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Re: Life Duty Death & Denial
John DeLaughter (jed@nam.earth.nwu.edu)
19 Sep 1995 15:44:21 GMT
In article <43ldu0$5qc@guysmiley.blarg.net> warrl@blarg.net writes:
>jed@juand.earth.nwu.edu (John DeLaughter) wrote:
>>The addition of the ice to the oceans should not *directly* affect the
>>temperature of the oceans too much; remember that the Anarctic ice cap
>>has a total mass of about 1% of the oceans. (Imagine one ice cube in
>>a *big* glass of water.) However, since the sea level would rise by
>>about 60 m (~200 ft), there would be created many large shallow water
>>regions. These might then trap the sunlight, increasing the oceans
>>temperature, and warming things up. Offsetting this would be the increased
>>primary productivity, which would decrease the amount of CO2 in the
>>atmosphere, which should lower temperatures a bit.
>
>Don't forget that H2O is a decent greenhouse gas.
H2O is a mild greenhouse gas (about 1/10th as effective as CO2), but
it also acts to cool the atmosphere. Remember that increased water vapor
leads to increased cloudiness, which increases the amount of energy
reflected back into space before it can heat the atmosphere. As I said,
this is *not* an easy problem; I know people who have spent the last
twenty years on it - and still haven't found a complete solution.
John DeLaughter
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