Tuesday, January 29, 2008

tip of the iceberg?

I just read in Holland they are designing floatable villages with buoyant foundations to accommodate the rise of water levels caused by global warming. This reminded me of a question:
Water has 3 states solid, liquid, gas. Solid expands and gas evaporates into the atmosphere. The vast, frozen base of the iceberg is submerged, thus "the tip of the iceberg." So when the icebergs melt from their expansive state into a decreased volume liquid state shouldn't the sea level go down. Furthermore, when the temperature increases shouldn't it cause more evaporation in the tropics waters and thus causing more decreases in ocean levels. All this evaporation is what causes the weather pattern changes (El Nina, and El Nino). So, shouldn't the sea level fall?

This one time my roommate left a cola in the freezer and it blew up.... looked like somebody took a frozen crap in the fridge.

2 comments:

Derrick said...

Oh you are writing again. I'm so proud of you.

Lots of thoughts here, but I am too lazy to write them. But as for you iceberg question, I will reply.

Although Ice is an expansive state of liquid water, the melting of icebergs will not make water levels fall. It will NOT make water levels RISE either. If you don't believe me try an experiment. Put some water in a glass, then add ice cubes (put as many as you want as long as there are none that above the water line -- floating is okay). After a while, the ice will melt and the water line will be exactly the same. The concern comes when giant ice shelves in the arctic and antarctic begin to melt. These are OUT OF THE OCEAN. Hence, they will melt and tons and tons of water will run into the oceans. This is why the oceans will rise.

An inconvenient truth explains this very well, if you don't understand me.

And I feel like a dork now.

Anonymous said...

but the majority of the arctic shelf is ice with very little land mass