It's getting windier.
 

For the past few days the wind round here has been blowing rather strongly and that, together with watching a few TV programmes has got me wondering.

It seems that the past couple of years or so have been far windier than I have ever known. Older trees in the garden are growing straight up but younger trees that have only been planted around five years ago are all growing on a slant.

I watched a bit of a programme on TV last night called "Waterworld" which was about life on the inland waterways. It showed pictures of icebreakers on the canals in the early part of the last century trying to break the ice which could be up to two foot thick. Nowadays it rarely gets more than a couple of inches. It just shows how the climate is changing.

Television coverage of the Tsunami disaster showed pictures of the areas involved, many of which are only inches above sea level.

Browsing around today I have found sites which suggest that global temperatures will rise by 2 to 6 degrees fahrenheit by the year 2010 with sea level rising by upto 37 inches. :Yikes:

These changes will affect life in a big way. Agriculture will be affected in a big way. Wildlife will be affected, particularly birds that breed in the spring. Tourism will be affected, particularly places like the Maldives which will vanish below the waves.

Thinking back to the weather we had in my childhood it has changed considerably. Snow a couple of feet deep was common but we rarely get more than a couple of inches these days. We never had winds like we have today.

Apparantly we can blame a lot on the dinosaurs which ate a lot of vegetation and were constantly farting and giving off methane gas which was the start of global warming. Where will it all end and will civilisation eventually kill itself off.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Nah, we'll all have been killed by of those asteroids before then :D

Re: It's getting windier.
 

All the more reason to go pub aint it? :D

Re: It's getting windier.
 

thats the excuse for tonight sorted then :D :angel:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Thats right, blame a reptile :mad: :p: if and when it does end, we will have colonized outta space by then, hopefully, then we can just move throughout the universe destroying all as we go. :rolleyes: :D

The end is nigh .

Re: It's getting windier.
 

more a excuse to goto the pub aint it. :LOL:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

so who do you blame it on now?

people who eat curry and vegetarian :disturbd:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Have you been reading Dan Brown's Deception Point?

Re: It's getting windier.
 

People eat vegetarians? :eek: ok that's me worried now ;)

Re: It's getting windier.
 

is there any meat left on a vegetarian ?

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Nah, it's mostly all right :p:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Nope but just had a look at it, might have a read sometime ( big might though )

Re: It's getting windier.
 

So what's the answer?

Is the problem global warming and if so how can it be resolved? George Bush buggered up any attempt to tackle this issue a few years back by putting America's short term interests ahead of the planet's long term future.

Should we planting more trees, converting our cars to more environmentally friendly fuels, taxing non low energy light bulbs...?

Re: It's getting windier.
 

wat you never been out with a vegetarian,it will blow your mind :Yikes:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

And you think it is windy these days? :D

Re: It's getting windier.
 

That means places like Ely, Norwich and Ipswich could be entirely underwater... :scratch:

*burns more fossil fuels*

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Errr, isn't Abertawe near Swansea, so near the coast, so also potentially underwater :D

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Abertawe is very near Swansea, yes.... :LOL:

But it's quite mountainous terrain.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Just checking ;) :p:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

*wonders whether to tell Nugget that Abertawe is Welsh for Swansea* ;)

Re: It's getting windier.
 

*wonders whether to tell jimbo that Nugget is Brummie for thicko* :D

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Well the project I take part in is based on predicting the climate for 2050 :)

Re: It's getting windier.
 

hot summers...cold winters....?

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Not if you live in the southern hemisphere!

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Singing all together now.....

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine......... :D ;)

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Care to explain then? . :D

Re: It's getting windier.
 

wont make much difference to me , i will be very old and wrinkly and / or pushing up daisies :disturbd: :D :D

Re: It's getting windier.
 

See post #21 :Sprint:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

*wonders whether to tell everyone that nffc is a term in football-speak meaning s*it * :D

Re: It's getting windier.
 

You know after the last 2 weeks I've come to the conclusion that we don't know everything and that this planet can do a hell of a lot more to us than we can do to it. :(

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Although I agree with you and do belive global warming exists it should be noted that there is no conslusive proof that our actions are leading to an increase in global warming. The world is heating up but this could well be natrual.

Before the last ice age it was very hot then the world screwed up because of this and the ice age happpened (like a healing effect) and scientists found out this occurs natrually and we are due for one in a few thousand years.

Also dispite the appearance of recent events they are not down to global warming

Re: It's getting windier.
 

