Capitalizing on Melting Polar Ice 505
efuzzyone writes "As an affect of global warming, the polar ice caps seem to be slowly receding, what do you do? The NYT reports it is a gold rush, 'the Arctic is undergoing nothing less than a great rush for virgin territory and natural resources worth hundreds of billions of dollars.' Also, 'polar thaw is also starting to unlock other treasures: lucrative shipping routes, perhaps even the storied Northwest Passage; new cruise ship destinations; and important commercial fisheries.'"
Yep (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yep (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yep (Score:4, Informative)
It's easy to overlook 'facts' when they are in reality fiction.
In reality Clinton's administration negotiated, supported, and he personally eventually signed the Kyoto protocol.
"Former President Clinton's vice president, Al Gore, negotiated the treaty for the United States and had a major role in its final form."
According to Wikipedia:
"On June 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was to be negotiated, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95-0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Aware of the Senate's view of the protocol, the Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol for ratification."
The criticism is that Bush doesn't support the Kyoto protocol. If Clinton commanded a congress with a dominant Democrat majority, as Bush commands a Republican majority, the Kyoto protocol would have passed under his administration.
His administration undeniably supported the Kyoto protocol.
It seems very strange for me to hear conservatives, which I'm sure you undeniably are, cry foul at simply criticizing the policy of the Bush administration. The only way you could find these criticisms innately negative, is if you agreed that the policy they criticize is innately negative. Clinton suffered an array of actual 'shots' that had nothing to do with his policy, by 24 hour cable news networks, and independent councils; working full time to dig up information on fabricated crimes he supposedly committed (yet predictably never yielded anything substantial).
Re:Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
"If Clinton commanded a congress with a dominant Democrat majority, as Bush commands a Republican majority, the Kyoto protocol would have passed under his administration."
Please explain to me this contradiction. Or are you saying that there was 95 Republicans in the Senate and 5 Democrats?
Re:Yep (Score:2)
Kyoto is useless... (Score:2, Insightful)
Instead we have whiney Euro politicians who want to appease their Green parties and stick it to the Americans, while avoiding fulfiling their obligations as much as humanly possible.
International Treaties aren't worth the paper they are written on.
Republicans Hate the Earth (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst American politician whiner was Bush, who whined "we'll give you something better than Kyoto" when he rejected it. Just another lie from Bush, who has given us nothing but tax rebates on SUVs that did nothing but further break the environment, and even break the American carmakers' future sales, driving them to the brink of bankruptcy.
Just to complete your Bushwacko rhetoric, your "aren't worth the paper they're printed on" was Bush's comment about our Social Security "lockbox" that he looted, referring to the debt he owes us to finance his $3TRILLION annual budget, his $45TRILLION in committed debt. When, in fact, those Social Security debts, backed by US Treasury Bills, are by law the highest priority debt obligation of the US government. Bush is talking about defaulting on America's $TRILLIONS in debt, which would do for our country what he's been doing to the economy and the environment. And you're happily parroting his insane talking points. You really deserve the ecocaust you're courting. But I don't.
But Europeans are ruining their economies.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, Kyoto is fatally flawed because it seeks to manage the atmosphere by controlling emissions, rather than by mandating or establishing a carbon sink. And its a consumer pays treaty, not a producer pays treaty, so the USA would have to foot the bill, when OPEC should be.
Re:But Europeans are ruining their economies.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Kyoto has controls for both emissions and sinks. One reason Russia embraced it is that Russia does produce quite a lot of carbon fuels (they've got the world's largest reserves), but also has the largest area that can be reforested. They're in the carbon sink business. But the problem with your plan, which they'd favor, is that emphasizing the sink now more than the emissions would pass all that pollutiuon through the atmosphere. Like protecting polluters from liability as long as they clean it up later - or someone cleans it up later. Like exonerating a thief if they give back their loot when they're done using it.
Kyoto isn't the best, or last, solution to Greenhouse pollution. But it's better than nothing. The US has embraced nothing as our solution. Which is unacceptable, especially as Bush lied about responding to Kyoto with "something better", which he has certainly not. So Kyoto isn't good enough - it gets us all started, and gives us something to learn from. It's a global industrial policy, with our civilization's survival hanging in the balance. We've already squandered a decade ignoring it here, where we can best execute it for maximum benefit, so we have that much more ground to make up. Many scientists warn that the tipping point, beyond which accommodations like Kyoto won't be enough, might pass within a decade. It's certainly far too late to make procrastinating arguments for doing nothing, that merely build our polluting industries. We've got to do something to save ourselves, while we argue about what better we can do with the time that Kyoto has bought. Europe is making us look stupid, though we're doing at least half of the work to do so.
