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Many of you know that I despise lies and innuendoes in the media. NBC news has been caught out by me before, and today brings yet another "slip" in rhetoric that has the effect of deception. NBC Evening News tonight, Sept 16, 2019, 13 minutes into the broadcast after a story on a receding Alaskan glacier, the following is an exact quote: "Melting glaciers contribute to rising sea levels and warming oceans."
OK... Just HOW does water at 32 degrees contribute to WARMING oceans? Should I put ice cubes in my tea to heat it up?
There is NO excuse for a national news program to have such an IDIOTIC and FALSE statement in a broadcast.
Pardon me while I pour boiling water on the ice in my Kool-aid to cool it.
Harry, the person who said that was speaking non-comprehensively and maybe didn't have enough time to explain how it happens, but he wasn't entirely wrong, it's a real thing. It's called thermohaline circulation.
When icy cold melt water flows into a larger body of water it sinks to the very bottom and continues flowing along the bottom depths, displacing and forcing less cold water from the depths to rise up closer to the surface (called upwelling), where that cold water then becomes warmer and increases the layers of warming water at the surface. When there is a continuous flow of fresh glacial melt water sinking to the bottom, adding to and raising the sea levels there is also a continuous heating of all the surface water that has been forced up (welled up) from the bottom. It's causing the oceans to heat up.
So the cold water sinks, and the water above it has to rise. The water at the top will be heated anyway, and the net impact in history (according to your reference) was the Younger Dryas ... which was a "condition that reversed... warming."
So the cold water sinks, and the water above it has to rise. The water at the top will be heated anyway, and the net impact in history (according to your reference) was the Younger Dryas ... which was a "condition that reversed... warming."
I don't know about Younger Dryas or what it was. I just know what's happening now as a consequence of increasingly larger rivers of glacial melt freshwater flowing into the depths of the oceans and increasing the sea levels while altering salinity and causing the upwelled water to heat up. When all the glaciers are gone and no more icy cold melt water remains to flow into the salty oceans the sea levels will be about as high as they can get and the depths will be much, much deeper down and colder than what they are now. I'm assuming that over the course of time in the future the oceans will begin to cool down again (from the bottom up because it always stays coldest in the deepest depths) and as the oceans gradually cool again then all new life forms in the oceans can start again. But the oceans as we know them right now - today's marine life will cease to exist because of the extreme changes in salinity and increasing temperatures and dead zones.
I don't know about Younger Dryas or what it was. I just know what's happening now as a consequence of increasingly larger rivers of glacial melt freshwater flowing into the depths of the oceans and increasing the sea levels while altering salinity and causing the upwelled water to heat up. When all the glaciers are gone and no more icy cold melt water remains to flow into the salty oceans the sea levels will be about as high as they can get and the depths will be much, much deeper down and colder than what they are now. I'm assuming that over the course of time in the future the oceans will begin to cool down again (from the bottom up because it always stays coldest in the deepest depths) and as the oceans gradually cool again then all new life forms in the oceans can start again. But the oceans as we know them right now - today's marine life will cease to exist because of the extreme changes in salinity and increasing temperatures and dead zones.
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You have a whole different bunch of ideas and concepts in that post.
The Younger Dryas is easily referenced on Wikipedia, so we can skip that.
Cold water is generally more dense than warmer water (depending on salinity or other inclusions or contaminants) and it therefore settles towards the bottom of a reservoir or ocean. I think we are in agreement there. However, the upwelled water it displaces is not heated by that. Heat is an expression of energy, which is absent. The displacement does bring the upwelled waters into layers of warmer water (cooling those at the same time it heats the displaced water) and towards the surface where it can be heated by the sun and (to a much lesser extent) the temperature of the air. The surface area of the oceans being relatively fixed, I see no mechanism for significant additional heating.
"Dead zones" are dead less because of heat or salinity differences, and more because of lack of dissolved oxygen and/or the presence of toxins. Can warm water exacerbate toxin load from algae and organisms that thrive in warmer water? Yes.
Sounds good, except: the last glaciation that covered most of NA & N Europe/Asia started melting big time over 12,000 y/a. It melted very fast at first raising sea levels 300 ft over just a few centuries and has now slowed down considerably. I recently sited a graph here showing that sigmoid shaped sea level/time relationship. We're at the asymptote of the graph for the last several thousand yrs.
There's almost no land based ice left (it was a mile thick at it's zenith)), so the little bit of melting over the last couple thousand yrs is miniscule (<2mm/yr). That thermohaline cycle has been going on for these 12,000 yrs and is actually slowing down. The oceans, with or without glacier contributions, cycle anyway. Yearly precipitation of fresh water over land eventually finds its way to the sea. That contribution dwarfs ice melt from glaciers.
