Glaciers melting

[Cookiely]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/02 ... index.html
What effect if any does this have on hurricanes?

[f5]

if to much cold water gets into the ocean it can shut down the conveyer belt which would put us in another ice age.it all has to do with salinity

[Hybridstorm_November2001]

Yup. That is the theory anyhow.

[HURAKAN]

Yup. That is the theory anyhow.

I hope we don't have to prove if it's just a theory!

[Jim Cantore]

if to much cold water gets into the ocean it can shut down the conveyer belt which would put us in another ice age.it all has to do with salinity

my thoughts exactly

[JonathanBelles]

could this cause an ice age?

[MiamiensisWx]

If is occurring, it might cause something similar to that...

[Hybridstorm_November2001]

I sure hope not

[senorpepr]

could this cause an ice age?

See the following...

if to much cold water gets into the ocean it can shut down the conveyer belt which would put us in another ice age.it all has to do with salinity

[Brent]

could this cause an ice age?

See the following...

if to much cold water gets into the ocean it can shut down the conveyer belt which would put us in another ice age.it all has to do with salinity

[x-y-no]

It's extremely improbable that the Greenland shelf could melt fast enough to freshen the North Atlantic to the point of shutting down the THC.

The past events which caused such a shutdown were far more rapid - for instance the Younger Dryas event occured when the ice dams broke and Lake Aggasis drained into the Atlantic over a period of just a few years.

[f5]

its not a matter of if its a matter of WHEN.the planet has had several ice age some small and some big and their have even been catastrophic ice ages that covered the whole planet.people who study rocks say that at one time ice covered the whole planet.how would you like to see a snowstorm in the amazon?

[x-y-no]

its not a matter of if its a matter of WHEN.the planet has had several ice age some small and some big and their have even been catastrophic ice ages that covered the whole planet.people who study rocks say that at one time ice covered the whole planet.how would you like to see a snowstorm in the amazon?

The Cryogenian Period ended 635 million years ago, and conditions are very different today. For one thing, multicellular life has evolved since the last "snowball Earth" event. Also, the continents are distributed closer to the poles on average (they were mostly distributed around the equator in the Cryogenian, and this is thought to have been a factor in the extreme instability of the climate).

That said, while the climate seems to be more stable now than it was back then, it is still by no means entirely stable. Thus we should properly be very concerned about the perturbation we are forcing on the system.

[f5]

its not a matter of if its a matter of WHEN.the planet has had several ice age some small and some big and their have even been catastrophic ice ages that covered the whole planet.people who study rocks say that at one time ice covered the whole planet.how would you like to see a snowstorm in the amazon?

The Cryogenian Period ended 635 million years ago, and conditions are very different today. For one thing, multicellular life has evolved since the last "snowball Earth" event. Also, the continents are distributed closer to the poles on average (they were mostly distributed around the equator in the Cryogenian, and this is thought to have been a factor in the extreme instability of the climate).

That said, while the climate seems to be more stable now than it was back then, it is still by no means entirely stable. Thus we should properly be very concerned about the perturbation we are forcing on the system.

i will not go into the creation/evolution arguement instead i'll just stick to the weather

[MiamiensisWx]

Huh, f5?

[curtadams]

An ice age is very, very unlikely. The current type of ice age didn't start until CO2 levels dropped below 200 ppm about 1 million years ago. It's now up to 376 ppm - characteristic of 15 + million years ago, and there were no ice ages them. If we were at normal CO2 levels, Greenland melting might cause an ice age, but we're not.

Of course, flooding every port and sea delta on the planet is quite bad enough.

[Jim Cantore]

an ice age would be a disaster for some, a blessing for others

[brunota2003]

Once again...Heard of the "Little Ice Age"??? Here is when it happened: Quote:

The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of cooling lasting approximately from the 14th to the mid-19th centuries, although there is no generally agreed start or end date: some confine the period to 1550-1850. This cooler period occurs after a warmer era known as the Medieval climate optimum. There were three minima, beginning about 1650, about 1770, and 1850, each separated by slight warming intervals

Interesting huh??? Before the LIA, the earth was about as warm or warmer as now, England had grape venards...ok...and everyone was prospering...then the LIA set in and everything came to a crashing and falling hault...literally

[brunota2003]

Here is more: Quote:

With each climate change, whether global or local, ecological communities shifted north or south or were disrupted, leading to the creation of new groupings of species. Likewise, human cultures were uprooted and driven to more favorable locales, or people adapted by changing their technologies and behaviors.

About 6,000 years ago, for example, during a period known as the "Holocene Maximum," global temperatures were about 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than today. Rainfall patterns also were different. For example, in what is now the arid core of the Sahara desert, hippopotamuses and crocodiles thrived in lakes and swamps. Moister conditions in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley aided the development of agriculture and humanity's first great civilizations in these regions.

Then global cooling dropped the temperatures to a little cooler than they are now, and living things shifted again. Earth didn't warm appreciably until about 2,000 years ago.

During the present millennium there was a period of relatively mild climate called the Medieval Warm Period, lasting from about 1000 to 1300 AD. As with the Little Ice Age, its timing and effects varied from region to region, and many experts doubt that the Medieval Warm Period was a truly global phenomenon. In East Asia, for example, temperatures were cooler.

Europe, though, enjoyed an undeniably balmy climate during the early medieval period. Agriculture flourished farther north and at higher elevations on mountains than is possible even in today's warmish climate, and harvests generally were good.

Farmers raised wine grapes in England 300 miles north of present limits, and in what now are icebound parts of Greenland, Norse settlers grazed sheep and dairy cattle. In his book Climate History and Modern Man, H.H. Lamb noted that the great burst of cathedral-building and population expansion in medieval Europe coincided with the peak of the Medieval Warm Period.

By about 1400, the climate had cooled to temperatures comparable to today. Over the next century or two, the world would cool still further, bringing on the Little Ice Age.

You can read the rest of this here: http://www-earth.usc.edu/geol150/evolut ... IceAge.htm

[brunota2003]

About 6,000 years ago, for example, during a period known as the "Holocene Maximum," global temperatures were about 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than today. So evidently, the earth has been warmer, and it isnt completely our fault...it appears to happen in cycles...
From the article above: Quote:

Most of the Little Ice Age occurred well before the Industrial Revolution and the widespread burning of fossil fuels, so scientists are confident that its climatic convulsions had purely natural causes. The event fascinates scientists because it gives them a glimpse of how Earth's climate system operates when left to its own devices.

For the rest of the theory please visit this topic: http://www.storm2k.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=81084