Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[PTTG??]

In summary, the Arctic Ocean is going to melt in four years.

Ok, that's a bit extreme. One researcher has stated that he predicts that within the next four years, the Pack Ice which makes up the actual main mass of the north pole's ice cap will have completely broken up for the summer months.

I haven't seen much discussion on the science of the argument, or on the effects this might have on further climate change. Worst case, subsea permafrost melts and releases geological-scale quantities of methane from the seabed, making for a serious example of positive feedback.

I don't expect it to necessarily occur in the next four years (though it certainly could happen before 2020), and I don't expect hyper-icebergs to come thundering out of the north and attack New York. Nor do I suspect that free-market powered snow golems will arrive and magically restore the ice cap with the power of the invisible hand.

[Levi]

This actually makes me pretty mad.  Its a perfect opportunity for governments to try out some megaprojects like cloud-whitening factories/ships, or a giant satellite to block out the sun periodically, and they just sit on their ass and do nothing as usual.  They are all too corrupt or incompetent to even make an attempt to get anything done.

[pisskop]

Theory is, if I remember, is that when the ice-sheets melt enough, the salty cold water of the artic will escape into the Atlantic.  This water will sink and become so unmovable it shuts down convection currents powering our ocean currents.  The currents will no longer circulate warmth and nutrients to the world, and we all die a frozen 'The Day After tomorrow' deaths at the hands of a uber-violent ice age.

[Loud Whispers]

Theory is, if I remember, is that when the ice-sheets melt enough, the salty cold water of the artic will escape into the Atlantic.  This water will sink and become so unmovable it shuts down convection currents powering our ocean currents.  The currents will no longer circulate warmth and nutrients to the world, and we all die a frozen 'The Day After tomorrow' deaths at the hands of a uber-violent ice age.

By the time it gets to that it sounds like we'd already be dead.

[PTTG??]

Theory is, if I remember, is that when the ice-sheets melt enough, the salty cold water of the artic will escape into the Atlantic.  This water will sink and become so unmovable it shuts down convection currents powering our ocean currents.  The currents will no longer circulate warmth and nutrients to the world, and we all die a frozen 'The Day After tomorrow' deaths at the hands of a uber-violent ice age.

That particular theory is really about a more regional disaster caused by Greenland's sheets melting. They bring freshwater into the ocean, and that technobabble the gulf stream and the eurpean current. It was an overhyped theory to begin with, since it'd really only be Europe that gets somewhat colder. I don't know the effects the polar ice cap melting would have on currents, though there are theories that there will be much more active storm systems in the north if the polar ocean is warm enough to produce energy-laden storms.

There are almost certainly no transacrctic currents (such as, from the atlantic to the pacific directly over the pole), as there is nothing to drive such a current.

I'm seriously starting to think that cap and trade may be effective, if only to create a market for carbon scrubbing, which right now is the only way we're going to avoid substantial temperature increases.

The ice age threat is rediculous. We're looking at a more energetic system, one with more droughts and floods, and a very diffient one, but not anything as simple as sudden universal heat or cold.

[Criptfeind]

As a Minnesotan I am okay with global warming. Our winters could do with a extra 40 degrees. And another 20 in the summer would be bad, but not unbearable.

So this seems like a good sign to me!

[pisskop]

I should put away my igloo blueprints? 

[Loud Whispers]

So this seems like a good sign to me!

Not good if you don't want bad diseases from the tropics showing up.

I should put away my igloo blueprints? 

Move to the UK, global warming's going to make us colder - for better or worse P:

[miauw62]

Or move to Belgium.
The northern part is basically one big city.

[PTTG??]

That's the first time I've heard of someone responding to warming oceans and rising sea level by moving to Belgium.

[Nadaka]

This is going to mean the extinction of wild polar bears. They have a migration pattern where they walk/swim to the ice sheet after having cubs. And as the distance between land and ice sheet increases, the fewer cubs are capable of surviving the swim. Eventually, no wild polar bear cubs will survive.

On the plus side... this does mean that the Northwest Passage (and the Siberian coast passage) could become much more practical for shipping goods between Asia and North America possibly more significantly between Asia and Europe.

[10ebbor10]

That's the first time I've heard of someone responding to warming oceans and rising sea level by moving to Belgium.

Unlike some other neightbouring countries, most of Belgium would remain above sealevel. Besides, if needed we just need to fill in the holes between all the appartements that make up 75% of our coast line to create The Great Belgian wall.

[pisskop]

Ive always wanted waterfront property...

[Jerick]

Theory is, if I remember, is that when the ice-sheets melt enough, the salty cold water of the artic will escape into the Atlantic.  This water will sink and become so unmovable it shuts down convection currents powering our ocean currents.  The currents will no longer circulate warmth and nutrients to the world, and we all die a frozen 'The Day After tomorrow' deaths at the hands of a uber-violent ice age

Close but no, the heat coming down from the sun doesn't change when the current's stop flowing.
The stopping of the currents just stops the heat exchange between the cold places of the earth and the warm.
In other words the cold places get colder and alot of places become hot deserts.
That's the thing an Ice age doesn't mean a world covered in ice it means a world where the main methods of heat exchange breakdown.
It's only when and if large sheets of nice white ice form to reflect all that light and heat back into space that the world actualy becomes colder overall and even then it's not by much.

Now this is what I think will happen when the ice melts but global climates and weather are very complicated things that very few people properly understand and I don't claim to be one of them.

[pisskop]

  That what I said.  I never mentioned the Sun once.

In any case.  The world is changing, or to quote one of my favorite songs "this is the way the world ends, not with a flash, but a vapor".