Melting the Icecaps

I must apologize for the lack of citations or real data to refute in my post. It wasn’t a good post because of that.

I also can see I wasn’t clear. What my friend convinced me of was that humans have effected the climate, especially in the past one hundred years. However, like everything else, I don’t know what that means in the short or long term. Futher, as SpyOne points out, I might not be understanding what I was told!

At the end of the day, I know that climate changes. Everything else, I don’t know.

There are more than 10 indicators of the empirical evidence that find a distinct human fingerprint on the current climate change:

Well, since the basis and evidence of the current theories regarding what is driving the recent climate change were more formally mentioned in the 1950’s, one has to say that what you are saying is still part of the huge ignorance that is out there regarding the mountain of evidence that has been gained in the last 60 years.

http://climatecrocks.com/2010/11/08/climate-science-1956-blast-from-the-past/

I was quite clear about what I was discussing, I thought: my comments were about, and limited to, the contents of Vislor’s post. There can be mountains and mountains of evidence, that doesn’t change the fact that he presented none.

Vislor, no apology necessary: my remarks were intended more as an observation than a criticism. Or perhaps more as criticism than complaint.
I was just pointing out that “My friend made a very convincing argument about this that I don’t really remember except that it changed my mind” has an evidentiary weight near zero. It was not inappropriate to share the anecdote, but it was unlikely to convince anyone who did not already agree with you.
Anyway, I apologize for making you feel as if you should apologize. :wink:

Two notes on this column, both at the risk of looking stupid (sorry, I’m behind in my reading):

  1. Would grounded ice on the sea floor melting cause the oceans to rise? Because I would think that, just like floating ice is already displacing water, so would ice that’s currently under water.

  2. Talk of painting ice black to make it melt seems odd, to me. Personally, one of the most annoying things about melting snow is that it seems like the clean (white) snow all melts first, often leaving mounds of dirty, gross-looking black ice that can take days or weeks longer to go away. Am I missing something?

  1. If it’s grounded on the sea floor there’s more ice than buoancy can keep afloat. All the “excess” ice that you can melt before the ice starts floating again would contribute to a rise in ocean level. The rest, not so much.

  2. If you have a lot of ice and a thin layer of paint or dirt, the dark color will trap more heat and cause the ice to melt faster. If you have a lot of dirt and not much ice, the dirt will function as an insulator and the ice will melt slower.