RE: Only nuclear power can now halt global warming

["Riely, Brian P." <brian.riely@ngc.com>]

I want to thank everyone who responded to my question.  I know it took some time.  My question was meant to address several issues.  1.) Some people claim that the melting of the south pole will cause the ocean to rise by a significant amount, yet Antarctica is floating.  2.)  I realize that Greenland is a chunk of land, and as such the ice is not displacing the water.  The question then becomes, "how did the ice get there?"   If there were a change in the earth surface (land mass) that caused the water to flow to Greenland, stay in the vicinity, and subsequently freeze; and if the earth's surface is roughly the same now as it was then,  as the ice melts it should stay in that vicinity.  If the accumulation of ice on Greenland is due to water being transported from the ocean, via processes such as evaporation and currents, then we should have a steady decrease in the ocean's level.  Of

course, if we get a steady decrease over 10,000 years and a reversal in a 100 years, that could be a major problem.  So, it seems to me that before one can say that ice melting in Greenland is going to add water to New Orleans, one has to address how the water got to Greenland.  3.)  Sometimes, ostensibly obvious and simple statements are not true.  For example, I believe if you ask a typical physicist what would a sphere moving at a velocity close to the speed of light look like to an observer, he would say, " a prolate spheroid."  The correct answer is, "a sphere."  (to be pedantic: a rotated sphere).  It took around 50 years before people realized that the correct answer is a sphere.   The scientific literature is replete with errors because the author assumed an "obvious" statement to be true.



Anyway, if someone knows how the water initially accumulated on Greenland,  I would be interested.



My apologies for the lengthy e-mail, but I was misunderstood by being too brief.

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