The Problem With Melting Polar Ice

PA Pundits International ^ | 22 February 2010 | TonyfromOz

[NCC-1701]

"...I feel like I want to look at a picture of Helen Thomas just to feel better...."

Well, if it'll make you feel better....

[DustyMoment]

The Problem With Melting Polar Ice

It refuses to melt for the Glow Warming Hoax crowd???

[Mengerian]

Oh, his poetry is really bad. The stanzas about Neptune's bones and crying shepherds really crack me up.

I think Gore must be gunning for a Pulitzer, since he's already received his perfunctory Nobel Prize.

[RobRoy]

What they also forget is that if it warms up - but remains always below freezing - and the precipitation increases, the land ice will increase in depth.

Heck, you could have a significantly warming planet, causing a significantly increased precipitation at the south pole, causing a MUCH thicker ice sheet and see the oceans actually drop.

Add that to Siberia and even the Sahara and maybe we could reclaim the continental shelf!

:)

[RobRoy]

>>This argument works great for the North Pole, but not the South.<<

Actually it ONLY works for the south. The key is the land mass. There is none at the north pole. In fact, I thought the author was daffy at first because I thought at first he was discussing the north pole. Poor reading skills on my part... :(

[RobRoy]

>>The author may have wanted to take a science class beyond high school. He apparently is is unfamiliar with the process of sublimation whereby a solid is converted into a gas without an intervening liquid state.<<

I noticed that too. However, I gave him a pass for three reasons -

1. He actually used the word “melt”.
2. Sublimation is MUCH slower.
3. It confuses the point the author was trying to make. I suspect that if someone brought that up to the author he would say pretty much what I just did, but probably in his own way.

[Rockingham]

In the Antarctic as in glaciers, the tremendous weight of the ice on land produces a thin layer of water between the ice and the rock on which it rests. The ice sheets thus gradually flow to the ocean and break off into massive floating ice bergs. Plausibly, the Antarctic ice fields would diminish over time and raise the sea level if changes in climate caused less snow in the Antarctic or warming caused an increase in the flow of ice toward the sea.