Keep in mind that over recorded history, Alpine glaciers have advanced and receded several times. We have at least one such cycle recorded for Alaskan/Canadian glaciers....Note that Otzi, the famous Italian man of 5000 y/a had been under a good deal of ice until recent melting exposed him, ie- glaciers had advanced after his death to bury him until they started to recede. During this most recent recession, trees long since dead (dated to 2000 y/a), obviously had to grow on exposed soil in the Roman Warm Period, and then were covered with advancing ice before they again became exposed.
Back to oceans & weather/climate-- the oceans control the air temps, not vice versa. You put the kettle for your tea over the flame. It would take too long to heat it with a blow torch above the water. How often have I heard the weatherman say "It'll be 32 deg in Chicago tomorrow... warmer near the Lake...or " It'll be 85deg in Chi tomorrow...cooler near the Lake."?
Harry's right about media coverage. Look what CNN just did-- a 7 hr lie about GW. They had nary a single voice expressing the opposing view. Not very scientific. It's a political thing. Not a scientific one.
They didn't mention that GHG Theory is just a plausible theory with exactly ZERO experimental evidence that it actually affects the climate...That the temp record has been tampered with and the margins of error are so great anyway that it is meaningless...That the ONLY evidence the Warmists can present for their theory is based on computer models programmed to spit out the results they want to see....
...and then they expect us to change our lifestyle in such a way that will prevent all the advances made by Mankind thanks to fossil fuels and will cost $6 QUADrillion with no evidence that it will actually make any difference.
"Dead zones" are dead less because of heat or salinity differences, and more because of lack of dissolved oxygen and/or the presence of toxins. Can warm water exacerbate toxin load from algae and organisms that thrive in warmer water? Yes.
I think the dead zones exist more due to the dirt (literally) blocking sunlight thus disrupting the photosynthetic portion of the food web.
The dead zone in the Gulf of Mex is a good example. The Miss. Delta was growing naturally as most eroded soil was deposited there and only a small portion made it out into the gulf. (There was always a dead zone there due to that dirt.)..Then the Army Corp of Eng dredged the channel for shipping and the delta has stopped growing. The faster, deeper river effluent now is thrown farther out into the gulf ,increasing the size of the dead zone....Sure there's more chemicals and such, but Nature has away of adapting to that. It can't get by without sunlight.
You have a whole different bunch of ideas and concepts in that post.
The Younger Dryas is easily referenced on Wikipedia, so we can skip that.
Cold water is generally more dense than warmer water (depending on salinity or other inclusions or contaminants) and it therefore settles towards the bottom of a reservoir or ocean. I think we are in agreement there. However, the upwelled water it displaces is not heated by that. Heat is an expression of energy, which is absent. The displacement does bring the upwelled waters into layers of warmer water (cooling those at the same time it heats the displaced water) and towards the surface where it can be heated by the sun and (to a much lesser extent) the temperature of the air. The surface area of the oceans being relatively fixed, I see no mechanism for significant additional heating.
"Dead zones" are dead less because of heat or salinity differences, and more because of lack of dissolved oxygen and/or the presence of toxins. Can warm water exacerbate toxin load from algae and organisms that thrive in warmer water? Yes.
Yes. And what causes lack of dissolved oxygen which causes dead zones? Heat. Cold water holds dissolved oxygen. If water is too warm it cannot hold enough oxygen for aquatic organisms to survive. The more warm water there is, the more and bigger the dead zones become. The lower organisms in the food chain die, and consequently in ascending order all the higher organisms in the food chain die, all the way up the chain to the apex predators at the top of the chain.
Have you heard about the newest "Blob" (a marine heat wave) that has appeared in the Pacific just this late summer? It's so big this time (and it's only a baby right now, still growing) presently its length stretches from Baja to Alaska and its width is from the west coast of North America to Hawaii. It's just getting started, only confirmed in the past couple of days as having definitely formed. It's being called the “north-east Pacific marine heatwave of 2019” .... aka The Blob. These things kill marine life, and that's including marine mammals.
Many of you know that I despise lies and innuendoes in the media. NBC news has been caught out by me before, and today brings yet another "slip" in rhetoric that has the effect of deception. NBC Evening News tonight, Sept 16, 2019, 13 minutes into the broadcast after a story on a receding Alaskan glacier, the following is an exact quote: "Melting glaciers contribute to rising sea levels and warming oceans."
OK... Just HOW does water at 32 degrees contribute to WARMING oceans? Should I put ice cubes in my tea to heat it up?
There is NO excuse for a national news program to have such an IDIOTIC and FALSE statement in a broadcast.
Pardon me while I pour boiling water on the ice in my Kool-aid to cool it.
It's called the albedo effect. White surfaces reflect heat back into space while dark surfaces absorb the heat instead. It's like getting into a black car on a hot day versus getting into a cooler, light colored car.
I think you guys are overthinking what happened on NBC news. Either the writer or the announcer transposed the phrase. It should have been: ""Melting glaciers and warming oceans contribute to rising sea levels."
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