It is important to keep the distinction between heat and temperature clear. They are not exactly the same thing. When ice melts and becomes water, it does not change temperature. It just transitions from ice at 32 degrees to water at 32 degrees. But even though the temperature of the ice did not change, the amount of heat necessary to accomplish that much melting is equivalent to the heat it would take to raise that same amount of water by 144 degrees F. Look up “latent heat of ice” if you want more information on this fact.
Also, when people use the word “sink” in this context, this nothing to do with things going down into the depths of the ocean. The word means anything that takes rather than gives something. The opposite of a sink is a source.
Leaf,
Sorry it took so long to get back to you, but Christmas is coming, and we have grand kids, daughters and sons-in-law to get ready for. Anyway here I am.
Look, I understand what a “sink” is. I own my own–a 250 year old house that simply absorbs money and sends it into the ether. I’ve come to understand, through my 70 years, that you don’t own anything–no matter what you’ve paid for it—it owns you.
Now, back to AGW. First, I’m not sure that GW means anything that will affect our lives, other that, if true, a1or2 degree temperature will make life a little more pleasant for most of the world.
Why this and not the environmental catastrophe the AGW alarmists claim will happen? Well, in the first place, the Arctic ice pack is not melting at an unusual rate. Moreover, I have learned to understand that the proponents of an impending doom usually–no always–have a monetary reason for getting the government to agree with their insanities. And, AGW is no exception.
This is not to say that what these people claim is not a real thing. Obviously, GW is a real event: it has happened thousands of times over the course of the earth’s 4 billion year age. Of course, so is global cooling a real event. That has also happened thousands of times over the course of the earth’s life span.
So, the real question, I think, becomes not, "what is actually causing the climate change? it’s an recurring event that will eventually happen whatever I do to try to change it (I think of this as King Canute thought of what his Court told him: he had the power, as God’s anointed, to have carried out as he willed, any command he would give. Well, King Canute was a smart man, and knew that his Court was feeding him BS because they wanted him to increase their benefits. They were brown-nosing him.
So, to instruct his court in rationality, Canute, the wise, had them bring his throne to the sea side. There, he sat on his throne, and, as the tide came in, ordered it to turn back and not wet the king’s feet.
Of course, it didn’t. So, he ordered it more loudly with no result–the tide didn’t listen. Then he ordered his court to help him by joining in giving the command–after all, they were the king’s court and, together with him, had all the authority in the world.
It didn’t work. The king’s feet got wet; and he had to be pulled out of there less he be drowned.
Now, I think he should have executed the brown-noses, and installed a new, less arrogant. Court; but he didn’t. He only used it as an object lesson in humility, proving that nobility, even anointed nobility, could not control a single iota of natural law.
Now, let’s get back to AGW. Do you remember the hole in the ozone layer? It was back in the 60s or 70s. The hole was over the North Pole (there’s that NorthPole, again), and was getting progressively bigger. Well, you can only imagine how the doom and despair crew rolled out in force–claiming we were all going to be fried if we didn’t immediately stop putting the chloro-Fluoro-carbons (used in aerosol sprays, air conditioning, etc.) into the atmosphere, and close the hole–if we still could.
Turns out the “hole” happens every year over Antarctica and the Arctic–as well as other places. Of course, the alarmists are still at it–although their claims are now couched in terms like, ‘possibly’, ‘perhaps’, ‘it is thought’, but never in absolutes. They tried that in the past, and it turned out badly.
It’s the same with AGW. There is, now, no such thing as absolutes since the climate failed to perform as the AGW prognosticators definitively predicted for the 21st century. They were dead wrong, but they are trying to clean up the mess by claiming, we can’t really see the warming because the polar heat sink hides it.
Of course, for the 30 years before that, and especially during the 1990’s, it was nothing but global atmospheric temperatures that “proved” the existence of AGW.
.No, Leaf. There is no satisfactory evidence that AGW actually exists–like there is no physical that CFC’s create the Ozone hole. Furthermore, every single one of these academic alarmists have funding for their projects on the line.
You can’t trust them as far as you can throw them!
Try this site,
newsbusters.org/blogs/randy-hall/2013/12/02/report-claims-typhoon-haiyan-was-strongest-storm-ever-rejected-scientist
but I had some conversations with people who live in the north of Sweden (67N) – and they said that winters are definitely getting warmer. Not to mention that where I live (50N), 30-40 years ago -30C in winter was business as usual, now we declare emergency and close schools if the temperature drops below -20C.