Dammit.... (Score:3, Funny)
The only clues were that sometimes
Re:Kyoto is useless... (Score:4, Informative)
I find humor in the root-level comment, but there is a deeper underlying issue with the Kyoto agreement that doesn't settle well with my view on it.
Sure the U.S. pollutes a great deal; we also use something like 1/6 of all of the world's resources. But to my understanding (and I may be wrong), we put out a lot less pollution than China or India.
I have family that has recently travelled to this part of the world, and they've had a hard time adjusting to the pollution that exists in that part of the world... Smog is everywhere I'm told.
Yeah, the U.S. can do a lot to clean up its own act, but the rest of the world has a long way to go, too.
Now, why should the U.S. foot the bill for the rest of the world?
It's not a liability, it's an opportunity. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately doing so would require both business and political leaders with vision. Something we lack bigtime.
Re:Kyoto is useless... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, perhaps you knew you were wrong in the first place, but besided to say it anyway? Well, yes you are wrong. The US is by far the worst polluter (OVERALL, not Per Capita) in the world. The difference is that they don't pollute into the heart of their urban areas, so it's not visible to the average citizen. Some statistics to back this up:
Carbon Dioxide Emissions [nationmaster.com]
Energy consumption [ourplanet.com]
The central argument of your whole post is destroyed when you discover that your basic premise is wrong. Everyone in the world agrees that there is man-made global warming. Only in the US has the propaganda been strong enough to still sustain a debate, no matter how senseless. EVEN BUSH finally admitted [bbc.co.uk] that humans are causing global warming. Perhaps you need to admit to yourself that it's possible you could be wrong, and that the attachment to your lifestyle and your nationalism is what makes you so apprehensive of seeing the truth.
Re:Yep (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Yep (Score:2)
The good news is, since he's posting on Slashdot, statistics are in your favor. The bad news is there'll never be a
and, (Score:5, Funny)
Nah (Score:5, Informative)
Tethys Sea (Score:2)
This is great! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This is great! (Score:2)
I don't think selling sand to arabs or ice to eskimos has been done yet, but give 'em time...
Re:This is great! (Score:2)
Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
With all of these benefits who cares about preventing damage to our environment?!</sarcasm>
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Informative)
Especially take note of this chart [junkscience.com]
Re:Wow! (Score:3, Insightful)
Your argument is a logical fallacy. It does not disprove a link between CO2 and temperatures on earth, it simply shows that it's not as simple and straight forward as you'd wish. If there was a 1:1 correspondence between CO2 and temperature anywhere, figuring this all out would be a piece of cake.
The fact that there isn't a 1:1 correspondence does not mean that there is no effect. It just means that the timescale and other factors affecting temperatures over the course of 5-30 years is not insignificant
And Yet... (Score:3, Interesting)
Fear mongering by Chrichton (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a little light reading for perspective:
http://info-pollution.com/mc.htm [info-pollution.com]
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050121/
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c
etc..
Good Point... (Score:3, Insightful)
The right way to judge a situation is not emotionally, or sentimentally, but through cost-benefit analysis. As an example, I'm afraid that environment==good :. kyoto == good is simply not a logical assertion. First of all, the environment is not intrinsically worthy... what makes a bunch of carbon atoms organized as molecular skeletons any more important than carbon atoms organized as a rock? You would be hard pressed to come up with a formula. Sentience on t
Re:Wow! (Score:2)
Re:Wow! (Score:2)
I am sure the dinosaurs really appreciated the climate change caused by that asteroid.
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Great. (Score:5, Funny)
Great. Add more pollution to the area. Just what it needs!
And thats not all (Score:3, Interesting)
Pacific islands aren't going anywhere (Score:4, Informative)
Not to mention the rising waters flooding pacific islands. Good trade off, cruise destinations in the pacific get flooded, and cruise destinations in the polar region open up.
Ever wonder why many Pacific islands are at sea level? Most are volcanoes eroded to sea level. They become atolls through processes of erosion and a buildup of calcium carbonate that form a ring around the eroded ediface. As sea level rises deposition by coral will equalize with rising sea level. Indeed, flooding by major storms is the *only* mechanism where new material is deposited above sea level at all! This is not new. It has going for the last 12000 years since the end of the last ice age as sea level has risen several meters. So relax, the Pacific islands aren't going anywhere. Why do people discard rational thought when discussing the Kyoto treaty?
