If There Is So Much Ice Melting Caused By Global Warming Why Is?

Question

Why is it that no land is being covered by the water? They keep saying it will cover our land? My College Science professor said this in the 90's that Flordia would be completely covered by water in 10 years. Its been around 18 years? Ozone hole will cause this? Explain please?

Answer 1

Funny thing is, even though the Ross Ice Shelf melted, the ice on the actual continent of Antarctica has thickened over the same period. I guess the net change was close to zero. Believe it or not, nature really does know what it's doing, and scientists are playing catch up on systems that have been in place for millenia.

xgurl - the oceans aren't rising [much], Venice is SINKING.

Answer 2

People always make wild and unsubstantiated claims about what is going to happen in the future.

It's a way to shock people into action.

However, these claims are only propaganda.  None on them ever come true.

Answer 3

It will take a few more decades for oceanside property to start going under, but since we've ignored the warnings for about 20 years now and done little to control our fossil fuel use, that day may be coming faster than many scientists predicted:

"Instead of sea levels rising by about 40 centimetres, as the IPCC predicts in one of its computer forecasts, the true rise might be as great as several metres by 2100. That is why, they say, planet Earth today is in 'imminent peril.'"

http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserve...

The evidence of past climate change associated with CO2 increases confirms that we can't take the risk lightly:

Climate sensitivity constrained by CO2 concentrations over the past 420 million years

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v44...

"A firm understanding of the relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and temperature is critical for interpreting past climate change and for predicting future climate change1. A recent synthesis2 suggests that the increase in global-mean surface temperature in response to a doubling of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, termed 'climate sensitivity', is between 1.5 and 6.2 °C..."

As for the results of such levels of natural greenhouse gas warming in the past:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.h...

It was less reassuring to notice what the climate had looked like in certain ancient times when CO2 had stood at a high level... a level that humanity would eventually reach if we went on burning all available oil and coal. The Earth had been virtually a different planet, with tropical forests near the poles and sea levels a hundred meters higher. Worse, as one group pointed out, unchecked emissions seemed bound to bring not only "a warming unprecedented in the past million years," but changes "much faster than previously experienced by natural ecosystems..."(57)

It takes a while for expanses of ice as massive as the Greenland ice sheet to melt, but keep an eye on it in 2009 or 2010 when the next El Nino weather influence, plus the underlying trend of global climate warming, promises to set a new record for global temperatures.

Answer 4

I'd demand my money back if you were being taught that.    Some very low islands are going under water.   They were just a few inches above water before.     Florida might be a low lieing state, but it has more elevation than six inches.      

Ozone hole will not cause mass melting of ice.   It allows more ultraviolet light through that can cause skin cancer.

Answer 5

As far as Venice goes, it is the city sinking, not the waters rising that is the issue.  It's built on wood pilings and unstable earth that is subsiding at an ever-increasing rate.

Your college science professor sounds like a true academician, properly indoctrinated into the doomsday theories of the movement.

Answer 6

What you need to realize is the fact that there is no such thing

as "global warming' and that "Al (I invented the Internet) Gore' is

wrong about this too!

What scientists refer to as "global warming' is a natural cyclic

phenomena that has been going on since the beginning of time and

will continue to do so!  

The effects that humans have on it are so minuscule that it is totally immeasurable!

Actually, the only major problem that humans are causing is an

overpopulation of this planet.  

Nothing to do with "global warming' but plenty to do with being

unable to produce enough food to feed the entire words population.  

This is being caused by advances in medicine which allow babies,

who would have normally not lived, to be able to exist, albeit under

less than desired conditions.

Also the elderly living many many years longer.

So, as I see it, man is destroying his world,

just not in the way the scientists want us to think.

Answer 7

Mainly, no one is able to predict with any sufficient accuracy what global warming or cooling is. One massive volcanic eruption will have a much more significant effect than all of humanity.

http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Mon...

http://www.dailytech.com/Researcher+Basi...

http://www.rochester.edu/pr/releases/ear...

http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/history/535...

Venice is sinking as previously mentioned.

People need to understand that there are very, very few experienced global climatologists. There are larger numbers of regional climatologists. The earth is currently in a period of extremely stable and temperate weather. I will also state that it is quite obvious that man has an influence on the enviroment, including temperture, since anything that is part of a system influences it.

Now if people want to discuss pollution, that is a much more palpable issue and should be the real driver of environmental action. Unfortunately, this message was poorly marketed in the past and is tired to many people.

Ozone has other effects: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ozone-depletion...

Answer 8

Are you sure you remember correctly what your college science professor said 18 years ago?  That's a long time to remember something correctly.  But, if he actually did say that, then he was completely ignorant of real science, because no climate scientists in the early 1990's (or now) were predicting Florida would be covered by water in 10 years.

There's no doubt that land-based ice is melting and that the sea-level is rising at an accelerated rate, but Florida is in no danger of being underwater anytime in the next few centuries.  The more legitimate concern is the storm damage that will happen during a sea surge with just an extra 0.5 - 1 M rise in the sea-level.  That could cause significant damage in the lifetime of our children or grandchildren.

Answer 9

there hasn't been that much ice melting yet, but some has, look at venice italy, it's slowly getting more and more flooded.  the problem is that with the increasing overall temperatures that have been recorded for the past few years, if the trends continue, then heavy amounts of melting will start, which will then cause land to start flooding

Answer 10

If anyone here happened to watch the repeated program last night on TV, regarding global warming, then we can take this threat as pure BS,  This natural cycle of cooling and warming has been going on since the beginning, and in fact, as reported, enough warming of the polar ice caps, will dilute the salt content of the oceans, s***w up the warming currents and cause another ice age.

So, if we get enough of global warming, better make sure your furnace is in good working order.

Answer 11

Typical hype by the media.  The sky is always falling to them.  Remember how we were all going to die from AIDS back in the 1980's?

Answer 12

Your science teachers predictions are way out of line with what climate scientists have said.

No one has predicted that much rise in water that fast.   Why don't you go to some websites and learn the facts.

  You might start with these.

http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v06/n08/...

http://environment.newscientist.com/chan...

http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptic_ar...

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Ima...

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report....

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/a...

http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/f101.a...

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/sci...

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0130...

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwar...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbo...

chart showing CO2 over last 400,000 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_peti...   dispells the myth about 17,000 scientists who are skeptics on AGW

http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics    

http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfact...

http://www.skepticalscience.com/

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/0...    The Cold Truth about Global Warming  by Joseph Romm