Glacier ice is deep blue because the intense pressure on the ice changes the properties of water. Even the melt water from the glacier is a strange blue color. Do you think maybe the pressure might affect CO2? Also, since we know that things like bacteria, spiders, and ice worms live in glaciers, wouldn't they affect the gasses in the ice based on their respiration?
2007-05-17 21:02:42 · 6 answers · asked by smartr-n-u 6 in Environment ➔ Global Warming
You are right. A new study that came out recently challenges the theory of pre industrial co2 levels found in the ice cores.
In a new scientific paper in the journal Energy and Environment, German researcher Ernst-Georg Beck, shows that the pre-industrial level is some 50 ppm higher than the level used by computer models that produce all future climate predictions. Completely at odds with the smoothly increasing levels found in the ice core records, Beck concludes, "Since 1812, the CO2 concentration in northern hemispheric air has fluctuated, exhibiting three high level maxima around 1825, 1857 and 1942, the latter showing more than 400 ppm."
For more info, check out the below link.
2007-05-17 21:15:15 · answer #1 · answered by eric c 5 · 1⤊ 3⤋
If you were to take an ice core sample from say the Swiss Alps or Canadian Rockies you'd find a relatively high incidence of impurities often resulting from the local fauna and flora but if you go to the Antarctic interior there's nothing that lives there and the ice cores are pristine.
Also, if there were some impurities they would be detected and the sample rejected or the impurities taken into account.
As for glacier ice being deep blue - it appears to be in much the same way that the sky and oceans appear to be blue. All of them are in fact effectively colourless (it's to do with refraction, reflection, Mie Scattering and Rayleigh Scattering). If you were to look at an ice core sample it would look the same as the ice in an ordinary home-made ice-cube.
Water has a remarkable property in that it can't be compressed and in this respect it's harder than metal. Despite the incredible pressures exerted by glaciers the physical properties of water are unaffected. The same is true of the gas trapped within the ice, although it can be compressed (and is) it's properties aren't affected. If it were then it would become something different; carbon dioxide would become either carbon monoxide and oxygen or it would become carbon and oxygen.
There are other methods employed to analyse the atmosphere from years gone by and by comparing one set of results with another we can detect any anomolies. We can also compare one ice core with another. If something has affected a sample it will show up as an anomoly when compared to other data.
2007-05-18 05:11:16 · answer #2 · answered by Trevor 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The biggest unproven assumption is that the rate of reaction of the trapped Carbon dioxide gas with the ice around it is negligible. Given the length of time that the sample was trapped, even very slow rates would have an effect.
Carbon of any chemical composition found in the ice is seldom analyzed.
2007-05-18 12:34:55 · answer #3 · answered by Richard 7 · 8⤊ 0⤋
Science can compare anything.....write about it. Alarm a few people then write about it again until they peek interest, pull in funds then......movies stars take up the cause and all along....lol it just isn't that important. What is to be will be and global warming is here to stay.
2007-05-21 16:19:17 · answer #4 · answered by Sand D 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Probably not... but the scientists want to claim they can because it makes them feel important.
2007-05-18 04:06:45 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
no this is the most rediculous claim ever
2007-05-22 02:09:22 · answer #6 · answered by ben f 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