Sea Level Rise Can't Be Stopped 521
riverat1 writes "Sea level rise won't stop for several hundred years even if we reverse global warming, according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. As warmer water is mixed down into the oceans, it causes thermal expansion of the water. Under the best emissions scenario, the expected rise is 14.2 cm by 2100; under the worst, 32.2 cm from thermal expansion alone. Any water pumped from aquifers or glacial/ice sheet melt is added to that."
Bye Florida! (Score:5, Funny)
Serves you right. You let all those New Yorkers in and bad things happen....
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Serves you right. You let all those New Yorkers in and bad things happen....
Hope all those gators can adapt to a life at sea...
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bye Florida! (Score:5, Informative)
From the parent post
Well, we only have 88 years to deal with a foot rise in water. Damn, that's devastating, we'd better get right to work.
From the summary
...32.2 cm from thermal expansion alone...
I know it is easier to ignore reality, but I think the parent poster has gotten so used to ignoring science that he ignores the clear language in the article summary. Here is a fact: Most sea level rise will come in the end from melting glaciers. And the melting is accelerating.
So the "twenty feet by 2100" thing is gone now then is it Mr. Gore, cause, gosh, that sure sold a lot of movies books and carbon taxes.
Except that Gore didn't actually say twenty feet by 2100 in his movie. Here is a link to the transcript (pdf) [hct.ac.ae] of An Inconvenient Truth. I believe the passage that is often referred to occurs when Gore shows the maps of water inundated coast lines. Here is the transcript of that part of the movie:
If Greenland broke up and melted, or if half of Greenland and half of West Antarctica broke up and melted, this is what would happen to the sea level in Florida. This is what would happen in the San Francisco Bay. A lot of people live in these areas. The Netherlands, the low-countries: absolutely devastating.
The above statement is basically true. If you broke up the entire Greenland ice sheet, the rise in sea level would be catastrophic. Mr. Gore does not say this will happen in the next 100 years. It is a conditional statement. If something happens, then something else will happen. The time scale is not certain, though given recent trends in melting, three feet by 2100 is not unlikely. A basic search of recent literature will support this.
let's not beat around the bush (Score:3)
This is apparently Gore's equivalent of "I did not inhale" or "it depends on your definition of 'sex'". What this amounts to is that, in order to push his political agenda, Gore has been using technically true statements intended strike fear into people. And a lot of the advocates of action on climate change are doin
Re:Bye Florida! (Score:5, Insightful)
The above statement is basically true. If you broke up the entire Greenland ice sheet, the rise in sea level would be catastrophic. Mr. Gore does not say this will happen in the next 100 years. It is a conditional statement. If something happens, then something else will happen. The time scale is not certain, though given recent trends in melting, three feet by 2100 is not unlikely. A basic search of recent literature will support this.
A perfect example of how to be misleading without actually lying.
As opposed to the original parent post I responded to:
So the "twenty feet by 2100" thing is gone now then is it Mr. Gore, cause, gosh, that sure sold a lot of movies books and carbon taxes.
Which is an example of being misleading while actually lying
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So the "twenty feet by 2100" thing is gone now then is it Mr. Gore, cause, gosh, that sure sold a lot of movies books and carbon taxes.
Mr. Gore never said there would be 20 feet of sea level rise by 2100. He said that if all the ice on Greenland melted it would cause 20 feet of sea level rise which is an accurate statement. He didn't specify a time frame.
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Why say it in the context of a film about the need for immediate action then? I hate semantic pedantry like this - It's applying a fact to some completely irrelevant. If the ice on Greenland were to melt over a million years, he could use the exact same argument. This is a problem, since it diminishes research into what is actually happening _now_. It's a fuck up, IMO - it makes statements of no relevance to the current situation, and tries to make them relevant.
I believe in anthropomorphic climate chan
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Because its part of the big picture. The film was 1-2 hours and talked about a LOT of things. The reality is we dont know how bad its going to get , only that its bad. the film explored a range of scenarios at different time scales.
More to the point, as this very research shows, the effects of decisions made NOW will be with us for a LONG time to come. So yes, there is urgency. Even over the past ten years the *current* effects of climate change have become a lot more serious. Do we really need to spend ano
Re:Bye Florida! (Score:4, Funny)
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Since we built NY, I'm pretty sure we can also build a 1 foot tall sea wall.
pshaw! (Score:3, Informative)
Something tells me that 32.2cm won't affect all of Florida.
