re: Antarctic sea ice hit 35-year record high Saturday, Old but interesting artlicle

quote:

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the ocean is salty because of salt washed into it from rain.

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The oceans were salty long before there was land. It came from hydrotherml vents and volcanism. Additional salts from land have added to the oceans over hundreds of millions of years, but the oceans' salt content have been stable for many hundreds of millions, if not billions of years. This is in spite of the rise and fall of the oceans, the growth or retraction of glaciers, the forming of and retraction of ice sheets across the continents and the runoff of rivers and streams. Why is this?

It's because the salts in the ocean have reached a balance with runoff. The salts form new minerals at the bottom of the oceans. As these form, and salt is removed, new salts are constantly being added by runoff, geothermal vents and volcanos.

Except for places like the Black Sea, which has more than its fair share of fresh water inundation, the oceans are remarkably uniform in mineral composition and have stayed that way through all the various cooling and warming periods in the last few hundreds of millions of years.

Why, suddenly, are we to be concerned that water runoff from melting glaciers, or additional ice forming in the Antarctic is going to cause sudden doom and despair? Are we really so full of ourselves and our power that we assume our last 100 years or so (and the next 100 years) has the power to make changes that nature itslf can't make over hundreds of millions of years?

I just don't buy it. Will weather and climates change? You betcha'. Can we do something about ozone depleting chemicals released into the air? Sure. Can we stop the oceans from rising or falling? Let's not kid ourselves. The problem is, there is money to be made and most of us are too stupid to figure out how we, too, can profit from it.

When I do, I'm going to be on here like white on rice (I know... Racist!) exhorting all of you to pay those carbon taxes, buy my energy-efficient new 'green' battery, and most of all, buy my book on how YOU can make a change by protesting against all those mean Republicans who will drown the islands, rid the planet of polar bears and shut off the ocean conveyers. I'll invite each of you to attend my seminars (at an affordable, yet nominal fee), where you can stay in the same hotel with me at a special rate (meaning... I get a cut of the take), and for an annual membership fee you can join my society. Just think of the smug satisfaction you'll have, knowing that you personally 'made a difference' (in my bank account). Of course, there are some of you for whom, just participating isn't enough. Don't worry! For major contributors, you can have a personal meeting with me on my yacht, er, I mean my 'aquatic studies research vessel'.

Until then, and in the meantime, frick all this nonsense.