*wonders whether to tell jimbo that it's the Welsh for 'Mouth of the River Tawe'*

Norwich, Ipswich and Ely are all above sea level, although not much. The highest point in my home county of Suffolk is 55 metres, we used to need ice axes and oxygen climbing that. Ooo Arr.

Dinosaurs farting? Someone's blowing smoke - we've had a good few Ice Ages since then - the Earth warms up and cools down all the time, it's never steady. Back in the 1970s the worry was of global *cooling*, not warming, and in the 50s it was nuclear winter (so there's your all-American solution to global warming - nookuler missals, yessirreee).

Actually, since we'll run out of fossil fuels to burn fairly soon, the risk is not of global warming but of killing each other off in energy wars, unless someone comes up with a better idea than nuclear reactors - hot rocks, tidal, fusion...

More windy now? There was a harrowing Timewatch repeat on last night about the Great Storm of 1953, which flooded a lot of areas along the East Coast in a similar manner (although nowhere near as destructive) to the recent tsunami - most of those who died were the poor who could only afford to live in low-lying areas. Plus ca change.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

:p:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

It's pretty windy here now. I can hear it over my PC speakers and it's playing havoc with my tv signal :(

Re: It's getting windier.
 

The sooner we become self sufficient the better IMO, though currently not many people can afford to cover thier roof in solar panels, and those that can would find it wont pay off due to lack of sunlight in this coutry :)


EDITED: took out my first paragraph because I relised I had read BBKings post wrong.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

i can feel wind from where i'm sitting, bloody windows - too drafty :mad:
*gets up to put tissue in the gaps around my window frame* :Yikes:

:)

Re: It's getting windier.
 

I am very glad I'm in Essex instead of Wales tonight!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/4155795.stm

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Not too far from me here on the wirral, just glad we are relativeley high above sea level on this part of the wirral. There is also the road at the bottom of the hill I live on is actually a river bed so any flooding will head there first :)

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Global warming won't cause an increase in sea-level, it's all hype from militant fluffy types trying to get us to eat Tofu!

<Pay attention - here comes the dodgy science bit :D >

When you put Ice in a glass of water what happens to the level of the water? It raises (of course it does). As the ice melts does the level of the water continue to raise? No, it actually falls.

The reason that Ice floats is that it is actually less dense than water (water becomes less dense as it cools, in a complete contradiction to the normal scheme of things) and therefore it actually displaces more water (due to the increased volume of the ice) than it contains - enabling it to float.

It therefore stands to reason that the volume of water being displaced by the polar ice caps (ie the amount by which the sea-level has already risen due to their formation) is greater than the volume of water contained within them. So, when they melt, the water contained within them will actually take up less volume than the ice does which means that the sea level should fall slightly.

Obviously there is a large amount of ice above the water but this is only a small amount of ice compared to what is below the surface (the tip of the iceberg if you will) and should therefore have an almost negligable effect. I would expect the net result of complete polar ice cap meltage to be that the sea-levels will remain pretty much as they are at the moment.

<Dons a flame-proof suit and waits patiently>

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Um, are you serious?
How would the sea level not rise?

And quite how you worked out that an ice cube melting in a glass of water would not raise the water level is beyond me, unless you watched it for so long that the water evaporated.
Hope that flameproof suit works well. ;)

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Most of the ice is already below the water and therefore it's already raised the level, when it melts, the raise will only be from the equivalent water in the exposed part of the ice, which isn't actually that much.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

I would still rise though. :dozey:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Re: It's getting windier.
 

If you think about it it actually makes perfect sense.....sort of.....

If you take 2 one litre containers and have one full of water and the other full of ice (by full, I mean filling the entire space within the container with no room inside for anything else). You will find that the one containing the water is heavier.
The reason for this is that as water cools (actually, as water cools past 4 degrees celsius) it becomes less dense (the connetions between the molecules actually start to expand again rather than continuing to contract).

So, something floats because it is less dense than the thing in which it is floating (ice is less dense than water). We also know that an object floating in a liquid will displace a quantity of that liquid which is equal to its volume.

We have a situation now where we have two things to consider.

1: If we put our 1 litre containers into a pool of water one at a time they will displace the same amount of water (ie that they will cause the level of water in the pool to raise by an equal amount) but.....
2: We know that there is less water in the container which has ice in it than there is in the one that has just water in it.