It's call tidal surge. And increased atmospheric energy leading to more frequent and more powerful hurricanes.
Florida's not going to be a very hospitable place to live or grow crops if large parts of it are under saltwater frequently.
Anyhow, screw future generations, I've got mine. They can just adapt to the new normal, they'll never miss what they never had in the first place.
Re:pshaw! (Score:4, Insightful)
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I think the current understanding is that global warming doesn't necessarily increase the number of hurricanes/tropical storms but I will likely increase their intensity. Look at what TS Debby did to the Florida panhandle.
Re:pshaw! (Score:5, Informative)
The only "theory" I know of concerning storms other than the obvious more heat == more turbulance is that the N. Hemisphere jet stream will ocillate more and the ocillations will move slower. This will increase the likeleyhood of Atlanitic hurricanes being "killed" by the sheraing of the jet stream, but on a global scale the monsoon rains will increase and the sub-tropic deserts will expand due to the more intense Hadley cells (Hadley cells = convection currents on either side of the equator that pump moist air up over the tropics where it dumps the moisture as rain after which the dry dry air falls down on the sub-tropical deserts). In other words heat will increase the amount of water traveling through the hydrological cycle, this is already happening as evidenced by the atmosphere already holding 4% more water vapour than it did 40yrs ago. Note also that the increase in water vapour is more evidence of a warmer planet since the atmosphere is basically chemically staurated with H20 and the only way to increase it is to raise either the temprature or the pressure (and I don't think gravity is any stronger than it was in the 70's).
So yeah, to a certain extent the jury is still out on storms. It's pretty certain we will get more floods/snow and more droughts/heatwaves but it won't necassarily comes via hurricanes and blizzards.
Re:pshaw! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bye Florida! (Score:5, Insightful)
32.2cm is the mean sea level rise. If you picture the ocean as one gigantic seesaw, it's how much the midpoint rises by, not the endpoints. The lever on either side of this midpoint is around 3200 km long. I will leave you to figure out the total area of any given slice your side of the midpoint - and what will happen to that during spring tide. Sure, low tide might actually be lower as a result, but I'm thinking that any land much below 32m below current sea levels will be in real trouble.
That's ignoring the ocean currents. Those help take hot water away from the Gulf of Mexico, so lose/weaken them and you get longer, more severe hurricanes.
And this is still ignoring the fact that much of the SE is reclaimed swamp. Water table shoots up, even if only 32cm, and you WILL lose houses nominally on dry land because they're not designed for that. You'll also lose your storm drains and sewage systems, so the survivors can expect massive outbreaks of cholera. If there are any survivors - the road system there basically uses sand as a foundation, so you WILL lose most of your road network and that means no possibility of evacuation when the hurricanes arrive. New Orleans had substantially evacuated before Katrina, you won't be able to. With South Carolina in the same boat - literally, there also will be far fewer places to evacuate to.
By 2112, everything from Florida to the middle of North Carolina will be an uninhabited, uninhabitable lost land, barren of all life. Nothing will survive there.
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OF course there will be survivors. People will move as it happens more and more.
That's not the question. the question is:
DO we want a long term planned systems of codes to handle the changes.
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Relax, it won't do that. It's just the salt water that'll shoot up; the fresh water will keep receding as before, and probably faster due to the hotter climate and thus greater need.
On the contrary, I expect there to be se
Re:Bye Florida! (Score:5, Interesting)
As for TFA, the phenomena of thermal inertia has been understood for decades (it's why the hottest weather occurs a month or two AFTER the summer solctice, and is also the origin of the "pluto is warming" canard). More and better data have added weight to that knowledge and more finely tuned our accounting of what mechanisim is responsible for what portion of the changes (such as the recent stories about the draining of aquifiers contributing to the rise). All this is because the IPCC avoids using data that is less that 2yrs old in it's reports, they're currently approaching the cut off date for new data to be added to the 2014 reports so you can expect to see these kind of stories over the next month or so. The next two years will be spent arguing over the expected 100k or so individual review critisisims of the draft reports.
