The world is changing... bad changes or good?

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

I'm freezing this topic for a cool-down period -- I don't know if it's actually needed, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

[EricG1793]

OK, thank you for unlocking it again, Garrett.

I'm not sure whether what I'm about to talk about should go under philosophical topics/speeches or this thread, but I think I'll put it in this thread since it has been abandoned for months.

It seems to me as though streams around here are getting bigger, not drying up. There is a stream that runs though our woods, and over the past couple years, it's been changing. It seems as though LESS water has been flowing down it. Now, when there IS water flowing down it, it seems as though it's starting to expand itself, by splitting itself in to a bunch of smaller water trails, rather than one, small, narrow trail of water. I think it'll eventually become either a swamp or a river. But, with "global warming", the world is apparently drying up and getting less rain and water and such than it used to. There is another waterway in my town that's getting bigger as well.

There's a small rant to get the topic going again.

[Dragon Writer]

The world might be drying up, but keep in mind that more heat, means more evaporation, which means more precipitation. The water has to go SOMEWEHERE. Global warming also includes our oceans getting larger, and some large cities being swallowed up.

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

Something that was mentioned in An Inconvenient Truth was that it wasn't so much the polar ice cap melting that was the problem, since that ice would displace the same amount of water whether liquid or solid.

The big issue is the ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica, that aren't in the water: if they start melting, the ocean level _is_ affected. And if a big enough chunk drops off at once, we'll get very large waves. (I'm kind of more nervous about Cumbre Vieja, personally, although it seems like the odds are smaller...)

[Rubywolf]

IU thought that you guys might be interested to know that the Danish government has issued a warning to home owners on th eislands to be careful about bying "permenant" homes, for example homes that you expect to retire in and live in for the rest of you lives, because aparently the government doesn't have enough money to reimberse everyone if we get flooded. Which we will.

[Dragon Writer]

Ice doesn't displace the same amount of water as liquid, actually. water EXPANDS when it freezes, so by that logic it would take less...but if enough is ABOVE water (and since ice floats, at least some of it will ALWAYS have to be off the water), then what was previously above water would be having no effect on the ocean. Once it's melted, however, that would be things suddenly having effect. SO unless you're telling me the amoung above water and the amount the ice expanded by in freezing match perfectly in all cases, or somehow ballance eachother out one hundred percent when you take in all the ice caps (and i don't see how anyone can say that without looking at every ice cap in the universe) that really doesn't make any sense.

I can see it having a lesser effect than people are worried about, but not no effect.