is there anything in the article about it's contribution to climate change? i didn't see anything, but would be interested in scientific work on the topic.

Story

"The scientists say the heat released by the explosions is not contributing to the melting of the Arctic ice,"

Wow...

Just wow...

And yeah man, I mean, mountains and mountains of magma and lava that's...THOUSANDS of degrees with incredibly high specific heats...yeah man...surely it doesn't have anything to do with melting ice. To someone who doesn't understand thermodynamics or heat transfer.

wow? just wow? what does that mean?

i trust littlewing more than scientists, so i'm wondering if he's done any scientific work on the matter.

The last thing I want to be, is negative... but realistically... the earth's condition/climate cannot be reverted to it's former state... Global warming, etc has been in effect for several years now... & we are all to blame... between lack of knowledge, simply being unaware... obliviousness & selfishness...

The other day, I heard a news anchor mentioning the climate change, etc.. & how certain plants that would not normally survive in cooler climates are thriving... & how the weather is showing severe fluctuation.. he genuinely seemed shocked & concerned that the 'world was in danger'... I couldn't believe that he suddenly had this epiphany...

It was mind-boggling to say the least.

You are voting for Obama aren't you sunshine?



It doesn't really take a whole lot of thought. When you have an ice bath, the water doesn't warm one single degree...until the ice is gone. Sure, water does have a tendency to hold an immense amount of energy. It has a remarkably high specific heat considering what it is. But when you start talking about mountains of hot iron that has a much higher ability to hold heat, and that heat is released into the ocean...it goes to the coldest place, and it rises. The artic ocean is just like the bottom of any ocean. It's roughly 3-4 degrees celsius. The energy from these significant volcanoes is going to one place, and one place only.

The only question to me, that remains unclear, is just exactly how large these volcanoes are.

If the natural world always stuck with common sense, what use would scientific query be to anybody? We could just have common sense debates, which by nature shouldn't take long, and it'd all be cleared up. We'd get the whole universe figured out, stat. When one of the professionals involved directly in studying these things states, without qualifier, that it isn't contributing to the ice melt, and nobody else in their field jumps up and calls bullshit, I'm inclined to recognize they might know something about it. I'm also inclined to use a lot of commas.

I'm fairly certained that the natural world is constrained to follow all applicable laws of thermodynamics, etc. I'm not sure I'm down with LW on this, as I'd expect any heating effect to be relatively localized. The oceans is a pretty huge heat sink.

On the other hand, the outlet water from nuclear power plants produces a stream of water several degrees warmer than the surrounding water a pretty good distance out. I'll get back to you after Thermal Design and heat transfer.

There'd be a lot more dead fish if it wasn't.

Thanks for quoting me, now my incorrect grammar will be recorded for all time.

Great page for causes of climate change: http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/faculty/lemke/g ... hange.html

note: Man is not one
but Milankovitch is.
rubyrubyruby

According to the article:

they [undersea probes] found dozens of distinctive flat-topped volcanoes that appear to have erupted in 1999, producing the layer of dark, smoky volcanic glass on the seabed. There are no volcanoes exploding in the area right now

This is not a continuing local phenomenon. And this explanation of global warming due to undersea volcanoes has been around since before the Gakkel Ridge volcanoes were discovered. Robert Felix, the main proponent of this "undersea volcano" theory is not a climate scientist:

Felix doesn’t haven’t any actual data or measurements to support his theory that volcanoes are warming the ocean. He just lists news stories about undersea volcanoes and asserts that they must be contributing a tremendous amount of heat, but without any actual numbers. Apparently Pearson finds this more compelling than the IPCC reports with all their silly facts and numbers.

http://timlambert.org/2005/06/pearson-c ... l-warming/

the new york times has a good piece on this:

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/ ... e-sea-ice/

Do you realize how absurd this is? Every IPCC study that comes out eventually owns itself. The IPCC reports...with their silly facts and numbers...like the highly reliable hockey stick graph.

I wonder if they're silly facts and numbers took into account large rings of volcanoes underneath all of the ice? Knowing the IPCC, probly not.



In this thing called science, there are recursive cycles. Ice melt is one of those cycles. When ice begins to melt, it has a tendency to accelerate as it melts. This is due to a number of factors, one important one is surface area. So when glaciers end up in a cycle of melting, one triggering factor can continue rapid accelerated growth for many years into the future. It's called a positive feedback loop. It's ironic because global warming proponents have a tendency to point out positive feedback loops when it comes to ice melt...

If the natural world always stuck with common sense, what use would scientific query be to anybody? We could just have common sense debates, which by nature shouldn't take long, and it'd all be cleared up. We'd get the whole universe figured out, stat. When one of the professionals involved directly in studying these things states, without qualifier, that it isn't contributing to the ice melt, and nobody else in their field jumps up and calls bullshit, I'm inclined to recognize they might know something about it. I'm also inclined to use a lot of commas.




I like this. If the natural world were common sense, we'd have common sense debates and everything would be clear. Except when it comes to global warming. In this case, everything is clear. I'm a holocaust deniar according to Al Gore. I mean, the debate on man made global warming...there is none. It's happening right? Do you seriously think that there are no detractors out there? I'm tempted to run the numbers to see if such things would have a substantive impact on ocean temperature myself, just to see if it is worth considering or not. It's weird, because there have been detractors that have pointed to increased tectonic activity in the oceans as a contributor to global warming for years. And when you talk about something like this?

In regards to science, often times there are nice relationships. That's why we have Laws in certain areas. I've verified numerous laws of science in numerous labs through actual application and running the math with my very own calculation. Often times, under the right circumstances, the laws hold. You can do this yourself really, if you don't believe me that water will not warm a single degree in an ice bath until the ice is totally melted, try it out. The scope and proportion of this is obviously on a totally different scale, but these laws hold true. The idea that someone can just unequivocally say that a volcanoe erupting of the size that buried Pompie would have NO EFFECT on the local ocean is just...well...it's hard to swallow. And then when you consider the unbelievable amount of pressure that is under 4KM of water...and the idea that there was an unequal force that was able to counteract that water pressure SO MUCH so that it exploded like Pompie...that's unreal. And when you consider all that latent, internal heat conducted into the water, plus the energy necessary to perform the explosion in the first place being absorbed by the ocean...it's a daunting concept.

Actually, LW, I don't think that anyone said that. A number of scientists have done calculations that explain why these eruptions, that are not occurring on a continuous basis, don't explain the ice melt. Remember that the Gakkel Ridge, 1999 eruptions aside, is an area of very low volcanic activity in general. But Andrew Revkin explains it quite well in plain language. It's part of the comments in the article c_b cited:

Surprise volcanoes and heat vents in the Arctic!

But I am sure our intrepid climate modelers have that included right?

http://www.scienceandthesea.org/index.php?option=com_co ntent&task=view&id=30&Itemid=10

[ANDY REVKIN says: No real surprise these days. The volcanic activity beneath the Arctic Ocean there been known for awhile now. Keep in mind it’s two miles below the sea ice, with thick intervening layers of water that don’t exchange much heat.]

— Posted by Bob B

Just total idiocy. Under normal circumstances, perhaps not. When you introduce any heat source, there is going to be convective heat transfer until the entire amount of energy from the volcanoe is totally absorbed into the ocean.