Bad news unless you are in North Carolina (Score:5, Funny)
It will be ok in North Carolina since their legislature said you can only use linear extrapolations of sea level rise to plan building in coastal areas. Guess they didn't get beyond simple algebra in school (no quadratic equations etc).
Re:Bad news unless you are in North Carolina (Score:5, Informative)
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Algebra & seconds - both Arabic origins.
Ban Math and Time!
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That's why, once my kids hit elementary school, I left.
- a former NC resident.
Re:Bad news unless you are in North Carolina (Score:5, Funny)
Algebra? That sounds Arabic. Must be a terrorist training camp. Shut it down!
I heard they were working on weapons of math destruction!
Re:Bad news unless you are in North Carolina (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bad news unless you are in North Carolina (Score:4, Funny)
We don't need you Liberals telling us where Al Gore ithms got their start, you leftist hippy!
(And if you're not sure if I'm joking either, then God bless you))
Then wtf am I doing driving this Prius?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Should have known better than to try to save that ungrateful environment. I'm buying an SUV.
Suck my balls, you lying hippies!
Sell! (Score:3)
Time to unload all that beachfront property. 32cm is like, over 12 inches. That's gonna be noticeable.
Re:Sell! (Score:5, Funny)
32cm is like, over 12 inches. That's gonna be noticeable.
Somewhere in there is a "Your Mom" joke, straining against the seams to get out.
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Re:Sell! (Score:5, Funny)
Time to unload all that beachfront property. 32cm is like, over 12 inches. That's gonna be noticeable.
A-ha! I own the property just behind yours! I'm that much closer to having beachfront property!
I once opened a fortune cookie to read: You'll make your home in the mountains and by the sea.
I didn't realize it meant at the same time.
Overall rise (Score:4, Interesting)
Any water pumped from aquifers or glacial/ice sheet melt is added to that.
How big is the effect of thermal expansion in comparison to melting of ice? How much would be the additional rise in the worst case scenario?
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The effect of the cloud cover is not entirely clear yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_feedback [wikipedia.org]
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If the entirety of the Greenland ice sheet melted, over twenty feet of rise. There's a heckuva lot of ice sitting up on top of Greenland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet
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It's briefly touched upon in TFA (Score:2)
Does anyone have a map of affected low-lying areas? Can we get any visual depictions of the chaos to come?
People don't respond well to small numbers. Most can't understand the impact of them. Shouting, "The ocean will rise by 14cm!" only begs for the response of "Well that's only ankle deep..."
Can't we take what we've learned from marketing sodas to the masses and apply it to important doomsday scenarios like this? Where are all of the Don Drapers of the scientific world anyway?
Re:It's briefly touched upon in TFA (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, this: http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/
But that map makes even a 60m rise seem not bad at all.
Re:It's briefly touched upon in TFA (Score:5, Funny)
I know, I never liked Florida either.
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The panic, I'm missing it.
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But that map makes even a 60m rise seem not bad at all.
Seriously? 60m puts the states of Florida and Delaware underwater, half of Maryland and New Jersey, and major cities including Houston, New Orleans, Baltimore, Washinton DC, Boston, Philadelphia, and oh yeah New York City. That's well over 50 million people left homeless on the Eastern seaboard alone.
Internationally, also say goodbye to Shanghai, Tokyo, Nanjing, Pyongyang, Nanjing, Cambodia, Bangkok, Bangladesh, Denmark, The Netherlands, London, Sydney, Melbourne.... notice the trend where highly populat
Re:It's briefly touched upon in TFA (Score:4, Insightful)
I never get this kind of map. If you take their logic, Netherlands should already be flooded. As far as I can see from my window, it isn't.
Higher sealevel just means building some infrastructure against flooding.
You need a decent government for that. In the U.S., we knew for decades that much of New Orleans was going to be underwater if a decent hurricane hit it (I first learned about it in college in 1992). Nothing of substance was done.
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Global warming is a treacherous dutch plot to help their flood control engineering consultants. Fiendish.
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That map show sea levels. In high tide of low tide, not storms, not erosion, etc... What happened when level five hurricanes start hitting land happening monthly?
If the world was static, and the oceans still, then the map is what you would get.
It also doesn't take into account erosion.
That said, no one is really talking about a 'water world' The idea is stupid on the face of it.
