Your Letters
17:13 UK time, Tuesday, 7 October 2008
Re . After reading of Mike from London's research (Monday letters) on Google's "banana" results I decided to take the project one step further and Google banana in Hebrew. sure enough it returned porn.
Yoni, Tel Aviv, Israel
Mike from London has his Google set to filter search results. Trust me.
Sophie, London
Does Mike from London not realise that having his letter published will mean that his letter itself will be added to Google's index and will increase the chance of the word "banana" being associated with the words "porn" and "Mike" for many years to come.
Daren't say, UK
I'm a little bemused by a link on the : "In pictures: Voices of women in Afghanistan". What does it link to, oscilloscope readings?
Dave Edwards, Cardiff, Cymru
I think the Monitor should run some spread-betting opportunities. For example, today, I think you will get between 40 and 60 comments saying ice is less dense than water, and I think you will publish between two and four of them.
Tim, Oxford UK
In response to Chris Emms (Monday letters), the Lomonosov-Lavoisier law states that Mass cannot be created or destroyed. A fixed mass of water in its solid form (ice) has a greater volume than water in its liquid form, thus it is less dense and floats. Approx 20% of an iceberg is above the water, but water ice is only 92% of the density of liquid water, meaning that when the ice melts the liquid volume of the seas will be more than the current liquid volume plus the displacement of the ice.
Andy Porritt, Kerns, Switzerland
Re Comment on where the water for rising sea-levels comes from (Monday letters). You're right to say that floating ice which melts doesn't contribute to rising sea levels at all. The crucial point is that the ice on land (such as on the Antarctic land mass) does cause sea-levels to rise as it melts into the sea.
Simon Belcher, London
Chris Emms, the problem is with your claim that most of the ice is underwater. Most of the ice is actually on land, in Antarctica, Greenland, various other arctic landmasses and glaciers. The effect of sea ice melting is, as you say, fairly small, although it can still have a big effect by diluting the sea and disrupting currents. However, if all the ice on land were to melt, that would be an awful lot of water added to the oceans. For example, the Antarctic ice alone contains something like 30 million cubic kilometres of ice, which is about 3% of the volume of the Earth's oceans. A 3% rise in sea level would be something like 100m.
Rick, Didcot, UK
No doubt you will have had a flurry of letters, explaining where the water comes from to cause sea levels to rise. I must simply remark on how much I enjoy looking out for your weekly habit of publishing a letter that you know to be nonsense, just to ensure a full mailbox the next day. My favourite was from the chap a couple of weeks ago who couldn't do sums involving millions. Do you have a special name for these letters, such as "response generator" or "mail maker"?
Richard Place, Barnstaple, UK
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