Glaciers melt, sea level drops

I think that the writer below is wrong in one minor detail. It is true that ice has a larger volume than the water that it contains but the effect when floating ice melts is to leave the water level unchanged. The "missing" volume is the bit above water level. His basic point that melting land-based ice can cause the apparent sea level to FALL is however correct

Actually it is the land that is rising. More on that later. But just as the Church of Global Warming overlooked the possible effects of a drop to zero in solar activity, it seems these Brainiacs overlooked the effects of ice melting.

They have been saying the melting ice will cause the sea to rise. But when sea ice melts the sea level drops. Ask Archimedes about water displacement.

When glaciers melt (ice on land) the sea gets more water. But the land rises, too. At least in Alaska it has been rising.

“The geology is complex, but it boils down to this: Relieved of billions of tons of glacial weight, the land has risen much as a cushion regains its shape after someone gets up from a couch. The land is ascending so fast that the rising seas — a ubiquitous byproduct of global warming — cannot keep pace. As a result, the relative sea level is falling, at a rate ‘among the highest ever recorded, according to a 2007 report by a panel of experts convened by Mayor Bruce Botelho of Juneau,” the New York Times reported.

Now we know that shorelines shift over time. It has nothing to do with mankind producing carbon dioxide.

The predictions of the ice melting and swallowing up San Francisco as sort of a modern version of Sodom and Gomorrah is amusing. The adherents of the Church of Global Warming use parlor tricks and the general lack of knowledge among the general population to push this phrenological-style pseudo-science.

The New York Times story contains not one benefit — other than golf course — of the expansion of the land surface of Alaska. The story is as mournful as missing the glaciers that melted and gave us the Great Lakes after the last Ice Age ended.

SOURCE

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

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