But most people are talking about planning for future development of houses, cities ports, inward migration.
This is why deniers dri
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Where are all of the Don Drapers of the scientific world anyway?
Can't happen. Good scientists are honest.
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one of the Beetles died that way, jumping off a pier at low tide in a area with unusually low, low tides.
If you are referring to the band The Beatles, then no current or former member of the Beatles has ever died jumping off a pier into low tide. Stuart Stutcliffe died of a brain hemorrhage (not resulting from diving off a pier), George Harrison died of cancer, John Lennon was shot to death, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and Pete Best are all still alive.
Astonishing (Score:2, Interesting)
I really thought our cunning plan of exporting [institutef...search.org] our coal consumption to Asia was going to work. I mean, nothing that happens over there is in the Environment, right?
Yes we knew this (Score:3, Interesting)
This paper is just further evidence that we've already released enough CO2 to continue the warming trend. Even if all humans disappeared, like one of those History Channel Life After People episodes, the globe would continue to warm towards a non-ice age state.
Re:Yes we knew this (Score:5, Informative)
No, this paper is a theory. Observation of sea level rise is evidence.
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Hell yes! (Score:2, Interesting)
That coastal property I bought in Arkansas for 48 BTC is going up uP UP!!! My investments own.
remove excessive CO2? (Score:5, Interesting)
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We've been reforesting the U.S. for at least the past 15 years, and probably longer, but of course it is not enough.
Re:remove excessive CO2? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have actually thought about this.
Take something like kudzu. Evil vine that ate the south. It grows over a foot PER DAY.
Ok, plant it on an enclosed, circular growing area, with a slow moving, automated cutting system that continually dead-heads the vines, and keeps them inside. The cut off cruft is put into a hermitically sealed solar sintering system with sand, and heated to vitrefaction.
Carbon rich black glass is produced. The stuff would be more geologically stable than coal.
Slow, but could be nearly completely automated. Done on a large scale, you could remove tons of carbon from the atmosphere daily in rainy tropical areas.
vast energy required (Score:3)
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This may be a stupid question, but isn't there a way to collect massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, compress the carbon into some sort of solid composite, and store it somewhere where it's land-locked (similar to how trees store carbon in wood)?
Wouldn't it be much easier just to grow a crapload of fast-growing trees (since as you noted, they already do this very thing) and then bury or sink whatever wood isn't needed for housing and furniture?
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This may be a stupid question, but isn't there a way to collect massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, compress the carbon into some sort of solid composite, and store it somewhere where it's land-locked (similar to how trees store carbon in wood)?
Yeah. It's called an ocean. But it runs on its own timetable. Geological time, to be exact.
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Re:remove excessive CO2? (Score:5, Insightful)
Removing the CO2 is damn near impractical. However, even if we did it, it wouldn't be enough.
Any warming (should it exist) eventually is likely to cause two other effects...
1. an increase in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere (which is currently responsible for about 50% of the greenhouse effect compared to 20% for CO2).
2. an increase in methane clathrate [wikipedia.org] melting in the permafrost and ocean releasing large quantities of methane into our atmosphere. Methane is ~70x a potent a greenhouse gas as CO2 (but currently only accounts for about 7% of greenhouse effect)
Many speculate that if warming actually happens, these two effects could effectively cause run-away global warming. That's why people are thinking about how to block the heating from the sun (e.g., spraying particles in the air), not just sequestering carbon or just living with the consequences of warming. It's probably too late to just think about CO2. That ship has probably sailed...
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Hypocricy at its finest.
On the one hand, people proclaim their superior intellect and ability to understand the universe and make useful predictions of future events, and say it is what sets men apart from animals.
The on the other, they say and do shit like this.
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Natural sequestration is a punctured equilibrium.
Here's the scoop:
After the carboniferous period, brown mold and tree fungi experienced an evolutionary mutation that allowed them to digest a structural protein found in wood, which was previously undigestible. It was that indigestibility that allowed wood, leaves, and other bio matter to fall into peat bogs and not fully decmpose.
In the world today, where molds and fungus can completely decompose the organic substrate, such sequestration is impossable.
It is
Re:remove excessive CO2? (Score:4, Insightful)
At 468 passenger-mpg [wikipedia.org], people would take trains more often if the market failure were fixed by adding the external cost of carbon to the price of fuel. A demand curve [wikipedia.org] shows how price affects demand.
