muddysmind.com

You have it wrong muddy.
North pole has no land. When the north pole melts, there fore, as you pointed, the sea level barely moves.
South pole on the opposite is a huge continent, recovered with a huge ice layer. WHen that layer melts, it adds to the level of oceans.

I can reassure you that even if ecologists were incline to bias the facts (and they may at times) they would not make those basic errors.

(Only Bush can do such tricks ...)

rising sea level is not the worse risk for industrialised countries. It will mostly affect tiny islands and countries like egypt and bangladesh.

On the other hand global warming is a serious problem, already started and felt. That's the biggest on the list (drought, flood, climate change...)
+ disappearing fishing stock. more and more species are dangerously declining in number.
+ ozone hole still a risk
+ exhaustion of clean water resources
+ reduced variety in the seeds vegetable and animal grown and bred on earth so increased risks of global pandemia ...

Just for the next time, I did a google check, looked for south pole
http://astro.uchicago.edu/cara/vtour/pole/
Nice website with picture.
It mentions the fact that there are 2 miles of ice thick. it is wide also looks like 5000 kms long. I can't find the exact superficy. Let's say 6000 square miles.
Makes 12000 cubic miles of ice ready to leave the continent and run into the sea.

+ remember there's quite a lot of ice in Canada, groenland russia and hymalia.

LAstI checked, water expanded when it froze, so...if the ice caps were melting, overall volume should go down.

There are alot of other factors that affect sea levels: juvenile water, the moon slowly receded fromt he earth.

Well DF that just goes to show that I'm human as well. :-)

polar ice caps would raise the water level if they melted. the ice is on LAND. antartica is a continent. if it was just solid ice and no land mass, it wouldnt be considered a continent. it would be like the north pole which is frozen icebergers but not land.

it wouldnt be like ice melting in a glass, it would be like putting More ice in a cup and making it overflow.

That is true enough, but the last data I saw, said on one area of the south pole was melting. The rest was expanding.

MY original point was sea levels have been rising for millenia. The latest measurements range from 7-12" per year. 7-9" by tide gauge, 12" by sattelite, at a constant rate when mesaured by sattellite.

no harm done muddy

The south poles average temperature is way below freezing. that means it is too cold to snow. Therefore the south pole is classified as desert because it recieves so little snow. if the temp rose, it would start snowing and increase the ice. This would decrease the sea level.

I say to heck with the environment, lets protect mankind!

The fact that sea level would rise is not the part of global warming we need to worry about. Rather the freshening of the oceans which in turn affects the MOR (Meridonal Overturning Circulation). Freshening of the oceans can drastically affect the earth's climate; mainly through slowing down the latitudinal distribution of heat. Global warming is inevitable, however past climate reconstructions demonstrate that the present temperatures are not drastically different than those in the past. It's really a double-edged sword because the fact that the human input of greenhouse gases has most likely saved us from entering an ice age. Yet, it may also be the driving force to put us into an ice age.

I think it is both halarious and arrogant as hell to think that we have any real control over mother nature.

Sky everybody agrees with you. Nobody here claimed that humans control the climate.
That's precisely the problem. We're doing things at a huge scale and we have no control whatsoever of the consequences.
There s no doubt that greenhouse gaz emissions have an impact. That impact is already seen and felt in most of the regions of the world. What will the long term impact of these emissions be ? Nobody knows for sure, but one thing is sure they will change something. Change of course will incurr at a cost, humans will have to adapt to the new environment.
In cooling areas, in drying areas, in warming areas, in "watering" areas, lot of things will need to change. Cities may have to be relocated because of higher rivers, agriculture may have to change because of less or more water supply. Etc.

It is highly probable that the cost of reducing emissions right now are much less than the cost of facing the consequences of a changing climate later. Especially since we can't really know for sure what these changes will be, but have every reason to think that they will happen in a drastic manner.

Hopefully though, the upcoming world depression will reduce gaz emissions. And the low levels of oil remaining will severely limit emissions afterwards anyway.

We don't have control over mother nature we have influence. These types of influences lead to an unknown threshold being crossed, ergo entering an ice age.

I think the biggest issue is not whether or not we should try to conserve the enviroment, but more how we go about it. No one want sto destroy the enviroment, but the things that have been suggested to "Save" it (when we really don't know that it needs saving! we really don't know the eventual outcome since there are so many variables) will destroy our economies. What good is a sound enviroment when we can't even feed ourselves?

Let's not forget that the "greenhouse gases" can also have upsides. For instance, the increased carbon dioxide emmissions have stimulated plant growth and it is actually causing the sahara to shrink!

We're also forgetting that a single volcano emits more greenhouse gases every year than all of mankind put together. That's not forgetting other natural causes of greenhouse gases.

Nobody ever suggested anything that would destroy anyone's economy. In fact, the kyoto protocol is rather weak.

However currently, with each day passing by the USA through their emissions of green house gazes are hurting all the other economies in the world.

Their is not a doubt that altering climate will incur great costs. Their is not a doubt either that investing now to save costs later, is profitable. The only problem is that those paying later (those suffering from pollution later, say average man, farmers) are not those causing the pollution in the first place and needing to curb its pollution (car driver, plane taker)

Kyoto is weak on the enviroment and painful to the US economy.

It's false. The US have very polluting devices, they could reduce pollution at lower prices than european companies who have much better track record already, therefore they would be able to sell lots of emission permit.

Those who gain the least in kyoto are the europeans.

More over it is TIME the US economy cools off. Really is.

Lower prices doesn't make it any less painful.

why is it time for our economy to cool off? So that Europe can become more conomically powerful than us? Is that the motivation for that statement?

nope, the problem is the individual level of pollution.
Right now with 5% of the population, the USA are responsible of 25% of green house gaz emissions.
The same could be said about oil burned, and pollution in general.
THere are two reasons why the USA are such a nuisance as polluters to the rest of the world :
1 they are careless about the environment. The most careless country on earth, europeans japanese have much better anti polluting device, and they are far very far from perfection.
2 the USA are richer than the others, too rich in fact.

If all the earth inhabitants were to work and spend like americans, earth would be a vast garbage, oil would be in immediate shortage etc.
In fact, the american way can not be generalised, it is just a priviledge to those who have the guns and get to do whatever they please, and forget about the rest of the earth and forget about the next generation.

That is why the USA have to become poorer,not so that others become richer, but so that every body becomes poorer.
Being rich means in its present definition overspending earth resources, it means stealing earth resources to others and future generation.
Because being rich is a theft, the number of rich people and the level of their wealth has to be curbed down.
That's the basic.

Now may be, spending patters will change, and rich people will start to behave, so that may be it won't be necessary to reduce their numbers and the level of their wealth. It 'd be nice if they started to grasp that indeed it is time for them to change.
However Bush does not seem to have grasped that idea.
This is why the american way is doomed, because it refuses to change and adapt to the new conditions we leave in. An era of finite resources, where you can't just exploit mother earth without caring of consequences.

I just got into blogging and I absolutely love it, so thanks, I keep track of this blog as well as 5 others so far.

Well, welcome aboard, Bruce. The more the merrier.:-) Feel free to check out the forum too - if you'd like.