I'M MELTING! (C)1998 Alan M. Schwartz The sin qua non Greenhouse Effect threat is not warmer winters lowering petroleum prices through surplus, or a wetter planet less drought and famine, or retreat of the tree line to higher altitudes and northward thereby growing larger forests, expanding ecosystems, and sequestering colossal quantities of atmospheric carbon dioxide thus annulling the Greenhouse Effect. The cogent compelling Greenhouse Effect threat is that all ice on planet Earth will defrost, raising the level of the oceans, drowning Bangladesh, Hawaiian resort hotels, and Jewish retirement communities in Florida. Environmentalists fond of Hawaiian research conferences (free vacations plus unlimited expense vouchers) are livid with rage. A complication of Official truth is intrusion of real truth at inopportune moments. It is one thing to foment multi-$million climatic computer models fed oodles of multi-$billion satellite telemetries, the whole adjusted and renormalized by battalions of PhDs to give politically desired and dialectically pure answers without bias. It is another thing to look up the heat of fusion of ice and have a high school kid run a short line of algebra to cry "foul!" at the whole exercise. (American zero-goal education has mostly moved algebra out of high school into university post- graduate instruction. Secure an Oriental seventh grader and go for it anyway.) How much ice coats planet Earth? According to Science 282 2057 (1998), Gaia hoards a glut of frozen water to cool our drinks: Storage Volume, km^3 Volume, cm^3 Average thickness ----------------------------------------------------------- Greenland 2.99x10^6 2.99x10^21 1.79 km Antarctica 29.3 x10^6 29.3 x10^21 2.44 km Floating 0.7 x10^6 0.7 x10^21 ------------ ------------- 33.0 x10^6 33.0 x10^21 Thirty three million cubic kilometers of ice is a whole bunch of ice cubes, and you would not want to shovel your driveway if it were covered a couple of miles deep in ice. The density of ice is 0.9168 gm/cm^3, though a mile or two of overburden will compress it, rendering what follows conservatively low. The heat of fusion of ice is 80 calories/gram. Melting Earth's ice requires 2.42x10^21 kilocalories (plus decimal trim for mountains' ice). The solar constant at Earth orbit is 1373 watts/m^2. Dust and clouds diminish surface irradiation as do seasons, latitude, and the night side of the planet. Each year each Earthly cm^2 on the average is offered 170 kcal/cm^2 incoming. Total surface area is 6.087x10^22 cm^2. Summed insolation is thus around 10^25 kilocalories, which is enough to melt all the ice 4000 times. There are heat loss mechanisms, and it doesn't, not even once. Earth squats at the bottom of a very deep thermal hole. For Enviroweenies to cry "Greenhouse Effect!" is to think you can toss a pebble at a boulder and send it careening across a meadow, smashing fragile and endangered species, deforming frogs, and getting your picture on all the TV networks' 11 o'clock news. Earth is annoyingly distant from Sol and downright inhospitable at times, as Jamestown (14 May 1607 onward) settlers discovered freezing to death in New World record low temperatures. Was Virginia situated just south of the Arctic circle? The Maunder Minimum (1645-1715) caused widespread starvation and death across Europe with late springs, early falls, and legendary depths of winter. There is no geological record of Gaia self-immolating in its heat, though Ice Ages are both abundant and abundantly devastating in their enforcement of depauperate biomes. Earth has been deliciously toasty warm in the past, notably the Carboniferous Period 340-280 million years ago (fifth of six Paleozoic Era periods), when fossil fuels were laid down. Oil (oceans, Mississippian epoch) was secured first, then coal (land, Pennsylvanian epoch). The central United States, western Pennsylvania to Kansas, was a mammoth Eden. Giant tree ferns, scouring rushes, and conifers grew riot and eventually deposited as coal. We are talking untold hundreds of cubic miles of densely compacted fossil fuel remnants worldwide. 645 billion barrels of petroleum, 20.4 cubic miles, have already been pumped and there is no end in sight. The lush Carboniferous greenhouse ended with a Southern Hemisphere Ice Age, rendering much of the endemic biome extinct (which is forever). Freon-propelled armpit deodorant and abundant burning of fossil fuels could have saved Paradise. They can recreate it today. Gaia rattles about within a broad, flat, deep climatic minimum. Like a marble in a great bowl, giving it a shove may alter its trajectory but will not in the end do anything to its net position. Environmentalist Luddites scream about parts-per- billion this and parts-per-trillion that. They drool and belch doomsday atmospheric incineration scenarios. On 23 December 1998 Southern California orange trees exploded in freezing cold temperatures and the Greenhouse Effect caused that, too.