Thermal expansion? (Score:2)
What do Professor Vanessa and Dr. Dewey have to say about this?
Good news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that there is nothing we can do about it, the shills can stop pretending it isnâ(TM)t happening.
Already, Exxon has stated the obvious - burning fossil fuels is warming the planet by increasing the co2 level; however had to mute it with a statement that we can handle the change.
I suppose a whiff of honesty is better than before.
Listen and understand. (Score:5, Funny)
Not the worse (Score:3, Insightful)
But when I think of climate change, I think of longer periods of temperatures that are outside what a human can really aclimate to, and food can really be produced in. For instance, daytime temperatures that approach or go over 100F during the day and don't get under 80F at night. In Europe we are seeing another winter with temperatures staying at freezing for a continuous period. This is a concern because if we can't produce food, we can't survive. Look at the desertification of Africa. Look at the fight over water going on now in Texas and California. There are going to be some things that are just going to involving restructuring, insurance, and large writeoffs. This will be over and forgotten each generation, like the recurring banking crisis that hits us every 20-30 years. The other, like weather and temperature changes, are not going to be so easily fixed.
Take care of some of that excess housing stock (Score:3)
Particularly in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas. Sounds like a good thing to me.
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Since this is slashdot I don't expect you to read the article, but even a goldfish would have the attention span required to read the last sentence of the summary.
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It's is wildly unlikely someone will drown because they were caught unaware the water rose a meter over a century.
But it's quite highly likely that Florida will be declaring more and more natural disasters with greater and greater frequency since storms that now have an added foot, 2 feet or meter to build on are increasingly destructive.
And YOU will be paying for that since it's a 'national' emergency.
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As for sea-level rise due to aquifers, I'd be as much worried about aquifer depletion as about sea-level rise.
Gubdummit! One natural disaster at a time! Take a number and wait yer turn like everybody else.
;-)
Re:Not too bad? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a quick inventory of problems to cope with.
Florida has a maximum land height of 42 feet. A three foot rise in see level, plus shore erosion due to larger and more frequent storms could reduce Florida to a stub of the current state with central islands where the everglades are now.
Expanded erosion of barrier island and sand dunes along the gulf and eastern seaboard will eliminate thousands of square miles of existing shoreline, destroying some of the most valuable property in the country.
Much of the Mississippi delta and most of Louisiana will simply go away (a great deal of which is already below sea level due to subsidence from poor river engineering by the Army Corp of Engineers.)
The West Coast won't pass unscathed, because towns along the bays in both southern and northern California, will suffer significant land loss.
The simple fact is that the big cities of the world are virtually all coastal cities and as such will be seriously impacted. The amount of land shared be people and critters will shrink a couple percent (large coastal plains will be inundated... kiss Bangladesh and a number of small islands in the South Pacific goodbye.)
You bet we can engineer around it. Move cities slowly back. Build higher dikes and levees. Abandon places that are hopeless. Its just one more cost, and significant cost to consider as we continue to spew greenhouse gas into the air.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLlUgilKqms [youtube.com]
Re:Not too bad? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, for one, in the US alone, more than half the population [noaa.gov] lives in a coastal area.
Even if just 10 percent are directly affected, that's still a large number of people.
In the US, can you imagine all the lawsuits and politics about how to move people, does the government have the right to do it, does the government have the obligation to do it, and who is going to pay for it?
For countries like Indonesia that are mostly islands, or in countries or areas that are largely below sea level, this could result in a major loss of housing and usable land.
Anything that changes ocean patterns could affect shipping and fishing, both of which would be major blows to the global and regional economies. If we lose major fish populations, that will increase food prices, and if shipping becomes riskier, that will affect the price of virtually everything.
It's a lot more than avoiding getting wet.
Re:Not too bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Netherlands seem to be doing just fine below sea level. It might cause some economic harm, but it's not going to be a tragedy. Also, most low-lying islands are coral islands that follow sea level.
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You Sir are having a rational thought, which can be very dangerous to your karma around here.
Re:Not too bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Netherlands seem to be doing just fine below sea level. It might cause some economic harm, but it's not going to be a tragedy. Also, most low-lying islands are coral islands that follow sea level.
