I'm taking a bit of liberty here. I am using "sea level rise skeptic" as a stand-in for another forum member, because this isn't just about that other forum member. The identity of that other forum member could be discovered by scrolling through another of the current or very recent "rinselberg" topics, but I think there are some (if not many) who would be reluctant to do that, partly because it is another "rinselberg" topic, and partly because of how that other topic has been titularized. This is my bid to find a (slightly) larger readership. Larger than zero. So now, without further ado, here is the crux of the matter. All that follows.

Are you a "sea level rise skeptic"?



If you think that there's a simple experiment, like this meme, that anyone could set up in their kitchen, using only a glass of water and an ice cube (and maybe some food dye and a paper towel), to "diss" the rising sea level projections from climate scientists—then this is for you.

quote Originally posted by "sea level rise skeptic": Try this. Put an ice cube in a glass. Put it on a paper towel. Fill it up with water. Add some dye to it. Come back when the ice has melted and see if it has over flowed the glass. Tell us how that worked for you.

This is the same misconception that I talked about a number of weeks ago, when I responded to a very similar meme that someone else had posted.

What that would demonstrate, with the ice cube in a glass and filling the glass up with water (etc.) is that the total amount of sea water on the planet does not change because of sea ice—the ice that forms when it's so cold that the surface of the ocean freezes and covers offshore areas in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. These are the offshore ice packs and ice shelves. This is what ice-breaking ships have to deal with. When sea ice forms, it doesn't cause a negative contribution to sea levels. When sea ice melts it doesn't cause a positive contribution to sea levels. It doesn't affect sea levels.

Climate scientists are focused not on sea ice, but on land ice. That's the ice that covers areas of land. The glaciers in mountain regions all around the world, and the ice packs that have formed on land—conspicuously, the great ice packs that cover the continent of Antarctica and the large island of Greenland in the Arctic. These glaciers and land ice are seen by observations to be melting away at what many climate scientists say is an alarming pace. And when land ice melts and the melt water finds its way into the oceans, which is mostly what happens, that becomes a rise in sea levels all around the world.

I just said "alarming pace". It's an unnaturally rapid transition that most climate scientists believe is being mostly caused by us (humans) through everything we do that results in a net increase of planet-warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere—conspicuously, carbon dioxide and methane—but there are some other greenhouse gases of concern, caused by people.

To model the melting of land ice, you should fill a glass with water all the way to its brim to represent sea water and then pour more water on top of that, to represent melt water from glaciers and ice packs on land. Or you could use an ice cube to represent land ice that is still frozen but goes into the sea as a glacier melts from below and flows downhill to the coastline—the "calving" of a new iceberg. Put an ice cube into the glass that's already filled to the brim with "seawater".

Either way, some of the water in the glass is going to be displaced and overtop the brim of the glass and flow downwards along the outer surface of the glass and collect on the surface of the table that supports the glass.

That's what happens when glaciers and land ice are thawed by warming temperatures and become melt water, or float out to sea, still frozen, as brand new icebergs—a rise in sea levels.

There's a second component to rising sea levels in a warming world, and that's the thermal expansion of seawater as its temperature goes up, but I've already said enough to explain that this "ice cube in a glass of water" experiment, as originally set up here by "sea level rise skeptic", does not contradict anything that climate scientists are saying when they talk about rising sea levels.



Yo "sea level rise skeptic"... Say My Name!

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 11-18-2022).]

You have absolutely no control of yourself.


"I'm taking a bit of liberty here. I am using "sea level rise skeptic" as a stand-in for another forum member, because this isn't just about that other forum member. The identity of that other forum member could be discovered by scrolling through another of the current or very recent "rinselberg" topics, but I think there are some (if not many) who would be reluctant to do that, partly because it is another "rinselberg" topic, and partly because of how that other topic has been titularized. This is my bid to find a (slightly) larger readership."

[This message has been edited by Cheeper2keeper (edited 11-17-2022).]

quote Originally posted by Cheeper2keeper:

Why does this Cheeper2keeper keep coming to this Politics & Religion section of the forum? He seems to have nothing on his mind when he comes here, except for his stupid fixation on me. It's not symmetrical. I have zero interest in him, and zero interest in anything he has to say about me. I scrolled down just far enough to read the first line of the message he posted (immediately before this message) and I stopped right there. I don't know what came after that. I don't want to know. I expect to keep it that way.

Did he say anything about the original topic of this thread? Did he say anything about the melting of land ice or sea ice and how that contributes (or does not contribute) to the predictions of higher sea levels around the world from the latest climate science research? Did he say anything about how to make sense of the Glass of Water and an Ice Cube genre of science experiments, from a climate science perspective?

If he talked about any of that, and if he stopped talking like some self-appointed, phoney-baloney, psychiatrist wannabe, looking for someone to practice on... then I might read him.


In just 67 seconds, this video explains the Glass of Water and Ice Cube experiment. It reiterates what I said. Actually, I reiterated what the video says. Or maybe I only just iterated...

This video is what it means when it's explained by someone who actually understands the science of it, in conspicuous contrast to the crowd that traffics in ill-conceived memes like this one (again):

CLICK FOR FULL SIZE

It's one thing for people to just remain skeptical about the projections and the urgencies of global "de-carbonizing" that many climate scientists are aligned with.

It's another thing altogether when people traffic in explanations and "experiments" like this meme to justify their skepticism, but the explanations that they are coming up with "do not compute." And then this same crowd cackles on social media about how much smarter they are than the "anti-science leftists."

I've really "got it in" for this meme! I'm calling it a "meme". That's close enough, isn't it?

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 11-18-2022).]

Follow the science !

Science class - Sex Ed 201

[This message has been edited by Valkrie9 (edited 11-18-2022).]

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 11-18-2022).]

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 11-18-2022).]

How do those arctic regions keep getting more and more ice to melt every year? Icebergs and Inselbergs having meltdowns.

[This message has been edited by Cheeper2keeper (edited 11-18-2022).]