Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
My point isn't that you're wrong about everything or not smart enough. My point is that if I'm understanding what you're saying in the 1st post, that all ice melting will be equivalent to the earth receiving 2x more sunlight (extrapolated from Venus orbit comment), then I would expect the climate experts to be making those sorts of claims. I haven't seen such claims.
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1) for 18,000-years the mountain glaciers were stable. Ice covered with snow.
2) in 1979 they began to come apart.
3) the reason for it is global warming.
4) If you ever read Glickson's book, you're going to find out that we're toast. It's already bad. It's only gonna get worse.
5) There's a brief window to act.
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This thread is about a way to think about our impact. It's just a thought experiment, Like Richard Feynman's, about a glass of ice water, a rubber o-ring, and the Challenger disaster.
1-4 provided enough information for the setup:
All else being equal, what would one have to do, to get pure white virgin powder snow -phase water, to begin absorbing the same amount of solar energy that 'darker' ice-phase water absorbs, using constant solar output as the energy source.
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If you change none of the other conditions, you must move the Earth closer to the Sun in order to increase the 'solar constant.'
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A) We know Earth's solar constant.
B) We know the solar insolation value on the ice cap.
C) We know Pure snow's solar absorption rate.
D) We know the solar absorption rate for ice.
E) The ratio between the solar absorption rate of ice is compared to snow.
F) That tells us what the solar constant would have to be in order for snow to begin absorbing at the same rate as ice.
G) We know Earth's distance from the Sun.
H) Using the inverse-square law, we plug in the solar constant, and the distance to the Sun-squared, and solve for the Steller heat flux (S), in Watts/square-meter.
I) (S) falls out of the equation.
J) This is a constant that is plugged into memory.( It's in the 10-to-the-19th power in size ).
K) So, we're interested in a solar constant associated with the ratio we came up with at (F).
L) We calculate that.
M) Placing that into the inverse-square law, using ( S), we solve for the new distance-squared.
N) From that we take it's square-root, and the new distance at which energy balances for the different albedo falls out.( 74,841,303.31-miles )
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O) We do the same for the 'rock-phase' albedo, and it comes out at 63,503,861-miles ( inside the orbital distance of Venus ).
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We're only talking about what's happening on the ice cap, at that latitude, at that elevation, in mid-June of 1980, over the course of about a week.
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NOTE: As an aside, Earth is not the only member of our solar system experiencing global warming!
Triton, one of the moons of Neptune, between 1989, and October, 1997, gained almost 2-degrees Kelvin, warming from negative-394.87-F, to negative-391.27-F, and it did it because of a change to it's albedo. Triton is geologically active, with geyser plumes raining a reddish methane oxidate onto the satellites surface, absorbing weak, feeble solar energy.
It's a 'living' example of another global 'Albedo-flip' phenomena associated with a global warming.
The 200-inch Hale telescope at Mount Palomar Observatory, California, and Voyager-2 space probe monitored the activity.