North Polar icecap melt will (Score:4, Insightful)
Flooded = gone (Score:5, Insightful)
>
> So relax, the Pacific islands aren't going anywhere.
But anything built on them or growing on them will be going away if/when they get flooded.
The islands may indeed catch up to even something like a 5m rise in sea level, but even if it's in such a ridiculously short time as 100 years, that means (a) they cease to exist as islands for the near future, (b) they're scoured of all terrestrial life, and (c) all buildings and equipment on the islands are destroyed.
In other words, the islands are gone, at least as far as current human use of them is concerned. Witness what 5m of flooding did to New Orleans in just 3 weeks.
> Why do people discard rational thought when discussing the Kyoto treaty?
A fine question indeed.
Try telling that to the residents of Tuvalu (Score:4, Insightful)
The first thing I though of.. (Score:2, Interesting)
(I live in U.S.)
Re:The first thing I though of.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The first thing I though of.. (Score:2)
The first thing I thought of after reading the title was disenfranchised black people in new orleans
(I'm not black)
Pirates? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Pirates? (Score:2)
Re:Pirates? (Score:4, Funny)
How ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How ironic (Score:2)
And the circle of life continues.
DONT FEEL RIGHT (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Money : Because killing 6 billion people just to make some more was so worth it, now that it's totally useless because everyones dead and paper has no use when it's already doodled on.
Re:Anyone.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Anyone.. (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the thing, if there's more water, there's more weight on the crust, which will subside a bit. Cutting a long story short and without explaining the ins and outs of crustal isostasy, if your house, water source and farmland is above 75m in elevation, you'll be alright.
Otherwise, to quote Tool's very appropriate song Aenima, learn to swim.
Re:Anyone.. (Score:2)
This means that all you'll need to worry about is your neighbors who used to live lower on the hill deciding to move into your house. There'll probably be just about as much land area as ever...but it'll be in different places, and already claimed by someone.
You're essentially right, though. If this were happening slowly enough, there wouldn't be any pro
Re:Anyone.. (Score:2)
Everyone else reading this can go grab some ice cubes, put them in a glass, and fill it to the brim with water, and watch as it DOES NOT OVERFLOW when the ice is melted.
Eureka, d00d.
Re:Anyone.. (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Anyone.. (Score:2)
Waterworld wasn't a documentary about the future. It was fiction.
Even if the icecaps melt, the planet will not be underwater.
Re:Anyone.. (Score:2, Interesting)
If this does all goto hell then the entire eco system will change. Storms will be 10 times worse, the heat will be deadly.. Does it matter if we drown, die in a storm or heat stroke? Either way th
Re:Anyone.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of like that tsunami that hit indonesia a little while back. Tons of devastation, killed over 100,000 people. Wikipedia reports only 1200 deaths from hurricane katrina. Only 2000 US soldiers have died in Iraq. 200,000 Allied soldiers died during the battle of normandy. Americans don't even remember what real devastation is, and some have never ever experienced it. At least not first hand. They hear about it on the news, but it's hard to relate to pictures on a tv screen. Maybe this is why so many people forget how vulnerable we are. Because in the last 50 years, there has been very little in terms of real devastation.
Re:Anyone.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Anyone.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Anyone.. (Score:2)
It seems that advances in technology and the economy haven't been matched by the necessary advances in consciousness. Of course there is an intentional dumbing down of the population to make all this go down easier, but you still have to lay some blame at the people's feet - considering they think we live in a 'democracy'.
Re:Anyone.. (Score:2)
Re:Anyone.. (Score:2)
Six billion people dead? As another replier commented, that much land simply won't be lost. We won't be stuck in Water World, and while things will change there will still be enormous amounts of land left.
Your statements have no basis in fact. You may be interested to know that one of the big problems global warming will cause is not in fact floods, but droughts as places like China
Re:Anyone.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Nice work with the selective quoting, bub.
Very next line:
But the average temperature in Antarctica is -37C, so the ice there is in no danger of melting. In fact in most parts of the continent it never gets above freezing. [howstuffworks.com]
If we raise the average temperature on Earth by 37C, we'll probably all be dead anyway, so the flooding will be kind of irrelevant.
reminds me of a simpson plot. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:reminds me of a simpson plot. (Score:2)
Three eyes are better than two [studiostore.com]
New cruise ship destinations? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:New cruise ship destinations? (Score:2)
Works for me. Better surf to ride, more often. Let the damn condos go down in a cat V eyewall. The debris field might create a nice new reef with a fair decent wave breaking across it. With any luck at all, this Florida land boom will get snuffed out by hurricanes just like the last one did way back in the 20's. I've lived here all my life, but I'm not stupid enough to own any property. Let the sea level rise and take it all back. Fuckem. I'll just pack light and step ba
How can this be? Bush wasn't even alive. (Score:4, Funny)
This can't be right. George Bush wasn't even born then. How could there possibly have been hurricanes, or any other evil or dangerous thing?
