Ice and Ocean Levels

OK - I can't stand it anymore. All this is absolute nonsense. In what I call the the "Al Gore effect" there seems to be a commonly held belief that if the Arctic ice melts all our shoreline property will be inundated by a rising ocean level. This is just more example of the junk science that the scientifically ignorant media loves to repeat.

Message to Al (and the media) - ICE IS LESS DENSE THAN WATER. Get it. That's why it floats and why we have ice on our ponds and lakes to skate on in the winter. The fact is that if all of the Arctic ice at the north pole melted our ocean level would actually DECREASE since the volume of water that ice displaces is greater than it would create if it melted.

Most folks understand this from real life. If I have a glass of ice water that is mostly ice, as the ice melts my glass does not overflow. In fact if one were to measure the level in the glass as the ice melts the level drops. Isn't that interesting???

All this anthropogenic global warming hysteria is more scaremongering about the "effects" of climate change as a way to drive politically motivated outcomes related to economic choices that we face as individuals and as a nation.

While it is true that if the Arctic icecap melted polar bears may have to revert to land based scavenging rather than ice floes for their food, this is not the end of of the western world. And by the way the bears themselves seem to do very well at this operating out of land bases in Canada.

It gave me great pleasure to see a documentary today that finally revealed the deep division among "climatologists" about whether the global climate is being set up for a hot house effect (a la Al Gore's inconvenient "untruth") or another mini ice age.

As I have stated in earlier blogs on this site the earth's climate is more a function of its own volcanism, the sun's varying output of total energy, and variations in the earth's eccentric orbit around the sun. My point is that man's influence on the whole outcome is and will be like pissing in the ocean, and I am gratified that even the "experts" are unsure and divided about what this all means.

We need to stop worrying about global warming and start moving forward with sensible solutions (a.k.a nuclear power and an all electric transportation system) to our long term energy needs.