Global warming question: It is a fact that the polar ice caps are slowly melting and this is supposed to...?

Question

cause water levels to rise. I'm having trouble understanding this because the majority of the ice is under water. When you put ice in water, the water level stays the same once the ice melts. Only if the ice is solid right to the bottom and rises significantly above the water, does the level increase. (I couldn't help doing some kitchen experiments - my husband thinks I've finally lost it :o) So... Is the majority of ice at the polar caps, solid right down to the ocean floor? I don't understand how else the water levels could rise. I haven't yet seen the docmentary, "An Inconvenient Truth" - maybe this is answered there.

Thanks, Just curious.

Answer 1

the majority of the ice on the northpole is udnerwater, woudl the entire northpole melt, it would do nothing to the waterlevel.

antartica is a diffrent story, since most of the ice there is suspended on land. would antartica melt, the sea levels would rise dramatically.

secondly, the melting of the artics make ice break off from the main bodies of ice, these icebergs flow towards the equator, and affect the gulfstreams in the oceans. This affects weather.

more melting = more ice breaking = more effects on the gulfstream.

and: the northpole is not frozen to the ocean floor, the russians navigated subs under them.

Answer 2

You are thinking about an iceberg--and if that were all there was to it you'd be right. However, icebergs are just (big) chuncks that have broken off the polar ice caps. Those icecaps--mainly on Greenland (north) and Antartica (south) aren't IN the water--they are sitting on land. If they melt, the water will run off into the oceans--just like adding more water to a container--the water level will rise.

BTW--the increase in sea level resulting from this is already measurable--though it's still small as yet.

Answer 3

5 reasons why the theory that humans cause (or contribute significantly to) Global Warming is bunk:

1) We can't predict weather for next Thursday - how are we supposed to believe climate models looking out decades?

2) Mars is also experiencing Global Warming.

3) There are about 20 serious climate models in use today. They don't agree with each other.

4) The climate models are "specutacularly poor"(*) at predicting the past. That is, we should be able to feed in data from (say) 1982 and predict 1983. The results compare poorly to the observed data for 1983.

5) Little attention is given to the gas that is far-and-away the #1 contributor to global warming: Water vapor.
http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/wvfossi...

(*) In the words of Dr. S. Fred Singer. He is an atmospheric physicist at George Mason University and founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, a think tank on climate and environmental issues. The quoted phrase is from an interview: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/debate/s...

Answer 4

The ice interior the Arctic Circle, yet no longer the Antarctic Circle has been shrinking maximum summers for approximately 10,000 years. With the soil uncovered, much less mild is pondered, which hurries the melting. the the remainder of Earth has warmed approximately one degree c in the previous 112 years or their abouts, on the traditional; possibly an prolonged term problem, yet possibly purely a minor inconvenience the subsequent 50 years. international warming is possibly a secondary ingredient, no longer substantial. Neil

Answer 5

No it isn't. The majority of ice is on teh Greenland and Antarctic ice caps, which are both on land, above sea level.

Answer 6

There just isn't enough evidence to prove that global warming is even in occurrence. Certain records show that the earth has gone through warm and cold spells throughout history. I do not believe that global warming is an impossibility, but the is way too much speculation, and not enough solid facts.

Answer 7

THERE IS ALOT OF ICE ABOVE WATER LEVEL THATS THE ICE THAT WILL CAUSE THE WORLD TO FLOOD THE NORTH AND SOUTH POLE WILL MELT AND THE EARTHS TEMP. RISES