Since cookie was nice enough to reply to some of my post, I'll post my responses. (Also, thanks a lot for encouraging me to look at this debate from angles I currently hadn't thought of).
Ice that melts on the Antarctic sheet is currently resting on a landmass, so when it enters the ocean it will contribute to rising sea levels (however, the same ice is also depressing the landmass because it's resting on magma, so that will partially compensate for the increased mass of water). It is also true that floating ice packs melting won't contribute to sea level rises. Secondly, what is often overlooked is that the main contribution to rising sea levels will be from thermal expansion of the world's oceans. Melting ice caps will accelerate global warming also because ice reflects solar radiation better than ocean water, so less ice = faster warming.
I'll admit I'd overlooked thermal expansion (I honestly have only heard arguments about melting ice and stuff, but I can see thermal expansion making sense). Still, from some research I did today, I’ve seen studies and
graphs showing how the rate of increase in ocean expansion has not changed over the past 120 or so years despite a massive increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere over that period of time. This doesn’t mean that CO2 isn’t the cause or a contributing factor, but it does mean that our actions don’t appear to be the ones chiefly affecting this specific problem. CO2 can cause some bad shit; I’m not sure if it causes this problem. Yet, to be fair, this fact could make it slightly more important to try to affect the ocean rise through reducing CO2 to help combat other problems of rising sea levels in relation to stuff melting, as reduction of CO2 could limit those specific causes.
Second, ice melting = cooler oceans. It’s ice. Ice, ice, baby. Melting ice caps means ocean temperatures go down, helping reduce thermal expansion. If you’ve got some ice cubes in a glass of water, the water gets coldest when the ice finishes melting, not before that. Dude, there are so many intertwining factors that affect climate change, and the same cause can influence both increasing and decreasing warming. And also, I think I already mentioned the fact that this won’t be the most major contributor positively or negatively to climate change in my 1st post. The effect of ice caps melting would be relatively negligible, as it isn’t going to happen to a high enough degree to make a major impact, positively or negatively.
Regarding evaporation, what are you even getting at? Unless you're suggesting that increased evaporation will offset the increased volume of the oceans, which is ridiculous because what goes up must come down. Even if increased temperatures resulted in an evaporation/precipitation equilibrium that meant more water is in the atmosphere as vapour, it wouldn't be nearly enough to offset the increase in sea levels due to thermal expansion (I could do the calculations to show this but I really can't be bothered).
100% of the area of bodies of water would have increased rates of evaporation. However, last I checked, rain doesn't only fall on oceans. 30% isn't directly falling onto oceans; it falls onto land. All rain on land masses would have increased rates of evaporation as well, meaning there would be less of an opportunity for the rain that does not land on the oceans to trickle down into them (also, the amount of water that goes from streams/lakes/etc into the ocean goes down every year anyway; this is "aided" by increased development, increased demand for fresh water with population increase, and now increased rates of evaporation). So evaporation of water in the ocean goes up (meaning less water in the ocean), and amount of water that goes from the land to the ocean goes down. Please tell me what is stupid about that argument.
And I talked about thermal expansion above.
Just because you don't know how we can help stop global warming doesn't free us from the responsibility to do so.
I never argued this was the case. Also, I see you ignored the entirety of my 4th paragraph (which you ironically quote) which details a way in which we can reduce CO2 emissions in a way I see as efficient. If we are indeed contributing to a cycle that is unsustainable and would threaten our ecosystem, then yes, it's probably a good idea to do something to change that.
No, my only argument throughout that even resembles what you are trying to construe this as is my argument about quantifying the impact of global warming itself and what our man-made solutions would do to address current climate change problems. Nowhere did I ever claim doing nothing was a good thing, and I'm not using the idea that "we dont know what will happen" as a reason to do nothing; I'm using it as a reason to not do anything that would put people in other kinds of dangers, like economic ones, and to logically weigh costs and benefits instead of blindly follow politicians saying “the end is near.” Action is good, determining what actions will work is critical.
