Having done this activity in a science class a few years ago I remember that very little if any water overflowed the container. This is due to the fact that water expands as it freezes and traps air inside causing it to become less dense than liquid water. So the melting of an iceberg really won’t increase the amount of water in the seas and won’t cause global flooding on its own. However, much of the Earth’s freshwater supply is located in glaciers located on land in areas like Antarctica, Greenland, the Alaskan Tundra and part of Russia known as Siberia. These glaciers if melted would increase the amount of water in the ocean causing a rise in sea level of approximately sixty-one meters. That is a significant increase and could cause global flooding of mass proportions.
I believe that the Earth is going through a warming period, but I am not convinced that global warming is anything more than one of the processes the Earth has gone through in it long, (short) history. Geologically speaking the earth can be considered to be quite young. During that time, roughly 5.1 billion years, the Earth has experienced dinosaurs, an ice age and the global climate we enjoy today, not to mention the other changes documented by scientist to this point. Global warming is taking place but maybe it is another period of Earth’s history that we have little or no control over. Yes, I believe that we contribute to greenhouse gases through car exhaust and factory discharges but I once read that the oceans can control greenhouse gases over time. But do we have enough time?
So, the question I have is how do we continue the rapid pace of growth that we are experiencing today in the world and slow down the effects of global warming? Do we really need to? I mean maybe global warming and its affects will change the global environment for the better? Increased fresh water will lead to more evaporation, which will lead to more rain in areas that are experiencing wide spread drought releasing nutrients that have been locked away for centuries and create new agricultural enterprises. Only time and extensive research will tell. But do we take that chance?
Mark, did you by any chance come across the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC)? There are 194 countries that participate in this group. There were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, something that I believe gives them validity and a voice.
ReplyDeleteHere's a blurb from their website: The IPCC embodies a unique opportunity to provide rigorous and balanced scientific information to decision makers. By endorsing the IPCC reports, governments acknowledge the authority of their scientific content. The work of the organization is therefore policy-relevant and yet policy-neutral, never policy-prescriptive.
Please take a look at what the various task forces have come up with:http://ipcc.ch/working_groups/working_groups.shtml
I found it to be fascinating reading and will answer some of your questions.
Mark,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the fact that the Earth has gone through so much in its short time. For that reason it's hard for me to believe that all this major melting and flooding is going to occur in the next 19 years.
Also, so many things and inventions in our world have been great for us, but not so much for the environment. So I too believe we have contributed to CFC's, fossil fuel emmissions, and so forth. It reminds me a great deal of what Buxton and Provenzo wrote about when they were discussing the nature of science and said "Science progress has made possible some of the best things in life and some of the worst". We have created these great things, from that though has created other problems in our world.