Oh! I see: Halliburton Co., founded 1919. That explains it.
-ccm
Suddenly Canada becomes desireable! (Score:5, Funny)
How about some links showing the other side of (Score:2, Informative)
Lemmings for sale (Score:2, Insightful)
Gammar is important too! (Score:4, Informative)
An effect (n) is something that happens as a result of some action.
To effect (v) a change is to cause a change to occur.
A affect (n) is a feeling or emotion you feel.
To affect (v) something is to change it through your actions. To affect something is to effect a change in it.
Being the intelligent people we are, with great precision in our computer languages, let's not ride the wave of many technologists who believe they are too good to condescend to write English properly. Strive to do well in all things.
Re:Gammar is important too! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Gammar is important too! (Score:2)
Denial of global warming (Score:2, Funny)
First they say "there is no such thing as global warming."
Then they say "there is no proof that there is global warming."
Now they say "there is no proof that global warming is bad."
And they say "look, global warming is good!"
Soon they'll say "there is no proof that God didn't make this happen."
Then they'll say "it's written right here in the book that this will happen."
Then they'll say "it's one more reason to believe. God works in strange a
Sovereignty a huge issue... (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, Canada will probably roll over and let the U.S. have it's way on the sovereignty issue as we've done in the past when the U.S. ice breaker Polar Sea transited the Northwest Passage in 1985.
Re:Blame Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Blame Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Eep (Score:5, Funny)
Primarily, this will open up trades route with Hell, which incidentally is short on handbaskets.
Pretty rocks. (Score:5, Informative)
Still, global warming is not a plus for me. The ski season is getting shorter :-(
Re:Pretty rocks. (Score:2)
Well, down here in Arizona, we just had the best ski season of my whole life. It shat snow from October to May, a total of 459 inches for the year [webweevers.com] last season, and they've already had their first snowfall of the 2005-06 season. Our drought has finally broken.
If this be global warming, give me more, please. Selkirks be damned.
-ccm
help me out here... (Score:2, Insightful)
They also said we created the hole in the ozone; however in 2004 the hole in the ozone was record
Re:help me out here... (Score:2, Insightful)
The other day I thought my wife was having a heart attack, but hey I don't really know that, I only THINK that's what was happening. I'm going to wait a few more days to see what happens, and then I'll decide if it's worthwhile to take her to the hospital. After all,
Re:help me out here... (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that, the question of causes remains. Volvano activity certainly throws out a lot of C02, around one hundred and thirty to two hundred and thirty million metric tons a year [wikipedia.org]. In comparison the US produces around five billion metric tonnes a year by itself [wikipedia.org] convincingly dwarfing volcanic output. You also point the finger at solar activity, claiming it is ignored - it isn't. As you point out the IPCC includes it in their considerations and found, depending on the model used, that it accounted for effects of sixteen to thirty six percent that of those caused by CO2 and other greenhouse emissions [wikipedia.org]. There are questions as to how well solar activity actually correlates with global temperature [newscientist.com] as well, so it's an open topic.
On the other side of things: Our present understanding of physics is fairly unequivocal that CO2 and other gases can cause warming by trapping heat. Using ice cores and other methods to reconstruct historical CO2 levels we find that CO2 correlates extremely well with global temperature. We also find that CO2 levels have spiked beyond anything in recent history (recent history being the last four hundred thousand years) in just the last 150 years - again correlating extremely well with the recent acceleration in warming. Given the extremely good correlations and the clear reasons to believe in causation (which is to say, physics) it would seem that the burden of proof should fall to those who suggest human CO2 emissions are not having a significant impact on global temperatures.
Are we killing the earth? I doubt it - I expect the earth will simply get warmer and keep on going. The question is: are we making life for ourselves much harder and much more costly, and is that preventable? There is strong evidence that human CO2 emissions are having a significant impact on climate, and that is certainly the cause over which we have the most direct influence. It makes sense to do something about it if we can.
Jedidiah.
can someone say CRAP! (Score:2, Insightful)
Amazing, how stoopid humans are, we just deserve to be eradicated.
Great idea! (Score:2)
You first. If it's such a good idea, what are you waiting for?