Now remove the containers from the equation but leave the contents. Initially the two water levels will be the same (they have both displaces equal quantities of water and so they have raised the levels by an equal amount). But, as the ice melts its volume will decrease. We know that the container holding the ice had less water in it so it stands to reason that there is now less water in the pool that we put the ice into than there is in the one that we put the water into.

The point here is: Putting an ice cube into a glass of water will raise the level of the water but as the ice melts it will revert to water which will take up less volume, therefore the displacement of the original water in the glass will be less, therefore the water level will fall (although it will still be slightly higher than it was before you put the ice in).

Does that help at all? Sorry it's long-winded and complicated, it took me a while to get this straight - oh, and it is stupidly late as well :D

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Sort of, but you have to remember than when the ice below the surface melts the water it turns back into will actually occupy less volume than the ice did. This means that the amount of water being displaced by the ice is greater than the amount of water contained within it. Ergo (I hate it when people use that word :D ) the level of water in the sea should fall.

But, as you say, there is the ice above the surface to take into account so it should all even itself out :D

Re: It's getting windier.
 

LoL @ Richard and Bifta - Class :D

Re: It's getting windier.
 

What Ras says is true its because when water freezes the molecules of water form an open structure rather than the tight structure of liquid water. The theory works fine for ice in the sea, BUT, what about the glaciers that are on land? :erm:

So taking that all into account the water levels WILL rise as the atmosphere warms up.

As for the comments about Global warming being a completely natural and reversible process, may I humbly suggest you check out what happened on Venus :erm:

Edit - Knew I'd covered this ground before!

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...8&postcount=51

Re: It's getting windier.
 

And (before anybody says it) - yes I probably am a head-case :disturbd:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

But, the quantity of water that is contained within the land-based glaciers is fairly minimal compared to the quantity that is contained within submerged ice elsewhere. The savings in volume (God, I sound like a Government official) which are gained by the melting of this submerged ice should (in theory at least) create a reduction in overall sea-level which is sufficient to accomodate the water generated from the melting of land-based glaciers.

Actually, it might be kind of interesting if somebody would actually do the measurements of the different glaciers and do the maths on this one to see what the net increase / decrease in sea-level will actually be. I'm prepared to bet that it will be almost nothing!

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Water is a unique substance that is at its minimum volume at 4 degrees celsius and which expandswhen it is either heated or cooled from that temperature. The point is though that you are missing a couple of points in your theories:

1. There are over a dozen different types of ice, each with its own set of properties including different densities when all are at the same temperature.

2. Global warming increases the temperature of the sea which does expand with the increase in temperature.

So, it is possible that the melting of the icecaps alone may result in a drop in sea leavels but the increase in temperature of the sea (which is many times the volume of the water held in icecaps) will increase the seas volume and hence increase sea levels.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

My head hurts. :spin:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

On top of that you also have to take into account the effect of reduced reflection of the suns rays.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

A good example of water expanding when frozen into ice would be when making ice pops and the like. If you make it in a bottle you never fill the bottle right up or the ice while split the bottle open due to the increase in volume. Though ianathuth is correct, this doesnt take into account other types of water and ice.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Regardless of the outcome it does proove his initial point that its not as clear cut as it is made out to be.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

If you want to know all there is to know about water have a read of http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/index.html

Your head will hurt Richard if you try to understand all that. :)

One very unusual aspect of water is that hot water freezes quicker than cold water even though hot water has to become cold water before it freezes. Work that one out. :confused:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Agreed.....but.....

When water is frozen its volume increses by approximately 9%.

An increase in temperature of 16 degrees Celsius (from 4 degrees to 20 degrees) will decrease the density of the water by only 1%, an increase in temperature of 20 degrees Celsius (from 20 degrees to 40 degrees) will decrease the density of the water by only 6%.

Since Volume = Mass / Density (and the mass of the water will remain constant) the Volume should change by the same percentages for a given temperature increase.

This should mean that the increase in volume caused by the raised temperature will be accomodated by the decrease caused by the melted ice.

My science never was that good though so I'm happy to be corrected :D

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Ouch! Now MY head hurts! Nice link :D

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Volume equals mass divided by density

Edit. See you realised your error :)

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Yep, typo. Just spotted that (and corrected it) myself :dunce:

Thanks though :D

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Only 2% of Earths water is ice http://www.activebirthcentre.com/pb/...nourlive.shtml

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Also spotted the fact that I had claimed that the density will increase as the water is heated :dunce:

Still not sure about the maths though. Does it neccessarily follow that a decrease in density of (say) 6% will lead to an equal (6%) increase in volume? It seems to make sense but my head's a bit foggy :D

Oh, and sorry if it seems like the thread's been hijacked. It hasn't, well - not really anyway :D

Re: It's getting windier.
 