One thing you cannot do is precede your words with 'I'm not an expert on these things' then proceed to make some pretty bold claims on the topic of global warming. You either know what you're talking about, in which case there's no need; or you don't, in which case you shouldn't be posting unless you just stick to talking about things you know.
Define "things you know." My only point about not being an expert was that I have not gone super in-depth into the literature itself; I have mostly picked up "facts" from debates and arguments, not from field research, in-depth study, etc. I've read up online about the whole climate change debate, but do not feel like an expert because I have trouble sometimes knowing which graphs to believe and not to believe, what are "true arguments," etc (ex: I hadn't heard the thermal expansion argument before today to be honest). It appears as if you and I have a different interpretation of what an "expert" is, which I'm fine with. And I’m glad this isn’t the crux of your argument, because arguments about the words I chose to use are kind of stupid.
Also, I didn't know I was making super-bold claims. Besides the oceans thing. I can probably see that as being bold. Everything else didn't seem that bold at all. Most everything else was "can't quantify; hard to do cost/benefit analysis." That sure as hell isn't bold. That's so defensive it's silly. Saying something is hard to do and/or knowing the level at which to do it is not bold; saying we should not do anything because we do not know the exact effects of climate change to put into a position to do cost/benefit analysis is bold. I never claimed the latter, as I disagree with it.
While you have a point on some things (like the contribution from melting ice packs) you then start talking about things that you really have no idea about, like talking about evaporation. Evaporation will occur more, yes, but the consequences are really not as simple as you might imagine. From what I know is that the increasing rates of evaporation are causing changes in the hydrological cycle of the Earth, creating imbalances in precipitation (put simply: more rain in some places and less in others). The consequences of that are that many places will experience more droughts/bushfires while others will have to deal with more flooding. This is probably a largely simplistic view since modelling weather and climate systems is notoriously complicated so by all means look into this yourselves because there may well be just anecdotal evidence for the relationship I just described.
Hm, that's probably true that I don't exactly know too much about evaporation and what-have-you. I'll admit that. And I'll look into that. Still, you admit yourself that changes like ones in precipitation are hard to quantify and predict. I agree that this could be one reason why we should do something to address climate change (and I acknowledge both in my first post and now that there are certain things that are quantifiably bad about the climate change problem). Still, I don't think that this is a reason to say "screw you" to the laws of economics and to frame the whole issue as a do-or-die situation; I'm not seeing the impact of brushfires and floods in certain areas outweighing the economic impacts of drastic reform. I guess for me, its just a matter or drawing a line as to where the costs are smaller than the benefits, which easier said than done.
First, we can assume that there are places with drought and flooding problems today. As we probably don't have the tools to know exactly where precipitation change will occur (we probably can take some guesses, but in all honesty i doubt future precipitation monitoring given increased temperatures is the most accurate field. If weathermen struggle sometimes to give the right forecast the day of, I can imagine predictions of the kinda distant future to not be great), climate change could easily just change which areas get the droughts/floods, as well as theoretically (note: I'm not saying this WILL happen, I'm saying it is in the realm of chance) "solving" for the areas in drought now and "solving" for areas with flooding. Still, changes in temperatures and rainfall in certain areas definitely could have negative effects on biodiversity of plants and animals in whatever areas happen to change, especially if it were to happen at a rate that nature could not self-correct in time (which it probably would).
I'm sure there are much more exact studies as to the exact effects on precipitation (as you say yourself exist), and I'll definitely do the research for myself on it and see where it takes me. And i see how your argument has some truth to it. I just wonder if we know the impacts of it. Yeah, some animals dying is probably bad and can mess up ecosystems. And that's not good. The thing is, this problem I doubt would be wide-spread enough to truly warrant dropping everything to solve.
Brain makes a valid point in that there really are two sides to this debate; science and policy. I'm not saying that science lies, or that science doesn't prove there are problems going on right now; I'm merely saying that the science isn't really as catastrophic as people make it out to be. We probably should do something, but it doesn't need to be drastic at all. That's kind of my general point, I feel.
