I was talking to my sister the other day, and she said that a girl she knew said it wouldn't matter if the ice caps melt, because that can't raise the
water level.
This is an example of how a little bit of knowledge can be dangerous.
I think what the other girl was talking about was something that you can prove with Archimedes' Principle (I think I did this on the forums somewhere), that the water level in a glass with an ice cube floating in it does not change as the ice melts.
However, all of the ice that could be melted by global warming is not now just floating in the ocean. Antarctica has continental ice sheets. When (more hopefully, if) that melts, it'd be like adding brand new water to a cup.
Another time, I was for some reason hearing Rush Limbaugh talk about ozone. He said you don't have to worry about making a hole in the ozone layer because (emphasis his) "THE SUN MAKES OZONE!"
Yes, it does. And ozone is unstable, which means it destroys itself. Those two processes, ozone always being made and destroyed, results in an equilibrium.
When something else comes along and destroys ozone faster than it would destroy itself, you get ozone depletion.
The science behind that is pretty high profile. It was the subject of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
This is an example of how a little bit of knowledge can be dangerous.
I think what the other girl was talking about was something that you can prove with Archimedes' Principle (I think I did this on the forums somewhere), that the water level in a glass with an ice cube floating in it does not change as the ice melts.
However, all of the ice that could be melted by global warming is not now just floating in the ocean. Antarctica has continental ice sheets. When (more hopefully, if) that melts, it'd be like adding brand new water to a cup.
Another time, I was for some reason hearing Rush Limbaugh talk about ozone. He said you don't have to worry about making a hole in the ozone layer because (emphasis his) "THE SUN MAKES OZONE!"
Yes, it does. And ozone is unstable, which means it destroys itself. Those two processes, ozone always being made and destroyed, results in an equilibrium.
When something else comes along and destroys ozone faster than it would destroy itself, you get ozone depletion.
The science behind that is pretty high profile. It was the subject of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