I never knew that....

:spin:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

A great way for visualising what happens to water and how pressure, volume and temperature affect each other are PVT diagrams. They may look abit odd and hard to grasp but they are really usefull. See google for examples of them, here's one ...
http://nebula.deanza.fhda.edu/physic...PVTdiagram.jpg

Re: It's getting windier.
 

A decrease in density of 6% will result in an increase in volume of around 6.38 %.

There are some statistics about this at http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_water.htm

More than 70 % of the Earth's surface is covered with about 1.36 billion cubic kilometers of water / ice of around 2% of this is in ice form.

No, don't think the thread has been hijacked at all, just developed into serious discussion on a very important subject.

The wind here is still rattling the windows round here, it's amazing how much it seems to make the double glazing in the patio doors bulge.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

The old house I am staying in is taking a beating right now, few creaks and groans. :dozey:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Well it was blowing a gale here not so long back, settled down a bit now, I like the storms / wind, just not the after effects :(

Re: It's getting windier.
 

I got up this morning to find one of my fence panels residing in next doors garden. :(

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Beginning to window if the old rear windows are upto this beating...they due to be replaced around June.


:juggle:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

As he said, water is less dense than ice, so when the ice melts the same amount of molecules would still be there but they would occupy less space...

Re: It's getting windier.
 

About 6.00 this morning, the wind was so bad that my house was shaking and I can't ever remember that happening before.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Not been keeping up with this thread, owing to being mostly asleep, apart from being kept awake by first the wind and then the baby woken up by the wind, but has anyone pointed out that working out sea level rises due to changes in ice/water density is fairly irrelevant as one of the ice caps is largely on land? The rise in sea level thus comes from land-borne ice melting and running into the sea, and I can't see how that won't result in an increased sea level, and even if the other cap melting doesn't result in an increased sea level it will result in less solar reflection and thus have a warming effect which increases the rate of melting at the other cap and thus increases the sea level more.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Well that would obviously depend on the amount of ice that would melt, and the additional volume it would occupy!

Re: It's getting windier.
 

It's been pretty windy here since last night. Luckly out fence has survive this beating so far, thought it would all be down when I got up, but not. The village I live in is in a dip but we still manage to get it here because I'm on the edge of the 'dip'.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Had a good look round this morning and everything seems OK. Glad that I had the fencing replaced a couple of years ago with concrete posts and gravel boards and anti bulge fittings in the middle of the wooden panels at the bottom. When we had the old fence with wooden posts we had a few occasions when one or two panels came adrift in high winds. The problem was that we have a large wooded bank alongside the house which is our property and we have a six foot fence at the top of it to give some privacy to our back garden. It was some of those panels that tended to blow loose which was very dangerous as they tended to skim away at a tremendouse speedforty or fifty feet across to the road which was some 10 to 15 feet lower down. They would have killed somebody if they had been hit by one.

Looking out across the gardens there are quite a number of fence panels down in gardens where they still have the original fencing and a few sheds with their felting missing including my daughters.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

I got woken up early this morning by the wheely bins being blown down the road.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

A 6% decrease in density will lead to an approximate 6% increase in volume.

v = volume, w = weight, d = density

v = w/d

For a weight w:

Initial volume, v1= w/d

Final volume, v2 = w/(0.94.d)

v2/v1 = 1/0.94 = 1.0638 (to 4 dp), that is an increase in volume of approx 6.38%

Re: It's getting windier.
 

I kept getting woken up last night.
My bedroom is in the roof and I could hear the roof slates moving and the wind really was making my house move. I could feel it.
Seems to have died down now and the suns out...Yay :)

Re: It's getting windier.
 

How did a wind thread move onto ice :confused:

Anyway, I thought ice floated on water, and the water it displaces while floating is less than the total amount of water in the ice - therefore if it melts, the overall water level rises.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

It does, but 1 litre of ice will contain less water molecules than 1 litre of water.

The whole reason ice floats is because it's less dense than water.

Overall if all the ice was to melt I'm pretty sure that the water level will fall due to the volume decrease. As has been explained countless times.

:notopic: [It's still pretty windy though]

Re: It's getting windier.
 