-ccm
Sell You Some Swampland in (North) Florida (Score:2)
Maybe Bill Hicks was on to something... (Score:2, Funny)
Profit First! (Score:2)
Extinct animals or increased human prosperity (Score:3, Insightful)
Humans would have to give up their multi billion dollar coastal mansions and their riverboat gambling. Eskimos would have to get real jobs instead of living off welfare in the middle of nowhere. Antarctic scientists would have to shift to rainforest studies. There wouldn't be any more arctic polar bears.
On the other side, we'd consume much less energy for heating. 1000 less marines would die every year extracting heating oil from terrorists. Russia and Canadia would become inhabitable.
Re:Maybe we should worry about the ice, not profit (Score:3, Informative)
Dumb humans.
Re:Maybe we should worry about the ice, not profit (Score:3, Insightful)
"I can always buy air filters with my money," or something to that effect. It's gosh darn arrogant goatse-holes like that that make the world a harder place to live.
Your poor research has lead to false facts. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll put it in a voice that fellow geeks can understand. The skewed facts of global warming is much like that of music downloads effecting cd sales. Harvard did a study on it, and found out the facts wer
Re:Your poor research has lead to false facts. (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree the melting and re-freezing of ice caps are cyclical, and that stats always skewed, but you do realize that coastal communities are a lot less mobile than they were the last time the icecaps melted significantly? (And yes, I know that only the melting of one of the icecaps, the Antarctic, can actually affect sea levels). You can't easily abandon all the infrastructure in say New York and rebuild on higher ground, like a small tribe living in simple huts or cabins could.
Just because events are historically cyclical, doesn't mean we're better able to weather them.
Your poor research has led to pollyannaism. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=1352 [ucsb.edu]
"The research described in this week's article demonstrates that over the last 1.3 million years, sea surface temperatures in the heart of the western tropical Pacific were controlled by the waxing and waning of the atmospheric greenhouse effect. The largest climate mode shift over this time interval, occurring ~950,000 years before the present (the mid-Pleistocene transition), has previously been attributed to changes in the pattern and frequency of ice sheets.
The new research suggests instead that this shift is due to a change in the oscillation frequency of atmospheric carbon dioxide abundances, a hypothesis that can be directly tested by deep drilling on the Antarctic Ice Cap. If proved correct, this theory would suggest that relatively small, naturally occurring fluctuations in greenhouse gases are the master variable that has driven global climate change on time scales of ten thousand to one million years."
This study of plankton cores combined with the recent study of bog hardwoods puts all these "sun output" and "natural cycle" arguments to bed. Good night. Usually it's a large catastrophic event releasing trapped methane from ocean depths that cause it. This time we did it all by our lonesome -- or is that loathsome -- selves.
Chill out . . . it actually can be good! (Score:2)
The main portion talked about shorter shipping lanes. I see ships using 40% less fossil fuel to get the job done. This is good is it not?
The other part spoke of shifting stocks of fish. Snow crabs eat ice-algae which is receeding into Russia territory. Somebody's gonna harvest them no matter where they are. So this one is a wash. No real "impact".
The other fish issue
Re:Global warming (Score:2)
Re:No change in sea level (Score:2)
the density of ice to water is 0.92 to 1. therefore the difference in displacement for ice already submerged isn't an issue. in a closed system that means that displacement levels are higher before the ice melts as opposed to after, right? But what of ice that is not submerged and is therefore not currently displacing water?
I'm not a physicist, or even particularly good at math. Just curious.
Re:No change in sea level (Score:2, Informative)
The short answer is, no it doesn't matter. If the ice is floating, that means that the part above the water level is supported by the ice below water level - and the volume of ice below the water level will displace a volume of water whose mass is equal to the total mass of the iceberg.
I gave the main caveats in my other post on this thread - namely that this doesn't take into consideration any change in the volume of ocean water ca
Re:No change in sea level (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two other effects to consider however - you alluded to the ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica, which would have a much greater effect on sea level if they should melt or even just flow into the ocean faster than they do now. With the polar ice cap gone, the Greenland ice cap would probably move faster and possibly even disintegrate.
The other effect is that once you get above about 4 degrees C, water starts expanding again. So if the entire volume of ocean water becomes warmer on average, you may well get a rise in sea level even without the Greenland or Antarctic ice caps melting (the quibble is whether enough of the water will remain around 4 degrees C where it reaches minimum volume per unit mass - this is going to be difficult to compute because the effect of a melting polar ice cap on ocean currents is hard to predict accurately).