A small article in the NY Times last week got me thinking about the limits of human intelligence.
For years we have assumed that global warming would result in the rising of tides and the loss of coastline as the ice caps melted. Al Gore, in his movie, showed graphically how the Florida peninsula would be reduced to a little pencil-thin strip of land as the water rose. And Manhattan has been depicted as disappeared with a few tops of the tallest buildings poking above the waves.
Well, science has begun to measure the affect of the shrinking glaciers and, guess what? In all our speculation about the rising tides, we forgot to figure that glaciers have weight. And when that weight is removed from the land, the land actually rises and the waters recede! Studies of both the north polar icecap and Greenland have measured an increase of coastline, up to thirty feet more beach in Greenland where the melting has been very severe.
How about that? More waterfront property to uglify!
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The same volume of ice weighs less than water since water expands on freezing. However, Archimedes' Principle makes it clear that water level should neither rise nor fall when floating ice melts. However, there are two caveats:
ReplyDeleteOne, if the ice in question is fresh water, not sea water, the level WILL rise since melted fresh water has greater volume than the volume of denser salt water it displaced. This is the case at the South Pole.
Two, if the ice in question were partially or wholly supported by land (either ice above sea-level or at the bottom of the body of water), the level WILL rise.
Who wrote the article, a geologist from Exxon-Mobil?
We might try splicing human gene components into beavers and start building dikes, instead of the way these German scientists (just Mengele enough to give one the shivers) messed with mice:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17206-human-speech-gene-gives-mouse-a-baritone-squeak.html