The thing about melting ice is that it's the only "smoking gun" that the scientists can point to that they think the public will understand. They are melting, so why not use that to scare the billions of coastal dwellers into thinking they must do something? You can show pictures of icebergs collapsing or the "before" and "after" shots of mountain tops. But if you try to give them one of the graphs that Evert posted, they'll think it's a new type of roller coaster.

Not necessarily. Researchers live to get grants to fund their research. If they can spread some fud and get more grants, I think alot of them would. Especially for assertions that can't be proved/disproved for centuries. Science and politics are deeply intertwined for some people.

As concerned Allegroites, I think we need to stop and consider changing our daily routines to improve the situation. We need to consider the energy we are wasting by blitting our sprites to the buffer. I propose that we blit them directly to the screen from now on, thus eliminating the need to blit the buffer to the screen (which requires considerable energy and generates additional heat in the CPU and GPU). We should consider a framerate limitation of 30fps and add a timer function that takes a new parameter-> BPS_TO_EARTH_TEMP which will only run our logic cycles when the Earth's temperature is at or below average.

Remember whom you're talking to here. How many colleagues of yours work/have worked on weather patterns and the climate?
Also, if there were funds being dealt out for fake research with a predetermined outcome, don't you think oil companies would be the ones doing it?

You didn't read my edit, did you? The iceberg moves its own mass while floating in water. It still moves its own mass when turned to water - the water level doesn't change.
But you don't need new water to get sea levels to rise - just increasing the mean temperature by a tenth of a degree will do that for you.

No, you rather belief what's written down in the Bible than what people tell you. Sorry if that hurt, but it really galls me no end when people blockheadedly refuse to listen to reason or wilfully close their eyes to the evidence before them. Look at the damn temperature graph.

I'm not, but then again, your country isn't below sea level.
In 1953 springtide and a western storm breached dikes along the coast, flooding 175,000 acres of land and killing almost two thousand people. If something like that were to happen today, the death toll would be very much higher. The dikes were reinforced after the floods, but it's clear that they won't be strong enough in a few decades if the sea level continues to rise in the way that it has been rising.

Hey, but don't mind me! I'm just one of those lieing scientists who need a job in a year or two.

We are going to rechristen Britain as the Glorious Emprire of New Atlantic in 2100.

Density changes with temperature. Water is at its densest at 4 °C - beyond that, density decreases as temperature increases. Since the mass is constant, that means the volume increases.

Yeah, and since there's a lot of water in the oceans, even a relatively small increase will show.

I'm guessing they couldn't anticipate stuff like this back then. It's always hard to estimate what will happen with new technology. Computers are a great example of this.

Arguements have been given from both sides. The ones who speak more intelligently are the most likely to be believed.

Yeah, my thought was more that it would break even, actually ...

You've got a big bridge to build between that and what you said though. This isn't "water warming", it's "global warming". Why a tenth of a degree? How close to that are we actually (there's a helluva lot of water out there)? What other factors might regulate that? By how much does the mean temperature of the water change now?

See above edit

Well, that's not what you said!

That's thermodynamics for you. Heat flows from hot to cold. Normally, there's a balance of heat flow between the ocean and the atmosphere, such that on the whole neither of them grows warmer or colder (of course there are fluctuations, but there is no overall trend): there is no net heating. If you heat up the air (which is what global warming does), you add a source to the balance. Eventually some of the heat you added to the atmosphere is transported to the ocean (the principle is that of "equipartition of energy" if you want to look it up). Net effect: you've heated up the ocean.
Of course, water has a large heat capacity, so it's much harder to warm up the ocean than it is to warm up the atmosphere. Conversely, it's a lot harder to cool as well.
The ocean is a big thermostat that normally prevents temperature on Earth from fluctuating too much. Heat it up and you disrupt that thermostat.

An example meant as a small number that seems insignificant, but which can already have measurable consequences. And memory.

We're past that, I think - but I'll need to see if I can find a reference for that. Caveat: the number I remember may be specific for the North Sea, not global average ocean water.
By the way, there is a "neat" diagnostic tool for measuring fluctuations in sea water temperature: coral reefs. It's known from trying to keep coral alife in an aquarium that they tend to die if the water temperature is just slightly too high. This has been observed to happen.
(Yes, I know, pollution kills coral reefs too - so do the people who did this research). It's been a while since I read about this research, so I may have some trouble finding a reference for you.

As I said, I think this is already in the order of a tenth of a degree.

EDIT:
I'm sorry it's in Dutch, but it was the fastest way I could find a relevant reference: http://www.knmi.com/VinkCMS/explained_subject_detail.jsp?id=2621, you may have some luck throwing it to Babelfish. Although it will only tell you what I have already said above.
Or this one: http://www.knmi.com/kenniscentrum/nieuwe_inzichten_zeespiegelstijging.html
Some numbers from there: the sea level is rising at a rate of 3mm per year over the past few years. By 2100, the sea temperature is estimated to have increased by 4 degrees.

So what terrorists should REALLY be targeting is the polar ice caps?
Wouldn't a nuclear bomb or two melt enough ice to set off a chain reaction?

Then what? We build a giant solar powered freezer to put in the ocean?

I do my part! I light my apartment with three compact fluorescent light bulbs.

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Actually I bought them because they look cool.

I'm afraid I have to agree with nonnus here. when I was working for NIWA, they were doing a lot of research on global warming (the implications of global warming, should the theories prove sound, are important to an island nation where at least 75% of the population live on the coast). Most of the climatologists I talked to stated that they needed at least several thousand years of accurate worldwide data to be able to determine if human activity was having as much effect on the atmosphere as some scientists claimed.