How many people will die if the polar caps melt?

Question

HOw large is the population density in low lying coastal regions on all continents

Answer 1

Well, melting polar caps aren't likely to DIRECTLY kill anyone. First of all, arctic ice is floating, so even if it all melts it won't raise the ocean levels one iota. Second of all, even if we include all the ice in Greenland, Canada, and on mountain-tops which is melting, it's not going to melt overnight. So presumably if someone is flooded out, they'll just move.

On the other hand, little or no ice means a much lower albedo of the Earth - in other words, less sunlight will be reflected directly back out into space and more of it will be absorbed. This may not be a massive effect because the poles don't get a whole lot of sun anyway. But it contributes.

Likewise, cramming a buch of people who used to live on the coast into a smaller area is not likely to be conducive to health. High population density has always been associated with the spread of disease, poor living conditions, food distribution problems, and the like.

The best answer I can give you comes from PBS. If just the entire antarctic ice sheet melts, it will flood out half the world's population. Billions of people. (Link 1)

So I don't think anyone can say. Even though estimates are getting more and more locked in, there is still quite a bit of variability in them. There is, however, no doubt that this is happening. Since 1979, the size of the arctic ice cap has shrunk by 20%. (Link 2)

Whether or not what's happening is caused by humans, it behooves us to try and stop it. If it continues unchecked, it will be massively expensive in terms of money and lives. Pretending it's not happening at all, however, is simply the worst kind of affected ignorance.

Answer 2

Lane... the polar ice caps ARE melting. Get a clue.

As for the actual question.

The ice caps may melt, but nobody is going to die because of this. The sea level will gradually rise, and people will have YEARS to get out of the way of the rising water.

What the melting of the ice caps will do is create tens of millions of refugees and make low lying coastal cities useless (New York City, LA, and San Francisco for example). Millions of people living in eastern India/Bangladesh and much of China will have to find new homes.

It would be a huge disaster, but the rising water isn't going to actually kill anyone.

Answer 3

Your question needs to specify a time frame for there to be an answer. Melting ice caps would partly be caused by the warming of the ocean. So thermal expansion of water is a big factor and might cause more havoc overall than addition of water due to ice melt.

The very real and terrifying answer to your question is this: Given enough time, everyone dies. Not just from drowining, but from stravation. Heat up the earth enough so that the ice caps melt and you would have to have had enough heat added so that crops wouldn't grow anywhere.

It works like this: Start up your hummer and starve

Answer 4

A lot fewer people than would die if we had another ice age.

By the way, do you honestly think that people are not going to move as their cities are drown by the sea? Of course, those might be the ones dumb enough to believe all the alarmism surrounding the issue of global warming.

CLUE: Worst projected sea level rise (from the fearmongers themselves) over the next century is 3 feet. (And that figure is BS, but let's go with it.)

CLUE 2: Many parts of the Netherlands are 25 FEET BELOW SEA LEVEL!!!! Gee, how come all those Dutch people aren't DEAD??? Wow, you mean they used technology and built dikes? I guess we must have lost that knowledge because now just a three foot rise in the ocean is gonna kill BILLIONS!!!!

This is just one example of global warming nonsense. LAST CLUE: Humans are going to be able to adapt to whatever comes and very few will die (though many might have to move).

Seriously though, sea level is unlikely to rise more than a few inches in the coming decades...just another one of those pesky facts that the fearmongers ignore. They scream that sea level is going to rise dramitically, ignoring the fact that the rate of sea level rise has been constant (about 1 inch per century) since the last ice age. Contrary to all the fearmongering, the rate of rising sea level has not increased during the last 150 years of "global warming." It's the same rate it's been for thousands of years. There is ZERO evidence to say that sea level is going to increase its rate of rising.

CLUE 3: The arctic ice cap is FLOATING on the ocean. The entire thing could melt and it would not raise sea level AT ALL. If an ice cube melts in a full glass of water, does the glass overflow? NO!!!

(And don;t even get me started on Tuvalu...which is eroding away because of ground-water pumping and the destruction of its coral reef for building materials...not to mention the very natural progression of atolls eroding back into the sea.)

Edit: Gee Frederick (guy after me): Then how did life survive on this planet for 90% of the time when THERE WERE NO ICE CAPS AT ALL?????? People are so friggin' clueless about the geologic history of the Earth it's amazing. Ice caps are not the "normal" condition for Earth (if anything can be called normal)...for the vast majority of time that there has been life on the Earth, there were no ice caps at all. In the current cycle, the north polar ice cap came to be only 4 million years ago.

Gee, how come all life didn' fry in those higher temperatures. And, gosh, if you look at the fossil record, you see that life actually THRIVED during warmer times and, baddabing, there was GREATER BIODIVERSITY (to use the modern buzzword). This is one of the biggest myths about global warming, that it is bad for the planet. The fossil record CLEARLY indicates that ice ages are FAR WORSE for life than a warmer Earth.

Answer 5

I think it would be very hard to say exactly or even roughly. It would take a long time for them to melt but once they did people would be forced into smaller areas and overpopulation would probably be a huge problem...overpopulation might even end up being a big problem despite the fact...

Answer 6

Since the oceans are rising at 3 millimeters/ year ( a bit over 1 inch every hundred years) they'd have to be be very slow.

Answer 7

Not too many, since it would happed very slowly, the people would have plenty of time to move to higher ground or build sea walls. Dont stay away at night, over this one.

Answer 8

Doctor Why...

The ice that floats ABOVE sea level will raise water levels when it melts.

Answer 9

I don't know, but your question serves to illustrate the kind of ignorance surrounding the effects of man made pollutants on our environment.
the polar caps are not going to melt