Do you have a clue how expensive the water management system in the Netherlands has been? Do you realize that the Netherlands is tiny compared with the areas under threat from sea level rise in the US alone? Hell, it's tiny even compared with Florida. Do you realize that duplicating the Dutch diking system for American coastal areas would likely bankrupt the country? Not to mention how future sea level rise will make it even more difficult for even the Netherlands to maintain the integrity of their diking system.
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well at least it would do something to the economy unlike our current politicians....
Re:Not too bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not too bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe I am being overly optimistic, but 14.2cm in 80 years doesn't exactly seem so bad (or even 32.2cm for that matter). Surely cities that are going to be effected will have ample time to relocate those in "danger".
Too right. Let's move them into the last Indian reservations.
Exactly where would you propose we move tens of millions of people? Not only Florida and low areas of the Eastern Seaboard, but gulf coast and low lands of Texas, right up to Houston are at risk.
Walt Kelly's Pogo -- We have met the enemy and he is us.
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Or sea level rise from magic. Or because Gaia hates George Bush.
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Re:RTFS - 14-32cm only for thermal expansion (Score:4, Informative)
Nope, it is densest at 4C. I know this from spending my summers swimming in 4C water. The thermoclines set up, you get a bottom of near-freezing water, and the visibility is spectacular.
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> Nope, it is densest at 4C.
that is only true for fresh water.
Re:RTFS - 14-32cm only for thermal expansion (Score:4, Insightful)
Water has no thermal expansion? Really? Basic physics huh?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Properties_of_water#Density_of_water_and_ice [wikipedia.org]
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2007/AllenMa.shtml [hypertextbook.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ww6BIy3nc0 [youtube.com]
And water is actually slightly compressible:
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/compressibility.html [usgs.gov]
Re:Nothing to worry about (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nothing to worry about (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The sky is falling... (Score:5, Funny)
It's a poorly understood fact that any unwanted facts can simply go "poof" if you scream LIBURAL LIBURAL LIBURAL over and over.
Re:The sky is falling... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because, of course, the laws of nature obey your political ideology.
Here's news, moron, the Universe doesn't give a fuck about Liberal vs. Conservative, Socialist vs. Capitalist. It does not fucking care. If pumping millions of years of sequestered CO2 into the atmosphere in the space of two centuries is going to cause serious climactic changes, it is absolutely fucking irrelevant who you fucking vote for, or whether you masturbate to Vladimir Lenin or Ayn Rand.
Fucking hell, you ideological fanatics are a tiresome, mentally handicapped lot. Don't like evolution because you think it falsifies your religion. Don't like acid rain or climate change because it means there are consequences to wide-scale and uncontrolled industrial activity. Don't like regulations because it kills your particular get-rich-quick-while-fucking-the-economy scheme.
Is there any part of you at all that isn't a selfish, greedy piece of stupidity? Is there any part of you that gives the least little fuck for anyone other than yourself? Or are you really the vile repugnant sociopathic troll you appear?
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How to respond...
Option 1: Wish I had mod points
Option 2: .... And breathe! Sometimes a good rant is what it takes.
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Oh, I wish I had ranted that. Well done.
Climatology became political because the fossil fuel industry spends a boatload of money on public relations to make it so. If they can stall the development and adoption of carbon-neutral energy technologies for even 10 or 15 years by spreading misinfomation and confusion, it still means hundreds of billions of dollars to them, and PR firms are cheap compared to that.
I've spoken with conservatives - a couple in my own family - who've never taken any interest in any s
water is much lighter than rock (Score:2)
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Or, home.
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You mean tourists?
Re:But then there's the laws of physics (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_expansion#Expansion_in_liquids [wikipedia.org]
Translation: You're a fucking idiot.
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cutting emissions is economically harmful
Why do you think that? I love the way everyone thinks change = sacrifice. Even the progressives fall into that kind of thinking.
A War on Global Warming would be economically beneficial. War stimulates the economy. And unless you've been in a coma for the last 5 years, you know our economy could really use some stimulating. Producing solar cells, wind mills, hydro power, biofuels would create a lot of jobs.
World War II made the Greatest Generation great. The next generation kept the Cold War cold.
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I was right, it is above your reading level.