The question is surely how much of the polar ice caps are on land. If the ice is actually on land above sea level, then, when melted, it will run down to sea level, thus raising the water level.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Well as per my earlier post, I like the storms etc etc, but not the after effects.....

we've just got back from town to find a whole in the roof with about 6 tiles adrift and a couple on the pavement, looks like another job to be done http://homepage.ntlworld.com/alan.pa...077%5b1%5d.gif

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Yes. And how much of them will actually melt due to the temperature rises.

IF global warming is not, as I believe, a load of total ********.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

survived the nite, but my fence hasnt :cry:

had to be let loose with hammer and nails to botch them up for now - dont know how long they will last if this wind keeps up :shocked:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

OK but the ice sitting on the swiss glaciers is not in the ocean, when that melts into the ocean that raises the level of the ocean, apart from that the science is foolproof.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

I sympathise bb! I'm having a new fence put up on Wednesday (partly cos the old one is knackered and partly to hide next door's sat dish) so I hope the old one survives till then! :erm:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

The largest glasier in the world is in Antartica, and is contained by the Ross Ice Shelf. The Ross Ice Shelf itself has show signs of loosing its integrity over the last decade or so. (Some of you may remember the peice or sea ice the size of Spain (I think), broke of several years ago.) The glacire behind the Ross Ice Shelf contains several Billion tonnes of water, and if released into the ocean by the continued breakup or the Ross Ice Shelf, could be the death knell of may coastal cities.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

I started the thread because the wind was howling outside my study window and I have the distinct impression that the past few years have seen the weather getting windier and windier. Watching TV over the past couple of weeks has shown us the enormous forces of Mother Nature with many places wiped out by the Tsunami. This led to a few searches on Google which came up with things like a large increase in sea level being likely due to global warming and other factors. Vast icebergs breaking away from Antarctica have been in the news for the past couple of years. Animal life is being affected. All in all the starting point for discussion on what can be a fascinating and thought provoking subject.

So the howling wind prompted the thread but, as expected, it quickly went onto other aspects of Mother Nature which could all be contributors to producing this wind.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Main contributer to the wind is all the hot air the goverment speaks.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

maybe you should start a thread on that topic then ;)


anyway , i have never ever seen as many roofs , fences etc damaged before :disturbd: :disturbd: , the whole street is littered with broken slate tiles :disturbd:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Sorry to hear about the bad night BB.

I mentioned about the glaciers on Land, post 41 and you are right there will be a reduction in the albedo effect which could in theory result in a runaway greenhouse effect like has happened on Venus. :(

Obviously there is also data that points toward it being totally natural that the global mean temp fluctuates but personally I'm worried!

Re: It's getting windier.
 

We had a massive storm last night, it's been raining now solidly for a few day's and I'm hoping it doesn't turn out like the last major storm we had ..

http://www.derryonline.com/flood/

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Don't know about you soft norveners. but down south I can vividly remember the gales of 1987 and 1990, in the first our drive was blocked by a large fallen branch, several other trees had to be taken down and the whole area was cut off by fallen trees, in 1990 a chunk of the house blew off (this being a fairly substantial Victorian vicarage). The subsequent scaffolding was excellent fun for climbing.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

This thread has proven to be much more interesting than it's title would one to believe. :tu:

Re: It's getting windier.
 

The water level will stay the same. The upthrust on the floating ice equals the weight of water dispaced (Archimedes Principle). As the ice is floating, the upthrust equals the weight of the ice (the ice would either sink or rise if it wasn't). Therefore the weight of water displaced equals the weight of ice. Therefore when the ice melts it is converted into a weight of water equal to the weight of water displaced by the ice. Therefore it exactly fills the "hole" you can imagine left by the melted ice, so there is no change in water level.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

...disregarding the effect of changes in density, which I suspect is what nffc was referring to. All a bit acedemic though, as the main danger is from melting ice which is currently ON LAND.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Well we're stuck on the road, see my blog entry, we have seen about 6 wagons of various sizes being towed by recovery vehicles in all manner of shapes having been blown over. As for ourselves, we're stuck in a mini-bus with no heating :(

Re: It's getting windier.
 

There's a very intresting program about this on Channel 4 now.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Absolutely correct.

A very interesting article with some experiments to prove the facts at http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/blueplan...eriments.shtml

WARNING If you are worried about the effect of the ice caps melting and live within a couple of hundred feet of sea level then DO NOT read that article.

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Very informative. :D

Re: It's getting windier.
 

Watched it myself, and must say it was really good. I personally thought that the findings of the program where rather funny. To stop carbon emissions we need to release the ''nuclear gene'', from its much discredited bottle. Clasic. :D