Since the Arctic is melting and the Antarctic is looking stable what will the imbalance do?

Answer 1

First of all, the antartic is NOT looking any more stable then the Arctic, Significant portions of the Antarctic peninsula have already melted and broken off. Fortunately for us much of that melt off was floating ice and as-of-such has not affected ocean levels drastically. More of a concern at this point is the reduction of ice as a reflective surface, and the dilution of the ocean's salt concentration which is important for maintaining the ocean's currents. By reducing the earths reflective surface the warming effect in this areas is compounded which should further accelerate the melting of ice, but if enough ice were to melt into the ocean then this should significantly disrupt currents such that the currents which push warm equatorial water into the northern Atlantic and Norther Pacific will no longer be warming the northern Hemisphere. The good news is that this would cause the Artic ice sheet to regain its stability. The bad news is that in doing so we would be forced to persevere a lengthy ice age where our food supply would dwindle and the earth would experience a considerable reduction in its Human carrying capacity. The other bad news is that by the time the currents have been disrupted, likely the greenland ice mass and/or the South Western Antarctic ice mass will have melted and as these are land based they threaten to increase the sea level considerably, thus forcing mass displacement/death of human populations directly before the impending ice age. To be completely honest I'm not sure that we can reverse this cycle at this point as man made factors have pushed the earth's limitations too far. By acting against global climate change now our efforts would be towards reducing the Earth's backlash and reducing the severity of this ice age. Many of the natural ice age cycles that the skeptics of global warming like to point out are in the vicinity of 5,000 to 15,000 years in duration. The mega eruption of the Toba supervolcano, for instance, stressed the planet into a 10,000 year ice age in order to contain the global warming contaminents that it emitted 70,000 years ago. This catastrophe bottlenecked that contemporary population of Homo sapiens to 14,000 individuals according to DNA evidence. The onslaught of damage that humans are currently implementing put these supervolcano eruptions to shame and we will be lucky to escape an ice age backlash to our contaminents of any less then 50,000 years, especially if we continue to pollute atmospheric contaminents right up to and into this event.

It is important to note that the fluctuations between hot and cold periods used to be greater but as the Earth stored carbon it served to dampen the range of these oscilations. Since we have now released so much of this stored carbon we have essentially pushed the earth back 1 billion years in its carbon storage and thus are begging the Earth to return to similar oscilations as 1 billion years ago. This period was marked by hot periods and long 50,000 year ice ages, punctuated by episodes of mass extinction and adaptation of the surviving species to continually fill these new niche during these oscillations. This might not concern Humans that much as we have proven to be an adaptible species, but food shortages would become a reality, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. Look amongst your relatives and imagine that the food resources were only enough to provide for one out every ten of you and then ask yourself if that is an acceptable price to pay to continue to live a life dependant on releasing the Earth's stored carbon sources?

Answer 2

By comparison with Antarctica the Arctic is tiny. It covers a much smaller area and it's average depth is a matter of metres as opposed to kilometres. In terms of creating an imbalance there won't be much of an imbalance. There'll be a whole bunch of other consequences including many indirect ones but from a geological perspective very little imbalance.

If it's not a planetary imbalance you mean can you add some more details please.

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Just to pick up on a point that Joe makes (above). The Arctic is a floating ice mass and as such is already displacing it's own mass of water. If it were to melt completely there would be no affect on the sea levels. The cold water introduced to the oceans as a result of melting could impact on thermohaline circulation and most at risk is the North Atlantic Conveyor. We don't know how this would be affected, it may not be affected at all. In the worst case scenario it will shut down leading to a redistribution of warmth, the Caribbean would become hotter and parts of Nothern Europe would become colder triggering an advance or amassing of glaciers in Iceland, Greenland, some of the more northerly lattitudes of the Scandinavian countries and the establishment of semi-permenant glaciers in Scotland.

Answer 3

It will cause some of parts of the world to flood when all of the excess water level raises from the melted ice. Some animals will also start to die off. For example, polar bears are dieing because there's not enough ice. they swim for miles until they eventually drown from exhaustion.

Answer 4

Global Warming is a bunch of bull.
The earth does not hold fate on man, God does.

Don't worry about it. The earth changes so much and then goes back to normal. Don't be surprised if we have an Ice Age before global warming. I'm tired of those "Mother Earth" people that think the end is near. Those are the same people we can blame for high fuel prices by preventing oil companies from drilling or creating power plants in the USA.
Don't worry, so called "mother earth" will not let you down. It's all about earth changes that have been occuring daily for the last 6,000 yrs. Your fate belongs to God not Mother Earth

Answer 5

The scientific consensus is that the imbalance will cause the south pole to be so heavy that the southern portion of the earth will fall of at the about the Cape of Capricorn. No one will really care though since not much goes on down there anyway.

Answer 6

Balance is a subjective reality. The Earth has areas at different climate extremes during any given moment of time. To the Earth, that IS balance.

We may have to come to the conclusion that Earth's "balance" does not always coincide with the best interests of man...

Answer 7

well the ice bergs would mely and all those creatures that live on ice bergs would die...and the melting ice bergs would cause a major flood and alll of us would have to go in land more and we would die slowly...its sad but if we can stop pollution we could save our planet

Answer 8

Some small countries will drown (literaly)
Most will lose allot of coastal area.
The ocean will become colder and allot of species will die, then the species that eat those will die.

Global cooling. (ironically)

Answer 9

It's so sad,I don't want to think about what would happen.


(Many blessings)