Sorry - was only trying to inject some humor - the discussion outside of your comment had become rather seriously heated. (Yes, pun intended...) And Iceland does indeed have much volcanic activity underneath the island. There are hot springs, and some very old geothermal heating systems. I don't recall them having eruptions in recorded history, but I'm far from an Icelandic expert. I think I read of some lava flows causing havoc a few years ago though...

I think you are seriously underestimating how much heat it takes to heat an ocean's worth of water. Even with the sun beating down on the ocean all the time, once you get 1000 meters the temperature is 4 degrees Celsius (39 degrees Fahrenheit). The average depth of the arctic ocean is 1000 meters and above the mid-ocean ridge where the depth is 2000 to 4000 meters, which is where these volcanoes are. The heat simply isn't getting anywhere near the surface.

Roger,

Once again you seem to intentionally ignore any point that contradicts your pet theory. Instead of addressing silvCrow's observations about point source heat and induced currents, you try to obfuscate by posting a bunch irrelevant data about solar warming of ocean water. Of course solar energy heats only to a shallow depth, it's dispersed and heat flows up in a fluid, not down. How can you honestly compare solar warming to the issue he poses? Please directly address his point about a potential plume induced by a localized heat source.

Hey Everyone,

Keep the tone in this discussion reasonable. There is some good topical debate here. I realize this is an issue that raises the passions of many, but keep it friendly and keep it focused on the matter at hand.

Also, don't mark someone's post as off-topic just because you disagree with it. That's not the purpose of the system - and your ability to rate posts can be removed.

- Chris

Yay me's the 1st to reply im scared of GW think about penguins! And polar bears so cute and cuddlely

Hello Taganan

from me

Good reasoning, not following the Politically Correct herd.

Kind Regards....

I don't know what all the GW panic is all about, except big money and subsidies are involved.

As always, if you want the truth: Follow the money trail.

If GW was man-caused, then man must have caused it many times during the last few thousand years, and if that were true, please try and explain how man was the cause of those earlier GW situations.

Kind Regards....

It is patently evident that those who state "The sea level shall rise" xxx metres because of Global warming have not bothered to do the simple arithmetic.

Of course the icecaps in Greenland and Antarctica are large, but it is volume of ice we are talking about.

Compare the area of Antarctica plus Greenland and all the other "ice repositories", obtain the total volume of fresh water ice.

When that ice melts, it occupies lesser volume as it is now liquid water.

Thus spread evenly that volume of water across all oceans, seas, bays, coves, inlets - the actual rise is extremely small.

When I first read how small the rise would be, I vigorously opposed it, because of my own "Antarctica plus Greenland icecaps are very large" reasoning, ....etc.

I had to eat my own words, admit to the other person that I had taken published figures as fact, and not bothered to check it out.

As I said earlier: Do the Maths, and you will be (perhaps) surprised.

And I'm still persuaded that the current weather conditions are nothing any person, group, organization, Government, or group of Countries can do anything about.

Global temperatures vary because of the "carousel effect, and the cyclic radiation periods of Solar output from the nearest star.

Prove me wrong, if you can.

Kind Regards....

If you've done the math please post the results and procedures for you data collection and calculations as well as the volume affects on the tides. I would really like to see them!

For those interested,

Here's a nice chart I just discovered, while looking for something unrelated:

Kind Regards....

-9 degrees Fahrenheit at my house this morning. Can we do anything to speed this global warming up a little?

Hey Roger - Old blog, but I don't think I've shared this yet:

Respected GE Energy engineer Kevin Barb (steam turbines group), working in Schenectady, NY, presented a slide-show on this topic to my local ASME section, last February, at Union College. It may be of interest to both sides in this debate:

Global Energy Crisis - Kevin Barb of GE Energy (6.29 MB)

Adobe-format slide show (better than Al Gore's?).

Thanks for letting me share this.

- Larry

If the Arctic ice melts in summer for the next 10-20 years, will this be a bad thing?

1. Arable land will extend further towards the poles.

2. Wet tropics will extend further from the equator.

3. Unusable land zone will be diminished.

4. Increased CO2 levels increase crop growth - double CO2 equates to about 75% increase in output.

5. The commercial advantages of ice free transport in arctic regions for part of the year are obvious.

However:

The land most affected by the shift of the desert zones away from the equator will be the present prime farming zones. The people affected by this will not be happy and they have a lot of political clout, hence the "panic" about global warming.

If we do nothing, in 10 - 20 years, I fully expect the focus to shift to "what are we going to do about the cooling of the environment". This has been the pattern in the past.

Practically all geological ages showed higher CO2 (5-nearly 20x present levels) than we have now and many showed high H2O levels. There seems to be a notable lack of catastrophic consequences for life on earth during these times.

We do need to improve our efficiency of utilization of energy in all it's forms.

Peak oil need not be a problem as in the short term we can turn coal into oil for our liquid fuel needs

In the longer term, we must find good base load sources of power. Electric power can be used for transport when we crack the storage problem.

In the short to medium term, nuclear can provide power. High level wastes can be dealt with by using them to generate power. Waste disposal is actually more a political than technical problem (synrock, vitrification to mention only 2) and research will deal with these.

In the long term, fusion will become available and we should have ample cheap power. We should be giving research here high priority.

The crucial research problem is to develop efficient, reasonably priced high density storage of electricity. With this we can have electric cars and trucks, base load power can be stored and used for peak lopping and our dependence on liquid fuels can be almost eliminated.

If only what you listed were the true effects of the arctic ice cap melting. No, unfortunately it isn't nearly that straight forward. Ocean current patterns will be disrupted, so precipitation and weather patterns change. Desertification could actually increase (as is happening in Africa and Southwest U.S.). Take a look at a map when you get a chance and check out the latitude of Europe. You'll see that compared to the U.S., they are way up there (London Latitude=51° North whereas Chicago Latitude=41° North), yet their average temperature is much higher year round due to the warm ocean currents off their coast. If that changes, it gets much colder in Europe.

But you can forget about Global Warming, it's too late now. You should start to worry about the ph of the oceans rising as it trys to absorb some of the atmospheric CO2.

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

But hey, I'm sure we can just take our standard approach of pretending it isn't happening. The "head in the sand" approach.

just cover the polar with big wite cels so it can continue revlecting lighd and slowdown the climate change

Even Roger Pink will, I think, agree that the "greenhouse effect" is prompt. Deviation from radiative equilibrium occurs at nearly the speed of light.

We all agree that the level of atmospheric CO2 is increasing, whether or not it is anthropogenic.

If CO2 is responsible for global warming, if it is the biggest factor, then an increase in atmospheric CO2 should promptly result in measured increases in atmospheric temperature.

Actual measurements (as opposed to the consensus of computer geeks) indicate that atmospheric temperature is decreasing.

Therefore, it appears that the effect of increased CO2 is small, compared with other causes of climate change.

Perhaps there are better uses for $ Billions than spending to reduce CO2 if there are other causes that are more important.

Just a thought. Personally, I believe that if God is omnipotent and benevolent, then climate change is His doing, for our own benefit. If He isn't...