Posted on 06/07/2014 1:59:22 PM PDT by Hillary'sMoralVoid
Thanks to jpsb for this piece of doomsday prophesy on Global Warming:
"Together, the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets contain more than 99 percent of the freshwater ice on Earth. The Antarctic Ice Sheet extends almost 14 million square kilometers (5.4 million square miles), roughly the area of the contiguous United States and Mexico combined. The Antarctic Ice Sheet contains 30 million cubic kilometers (7.2 million cubic miles) of ice. The Greenland Ice Sheet extends about 1.7 million square kilometers (656,000 square miles), covering most of the island of Greenland, three times the size of Texas."
"Ice sheets contain enormous quantities of frozen water. If the Greenland Ice Sheet melted, scientists estimate that sea level would rise about 6 meters (20 feet). If the Antarctic Ice Sheet melted, sea level would rise by about 60 meters (200 feet)."
Here is my response:
Thank you. Let me do some simple math with the numbers your source provided:
Total area of ice sheets, North and South = 6M Sq Mi
Total surface area of earth = 200M Sq Mi
Total surface area of water on the earth = 140M Sq Mi
Percentage of ice sheet area to total water area = 4.3%
For 4.3% of the earth’s surface to produce a combined total of 220 feet of sea level change would require an ice sheet with a average thickness of 5,116.2 feet! Yes, a solid ice sheet all ABOVE WATER that is nearly a mile thick!
That is significantly thicker than the thickest known ice shelves in Antartica (around 3,000 feet), and they are quite rare. The thickness is most certainly much less that on the arctic cap.
I rounded my calculations conservatively, especially given the nature of sheet ice. It is not like solid ice, it is more like layers of compacted snow and ice. Therefore, to get the volume of water in the equation that was used might require as much 20% more volume of sheet ice to get the amount of water that pure ice would provide.
Freepers, don't be afraid to question the sources that make outlandish, doomsday claims. They often can be quickly silenced with simple math.
Not enough Scotch in the world to do it justice.
Google is your friend.
“Aren’t the thickest ice sheets in Antarctica about 9,000 ft thick? The average thickness is 1900 meters (6233 ft).”
Facts. Rain on his parade.
Check your sources. The Antarctic ice cap does in fact average 1.2 miles in thickness. The South Pole is at 9300 feet above sea level. Some of the ice is below sea level, but the terrain could be expected to rise close to sea level as the ice melts and its weight is no longer pushing the Earth's crust downwards.
The Arctic ice is not on land, except for Greenland and a few northern Canadian and Russian islands, and is negligible by comparison to Antarctica.
I'm not a global warming alarmist and think everything we see thus far is consistent with natural processes, with man's contribution down in the statistical noise, but you can be certain that the alarmists would pounce on your error if you tried to use it in an argument elsewhere.
There is no scientific evidence that they are melting, just cycling...so chicken little cries of what if they melted are pointless exercises.
Antarctic Sea Ice At Record Levels
The National Snow and Ice Data Centre said the rapid expansion had continued into May and the seasonal cover was now bigger than the record “by a significant margin’’.
“This exceeds the past record for the satellite era by about 320,000sq km, which was set in April 2008,’’ the centre said.
Increased ice cover in Antarctic continues to be at odds with falling Arctic ice levels, where the summer melt has again pushed levels well below the average extent for 1981-2010. The centre said while the rate of Arctic-wide retreat was rapid through the first half of April, it had slowed.
The April Arctic minimum was 270,000sq km higher than the record April low, which occurred in 2007. The Antarctic sea ice extent anomalies were greatest in the eastern Weddell and along a long stretch of coastline south of Australia and the southeastern Indian Ocean. The centre said the increased ice extent in the Weddell Sea region appeared to be associated with a broad area of persistent easterly winds in March and April, and lower-than-average temperatures.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/12/antarctic-sea-ice-at-record-levels/
It must be pointed out that Greenland would retain most of the melt as it is a giant basin.
Also, a large percentage of Antarctic ice is floating on water and would not increase MSL at all, should temps there rise the 90+ degrees F needed to cause significant ice to melt.
It’s a crime to put good single malt on ice. I will drink it with a wee bit of water, if only to save the planet.
The Ice caps are melting = Global Warming!
The ice caps are thickening = Climate change!
A tautology by any other name, still stinks the same.
Enough to make a few goog martinis.
bkmk
Best proof rising sea levels predictions are total BS... Al Gore buys a $9 million SEASIDE mansion in California. Now if the prophet of global warming doom who assured us sea levels would soon be rising to catastrophic levels, buys seaside mansion he apparently doesn’t believe his rising sea levels apocalypse. Why no one in the media points out this glaring hypocrisy is beyond me.
I found an interesting article on a giant canyon under the Antarctic ice as well, 2 miles deep, 15 miles wide and 186 miles long, just mapped in January of this year. It would be interesting to know if it is basin shaped too.
You want to see cold? Just wait to see what happens if the Arctic ice melts.
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