The ice-water phase change absorbs much more heat than heating water by 1 degree. The energy required for that phase change, called the 'enthalpy of fusion', is 333.55 Joules/gram. This is huge compared to the energy required to heat 1g of water by 1 degree, 4.18 J.
In other words, the ice 'cold bank' is much more of a cushion for temperature change than water is. One metric ton of ice is one million grams. The phase change melt absorbs 333 million joules ... the energy in about 2.8 gallons of gasoline. Multiply that by 28 trillion.
Heat is not 'banked' by the atmosphere though; it is radiated away. If that heat were not trapped phase changing water, a significant fraction would be radiated back into space.
The life that we care about as people is the biosphere that supports people life. I am not being facetious, that's just part of how this conversation works. We have to assume some things are shared knowledge.
Except 50 million years ago we had +10 degrees Celsius increase in temperature and life on the planet was pretty good. We see mass extinctions during ice ages, not during hot spells.
This is left out of nearly every climate debate, which typically goes back in the last few hundred years rather than millions.
The thermal mass in the ice water transition I suspect is tiny compared to the thermal mass of all the rock making up the crust, mantle, and core of the earth.
Obviously there is some thermal impedance to the deeper down rocks, but I still suspect the ice mass to be negligible.
Rock has about a quarter the specific heat of water (there are lots of kinds of rock, and it varies with temperature quite a bit.)
That's a quarter of the 4.18 J/g.K, not a quarter of the enthalpy of fusion.
> Obviously there is some thermal impedance to the deeper down rocks
Rock has very low thermal conductivity. That's one reason why land heats up at 2 to 3 times the rate of the surface of the oceans, so you go to the beach in summer.
Finally, experts in the field consider this (permanent ice melt) to be important. When you think they're wrong, surely the appropriate response is "what am I missing? What don't I understand?".
Ahh, who cares, we're just drumming up another existential crisis narrative again. Governments must spend trillions now to fix the ice problem, otherwise we're all going to die terrible deaths being flooded by water in our homes while night browsing on our smartphones instead of sleeping..... Rather ask "how much should each person give to fix this terrible problem."
Can we use a freeze ray to shoot a laser at the water, knocking off some electrons, thus slowing down the excitation of the water atoms, thereby freezing it?
That is, nonetheless, quite a lot. Imagine what would happen on earth if the sun were to disappear for 24 hours. How long would it take for life to return to normal?
It's not the net energy gain in the earth from one day of warming, which isn't all that much. It's the total amount of energy that falls on the earth, which is a lot. Enough to do massive damage if it happened all at once.
This was spread over 10 years so it doesn't provoke that kind of disaster. But it illustrates what an enormous amount of energy is involved, and is now permanently added to the earth's biosphere. And ten more years will add even more than that, only now we have less ice to moderate it. That means more of the delta will go into warming the seas and the atmosphere.
"Give me half a tanker of iron and I’ll give you the next ice age." - John Martin
Iron deposits occur naturally from Volcanic eruptions. It produces huge phytoplankton blooms which create huge fish blooms later. It also drops CO2 like crazy.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 70.4 ms ] threadThe ice-water phase change absorbs much more heat than heating water by 1 degree. The energy required for that phase change, called the 'enthalpy of fusion', is 333.55 Joules/gram. This is huge compared to the energy required to heat 1g of water by 1 degree, 4.18 J.
In other words, the ice 'cold bank' is much more of a cushion for temperature change than water is. One metric ton of ice is one million grams. The phase change melt absorbs 333 million joules ... the energy in about 2.8 gallons of gasoline. Multiply that by 28 trillion.
The bank is emptying.
Life did pretty well even in the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum.
This is left out of nearly every climate debate, which typically goes back in the last few hundred years rather than millions.
Example graph: http://jeremyshiers.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/glob...
Obviously there is some thermal impedance to the deeper down rocks, but I still suspect the ice mass to be negligible.
That's a quarter of the 4.18 J/g.K, not a quarter of the enthalpy of fusion.
> Obviously there is some thermal impedance to the deeper down rocks
Rock has very low thermal conductivity. That's one reason why land heats up at 2 to 3 times the rate of the surface of the oceans, so you go to the beach in summer.
Finally, experts in the field consider this (permanent ice melt) to be important. When you think they're wrong, surely the appropriate response is "what am I missing? What don't I understand?".
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=333.55+kJ%2Fkg*28+tril...
It's not the net energy gain in the earth from one day of warming, which isn't all that much. It's the total amount of energy that falls on the earth, which is a lot. Enough to do massive damage if it happened all at once.
This was spread over 10 years so it doesn't provoke that kind of disaster. But it illustrates what an enormous amount of energy is involved, and is now permanently added to the earth's biosphere. And ten more years will add even more than that, only now we have less ice to moderate it. That means more of the delta will go into warming the seas and the atmosphere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization
"Give me half a tanker of iron and I’ll give you the next ice age." - John Martin
Iron deposits occur naturally from Volcanic eruptions. It produces huge phytoplankton blooms which create huge fish blooms later. It also drops CO2 like crazy.
UN banned all study of this process in 2008: https://www.nature.com/news/2008/080603/full/453704b.html
Scientists have since gone rogue and done large scale studies anyway to prove it's safe, like this in 2012:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-...
Now the Canadian government appears to be prosecuting the founder.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/ocean-...
And now they are they are trying to do the same thing in Chili and the mainstream media is fighting it:
https://www.nature.com/news/iron-dumping-ocean-experiment-sp...
Not in the headline, and not in the article.