additional weight of the water is increasing the likelihood of earthquakes.
Danger, Will Robinson, danger!!!
Tell me why.
Yep, when sea ice melts the water level shoots up. That is why when you order a drink on the rocks, you must drink it quickly ;)
To #27; ‘picky, picky,picky!’
The 3 Gorges Dam in China is changing the earth’s behavior. If that bad boy blows, we’re talking major population reduction.
*laugh* I erased my reply on that, choosing C, and explaining it. :) Figured that I’d be a pain for pointing it out.
“Going from freezing to liquid changes the weight? Who knew?”
Well, the folks from History Channel obviously had the inside poop. It’s great they didn’t participate in the coverup.
Always we must remember that even the most concentrated efforts by man simply is barely registered by the vast engine that is our planet.
Nah, you should always point out disinformation, otherwise it gets to be a bigger pain later.
Deflation? Fluctuations in the gravitational constant caused by gold’s aura?
I have to admit that when I had my first car at 16 I thought the tires weighed a lot more when they had air in them.
France
Gold uses the Troy pound, which is equal to 12 Troy ounces. Everything other than precious metals uses avoirdupois weights, which is equal to 16 avoirdupois ounces.
However, an ounce of gold weighs more than an ounce of water, since water is weighed using the lighter avoirdupois ounce.
I learned this right before I lost all of my silver in the move.
I know you are joking, but did you know a pound of gold weighs less than a pound of lead?
A pound of gold weighs 5,760 grains. A pound of lead weighs 7,000.
Gold is weighed in the Troy System, lead in the Avoirdupois System.
There'd be some cracking and popping (in Greenland) from isostatic rebound after the 15000 ft. of ice melted off, but we aren't talking downtown LA or SF here.
I’ll go with that but somehow I don’t think that is what staytrue had in mind.
Just putting it in perspective. I seriously doubt there would be global tectonic destabilization, and at least we could run for (warmer) high ground...in Alaska.
History Channel is a notorious source of misinformation and false history.
Local earthquakes are a natural consequence of glaciers melting and the Earth's crust rebounding to higher elevations as the water runoff removes the weight of the glacier ice and meltwater into the sea. This has been going on ever since geological ages before the current interglacial period began to melt the continental ice sheets 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Examples include the localized earthquakes in Scandinavia and Britain.
The glaciers of Greenland have been relatively stable during the past 50 years, with some growing and some retreating. At the moment, there has been a sudden and significant stabilization or increases in their size as the conditions have changed to colder conditions this past decade.
Humans do not want the conditions to become any colder or the atmosphere to have less carbon dioxide concentrations. The carbon dioxide concentrations are among the lowest to have ever occurred in the Earth's past, and such low carbon dioxide concentrations are potentially lethal to the biosphere and the Plant Kingdom which seves as the base of the food chain for the entire planet. Photosynthesis is impaired and then ceases as carbon dioxide concentrations fall below the minimums necessary to sustain photosynthetic lifeforms. There Earth started out with a second atmosphere 100 times greater in mass than today with concentrations of carbon dioxide greater than about 98 percent. Life consumed this huge atmosphere of carbon dioxide, converting some of it into today's atmospheric oxygen we need to breathe and depositing much of the rest of it as carbonate rocks in the sea and on the land. Life removed so much carbon dioxide, it became a trace gas measured in thousands of parts per million parts of the atmosphere. By the time humans came along, the carbon dioxide had been reduced even further from several thousand parts per million to two thousand parts per million, and finally hundreds of parts per million. Man's influence is measured in tens of parts per million or less. Water vapor is a far more potent gas for retaining thermal energy in the Earth's environment, yet the Alarmists refuse to discuss the role of water vapor in the Earth's natural climate change variability.
Because of the freezing temperatures, ice loss from the glaciers is mostly by increases in their mass resulting in growth and calving of icebergs into the sea, by sublimation from ice to water vapor, and some lesser amounts by meltwater runoff into the sea. Glacial meltwater removes weight from a continental landmass, so it certainly does not increase weight on a continental landmass (LOL).
You might also let your friend know that it is extremely abnormal and dangerous to the biosphere for the Earth's Arctic region to have an icesheet like it does today. The normal condition of the Arctic is to have an icefree Arctic sea and no glaciers whatsoever in Greenland. The last time the Earth had an ice age of this extent of cold and ice sheets was 2.2 billion years ago, when the continent of Greenland was located in the Southern Hemisphere closer to the Antarctic and life had not yet colonized the continental landmasses, grass did not exist, and trees did not exist. Even as recently as only a few million years ago, the southern half of Greenland was warm enough to have palm type trees and tropical fauna such as crocodiles. Forests stood on the southern half of Greenland only some tens of thousands of years ago.
The present interglacial period is due to end anytime between the present and the next several thousands of years. The current period is already perhaps overdue for another glacial period to resume.
When the current interglacial period ends and the next glacial period resumes, the permanent ice sheets will once again grow out of the Arctic and Greenland to cover the land and seas to the south as far as the Central United States and Central Europe as it did before. There will, of course, be no shortage of glacial ice sheets with their weights bearing down on the continental plates and flexing them to trigger earthquakes. There is nothing humans can do to stop this ice age from occurring, and not even the immediate combustion of every drop of fossil fuel known to man in the past, present, and future contains enough thermal energy to stop the ice sheets from growing.
Ice ages are very rare in Earth's past, you can count them on the fingers of one hand, and they will become even more rare in the Earth's future as the Sun inevitably grows in size and luminosity. The next glacial period and any after that will eventually end as the current ice age comes to its inevitable end. The growing Sun will eventually scour the Earth, vaporize the hydrosphere, remove the Earth's atmosphere, and vaporize the Earth's remaining surfaces, leaving a barren surface with little more than traces of its former atmosphere. The Earth may barely escape being consumed by the Sun as its orbit increases in size, taking the Earth into the area of the Solar System now orbits. Mercury and Venus will be consumed by the Sun and vaporized inside it.
Not only will the Earth no longer have any glaciers or ice sheets, it will no longer have any oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, or atmosphere. Even the topmost soils and rock will be vaporized and the vapors blown by the Solar winds into the outer reaches of the Solar System.
Now, about those earthquakes (smile)...and human influences....
The difference is that you are talking rebound after the removal of the weight of the icecap. That’s legit. Staytrue is talking about the general addition of the weight of the meltwater over the entire world ocean.
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