BrutalDemon
Posts: 85
Joined: 7/10/2006
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quote:
ORIGINAL: OrionTheWolf
At one time the scientific majority said the Earth was flat. Just because the scienific majority says it is so, does not make it so.
We are having record lows where I live, could someone send some of that global warming my way.
As to co2 gases: How much of it being produced is a natural effect? How much is caused by volcanic activity, forest fires, etc?
How about methane? Natural product of both animals, and cultivation, and apparently a much more dangerous Greenhouse Gas than CO2 (which is easier to remove from the atmosphere through natural processes). I made a rather glib comment about raising sealevels reducing the amount of rice paddies, earlier.... this is why a 3-5 meter increase in sealevel is fine by me, because it'd destroy roughly 95% of those nasty, methane producing, rice paddies.
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Researchers often start with a theory and then start out to prove that theory. Does this ever cause things to be less than accurate?
That's the very basis of science... come up with a theory, then do your best to prove it wrong. Even better to successfully prove the theories of other, well respected, Scientists wrong.
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How much of the ice is above water level? Ice just melting will not automatically increase sea level, kind of like when the ice in your soda melts it does not cause it to overflow.
Does the Earth ever go through heating and cooling stages due to the warmth and position of the Sun?
Yes. There's a few astronomic factors that affect Earths temperature, some of which I've listed earlier in this thread. Orbital Eccentricity, Axial Tilt, Surface and Atmospheric Albedo (how much sunlight is reflected), and the Sun itself contibutes others. From variations in size... because it's basically a big fricken bomb that's constantly exploding, shrinking and expanding like a beating heart... to more localised phenomena like solar flares.
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Has the position of the polar caps, and equator ever changed before? Even if just slightly?
Yes and no. On a geological scale, measured in millions of years, the magnetic poles themselves are believed to 'flip' backwards and forwards. North and South poles switch. Don't know how quickly this happens, or when the next one's due, or what the effects might be.
The imaginary line we think of as the Equator doesn't change, much. Even though the Earth changes shape all the time, it's always going to be roughly a ball, slightly fatter around the axis of spin than from pole to pole.
The Icecaps will always be at the 'top and bottom' of the world... and as you point out, free standing ice won't have any bearing on sealevel. The biggest change to happen there is when Antarctica drifted over the southern pole, lifting a whole bunch of ice up out of the water. If that stuff melts relatively quickly, we could all be in real trouble. Problem is, the evidence of that happening is still, despite money being thrown at researching it, fairly inconclusive still. Some studies indicate it's thinning out, but in other areas it's actually getting thicker. There's evidence to support whatever theories you want to believe.
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So much to think about and so much sky falling.
Orion
The question should be... which lump of sky is going to cause you most immeadiate harm, and is there anything you can do to mitigate its effects.
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Old enough to know better... but still young enough to not care
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RE: "Scientists: Antarctic ice sheet thinning" - 
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