Global Warming

I can't tell who's shitting us, and who's for real here... so I'll jump in with abandon anyway.

First and foremost, a huge percentage of the worlds ice is on land. An absolutely massive percentage of it. When that melts, it's going to follow the path it's liquid cousin already follows, and flow down into the sea (some might flow into lakes, though, but that's its problem... stubborn bastards). Well that can't be too bad, can it? I mean, we have water flowing into the world's seas daily! Yes it is a problem - people don't realise the sheer volume of ice. Take glaciers, for example. They can be miles long, and hundreds of meters thick. The same goes for ice sheets, except that they can cover thousands of square miles. Only two exist, in Anartica and Greenland, and if they melt, then we're buggered. If the Greenland ice sheet melted completely it would cause sea levels around the world to rise by 20 feet (and completely re-direct the Gulf Stream, leaving little old Britain kinda cold), and if the ice sheet in Antartica melted, sea levels around the world would rise by 210 feet. That's a lot. Now I'm lucky, because I live in a very hilly country, and I'm over 1,000ft above sea level, so it'll take something stupid like the whole country sinking to immerse me in sea water, but there are a lot of places worldwide that would be completely flooded with only a six foot rise - take Holland, for example. Extremely flat. An extra six feet of water? Bye bye you crazy Dutch.

So to summarise - a lot of ice is on land. When that melts, billions of gallons of water would flow on their merry way to the sea, and Holland would drown.

Ah, thanks Lenny. I had not thought about the ice on land. XD

I don't follow the reasoning. Why would it matter that an ice crystal is less dense than water when it comes to flooding.

I had thought that most of the ice was in the ocean, therefore when the ice melted, it would displace less water than when it was in it's frozen state.

I had thought that most of the ice was in the ocean, therefore when the ice melted, it would displace less water than when it was in it's frozen state.

Ahh. Even so, there would be a significant rise in the water levels wouldn't you think?

Right. Of a glacier, about 90% of it is underwater, so I suppose you could assume that that 90% will not change anything when it melts, but the other 10% will.

I think what they are thinking is that it's like a glass of ice water, with ice cubes in it. Once you put the ice cubes in it, the water level is at the highest it will be, even once the ice melts. This is because the ice is already in the water.

However, it isn't the same as a glacier.

Water expands like 9 or 10% when frozen supposedly. In that case the change will be little to none, since 90% is already underwater. The poor coral reefs are fucked.

90% of icebergs are underwater, now without even slightly researching it, I can confidently tell you that most glaciers are not in the water, they are on land.

So, this goes back to Lenny's point. If these massive amounts of ICE on LAND melt, the water level will rise. It's as simple as that. Not only will the water level rise, but the Planet heating up could also have more severe weather changes that we are really unable to perdict, which is why I get so frustrated when people completely downplay Global warming and completely dismisss it as "not our fault" and don't care to take care of this poor country we're slowly destroying.

Where I live, we are roughly 5~7 feet above sea leval, now, if anything we're to shift within the next 10-15 years, I'm pretty much fucked, along with all of Florida which average above sea level is like 12 feet...