Recently there have been many news reports concerning global warming, some of which have discussed the melting of huge amounts of glacial ice from the poles and high mountain ranges. Often, there is also mention of the fact that the actual global temperature has risen very little. What I haven't seen is anyone putting the two together. The same as in a buffered chemical or physiological system, I feel that the vast amount of ice in place on the earth is acting as a buffer. The same way that external measurements of a buffered chemical reaction will change very little despite radical changes within the system, I feel that the measured average temperature of the earth can be expected to change relatively little due to the absorption by the glacial ice of tremendous amounts of heat as it melts. In addition to all the potential problems caused by this melting ice on sea level, changes of sea water salinity, and sea water temperature, one may expect to see dramatic changes in global temperature once this buffer is exhausted. Let us not be mislead by assumptions that the earth might only see up to ten degrees of change. I don't think anyone has much of a clue as to the actual amount of heat that is being produced and absorbed into the ice. Once the ice is gone, we might really start cooking around here.
Derek _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wwia.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/biofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel archives at Infoarchive.net (searchable): http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/
