Re: OT Gas Prices and the Blame Game

On Sun, 18 May 2008 03:56:21 +0000 (UTC), don@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Don
Klipstein) wrote:

In article <ch5v24ltltv81mejk2d9v22gq5hr7ckjf2@xxxxxxx>, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

On Sat, 17 May 2008 19:34:00 -0700 (PDT), mpm <mpmillard@xxxxxxx>
wrote:

I personally think the damage will get here long before the water
does.

Agreed. More damage will probably be done by the various "solutions"
to global warming than the effects of global warming.

For example: If 5 or 10 years from now the global climate models
prove to be even remotely accurate, then people will panic. I don't
think it will make any difference if the models say 10 feet in 20
years, and we only get 3 feet. The trend will be clear, and our
economic (and other) systems will collapse. (And in all liklihood,
the models will get even better by then..)

You might find this interesting:
"Sea level rise calculator"
<http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/sea_level_calc.html>
I couldn't find anything wrong with the logic or the calculator, but I
may have missed something.

The calculator appears to me to only melt ice with a stated percentage
of the amount of heat added to that stored in the atmosphere by raising
the atmosphere's temperature by a stated amount.

No. Read the explanation carefully. It's not very well written and
could use a re-write. I'll try my luck.
Disclaimer: I are not a fizixist.

1. If you raise the temperature of the entire planet 1C, then only a
small percentage of the heat used will be available to melt the ice.
The rest is absorbed by the ocean and land. The proportion of the
energy available to melt the ice pack is roughly the ratio of ice area
(Arctic, Antarctic, and Greenland) to the total earth surface area.
It's the surface area, not the mass because atmospheric heating only
acts on the surface of the ice, water, and land.

The author uses a figure of 3.45% which seems odd.
"The Greenland, East and West Antarctic Ice Shields total 3.45%
of Earth's surface with a combined surface area of about
1.524 x 10E7 km2."
Wikipedia has the earth's surface area at 5.1 x 10E8 km2. Doing the
math, I get 2.9% of the surface area is ice. It's probably more like
5-10% because I think the author apparently forgot about Alaska,
northern Canada, Scandinavia, and Siberia. Google found a few
references that claimed 10% ice coverage in winter. Also, subtract
out any floating ice because its weight has already raised the sea
level by the volume of the displaced water.

2. The average temperature of the most sensitive areas (Greenland and
Antarctica) that are covered with ice always remain below 0C and will
therefore never melt. For example, if you drag an ice block into a
freezer, and lower the temperature by 10C from -20C to -10C, how much
ice will melt? The answer is none. Until the temperature gets to 0C,
none of the ice will melt. Therefore, in the rather large areas where
the air temperature never goes above freezing, even drastic variations
in temperature will not produce any melting. Only those areas that
are near 0C or near liquid water are susceptible to melting.

I consider this faulty logic. One way to explain that: Suppose the
atmosphere's temperature took a sudden big jump to a level sufficient to
melt the icecaps and then quickly levels off. The icecaps will melt over
the following decades/centuries/whatever with the amount of heat stored in
the atmosphere being constant - the melting will be done from solar
absorption exceeding the planet's radiation into space until the surface
gets warm enough to have radiation to space equal solar absorption.

That calculator said a 66 degree C rise in the atmosphere's temperature
will only raise sea level by .1 meter. I would think that a 66 degree C
warming would totally melt the icecaps, which would raise sea level a heck
of a lot more than .1 meter.

Nope. Not when perhaps 95% of that temperature rise goes into heating
up the water and land, while only perhaps 5% goes into melting the
ice. That's also ignoring what gets reflected back into space.

To be perfectly honest (this time only), I'm also having a difficult
time believing the numbers. However, I can't seem to find anything
wrong with the explanation. I kinda wish the Javascript calculations
were visible, so I can see what's going on behind the web page, but
the main problems seem to be with the basic assumptions, not the
calculations.

- Don Klipstein (don@xxxxxxxxx)

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@xxxxxxxxxx
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: OT Gas Prices and the Blame Game
    ... "Sea level rise calculator" ... I couldn't find anything wrong with the logic or the calculator, ... The calculator appears to me to only melt ice with a stated percentage ... the atmosphere's temperature by a stated amount. ...
    (sci.electronics.design)