Global Warming, Global Flooding and Other Myths

Among the numerous orthodoxies of Democrat thinking on the general issue of Global Warming (see my post "Globaloney Warming" from December 9th), Gobal Flooding is surely one of the most idiotic. The premise that the Alarmists put forward is straightforward enough: Man warms the Earth; Ice melts; Ice flows into the seas; The seas rise; Coastal cities will be flooded.

This premise even has a veneer of credibility until you apply the principles of math, science and geography that you learned in high school. Simple common sense - not to mention Sister Paul, my sophomore science teacher - instruct me that the Global Flooding premise is, well, a load of crap.

The counter-argument goes something like this: First, ice displaces a greater volume than water. 10% to be exact. Second, as we all recall from endless documentaries - not to mention Sister Paul - 90% of all icebergs are underwater. So, to the extent that icebergs melt, it all balances out. Since the vast majority of melting ice is icebergs, it's no big deal.

The Global Flooders have gamed this argument by claiming that it is predominantly land-bound ice and glaciers that are melting, thus adding to the total volume of water in our seas. One problem with this claim is that atmospheric warming and melting of land-bound ice would have to occur whilst water-bound icebergs melting did not, something that even the whackiest of the Global Flooders is not trying to claim.

In point of fact, icebergs would melt first, since they are already water-bound, and yet, we see no evidence of massive displacement of icebergs; modest, yes; massive, no. And then, having confronted the displacement of icebergs, the Global Flooders must then concede that land bound ice - for the most part - would simply be replacing the lost volume in the oceans caused by melting icebergs.

This brings me to a favored aside I like to plug into any discussion on Global Warming, the disapperance of Glaciers. Global Warmers, of course, lament their passage as if they were Polar Bears instead of inanimate objects. They also routinely - and facts be damned - blame their disappearance on Global Warming caused by man. The idiocy of this is that every Ice Age builds them up, and every warming period melts them away. The "retreating ice" theory of Ice Ages is responsible for things like the Great Lakes. Nobody disputes this, not even Global Warmers. They just refuse to connect the dots if it disputes their beliefs.

The other problem with their overall premise of Global Flooding is that all the observable melting in the past 50 years has happened in the Arctic, which holds only 10% of the World's ice. The other 90% is locked up in the Antarctic, where the ice has been growing for decades, not shrinking. So, let's assume that 1% of the ice in the Arctic is melting every year, and that it would all be gone within 100 years. Of course, that's not happening, but stick with me. That means that to offset the total loss of ice in the Arctic region, the Antarctic would need to accumulate 1/10th that amount, or .1%.

The consensus of even the Global Flooding crowd is that Antarctic ice growth has offset Arctic ice loss, so after all of their blather, there is no rise in ocean levels attributable to Global Warming. As a sidenote, though, and because they can't help themselves, the Global Flooders attribute the accumulation of ice in Antarctica to - you guessed it - Manmade Climate Change.

In addition to their inconsistencies of their models regarding densities and melting, another curious oversight of the Global Coolers is the issue of how much ice is above or below sea level. The lowest point of Antarctica is 2,500 feet below sea level, and Antarctica itself is predominantly below sea level. This means that if the ice in the Antarctic ever should start melting, it will lower the volume of the world's oceans, not raise them. So, counter-intuitively, Global Warming would seem to reduce sea levels, not raise them.

Unless, of course, Global Warmers have figured out a way to cause only land bound ice at both poles to melt simultaneously, all while the oceans around them do not warm up, a phenomenon not heretofore observed by man or his instruments.

Adding to the idiocy of the Left over the issue of Global Flooding is the real cause of rising sea levels, if indeed there ever was to be any: Life. This is where crap enters the picture. Every year, billions of tons of plant and animal life are born, excrete and die in the world's oceans. Their carcasses and crap are only partially consumed, leaving the remainder to accumulate on the sea floor. Likewise, plant and animal life on the land are born, excrete, die and decompose, with a fair amount of that matter accumulating onshore being washed (along with common soil) into the oceans from our rivers.

So, much as the toys that accumulate in your toddler's bathtub displace the water necessary to fill it, so too with our oceans. Only problem is, the Seas have nowhere else to go - except up. And so they rise.

Not that any of this makes an impression on the Global Flooding crowd. Google sundry entries for the cause of the oceans rising, and it's all man-made. From melting ice, to the expansion of sea water caused by man-made global warming, to erosion caused by man-made hurricanes.

But nowhere a mention of Whale Crap or seashells.

And that's not the least of it. Surely the greatest scourge of Global Flooding must be coral reefs, which have grown exponentially in the past millions of years, the evidence of which is before our very eyes. Given their volume and relative lack of density (compared to, either ice or, say, a decomposed Humpback Whale), the Ocean's reefs are a monstrous displacer of water that must be dealt with, at least by the panicky standards of the EcoCrowd.

In conclusion, the only hope for Mankind to avoid extinction due to Global Flooding is to moderately lower the cycle of life in the Oceans and upon the Earth, preferably by polluting them. This will reduce significantly the amount of Whale crap, decomposing sea life and reefs which constitute the majority of all water displaced from our oceans.

Or, we could just wait until the next ice age.