Quote:
Originally Posted by rahl
If all the ice and snow was to melt today, it wouldn't have any real devastating effect on the oceans levels.
All the ice, snow, groundwater etc accounts for less than 3 percent of the total water on earth. So yea melting it won't do much
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no
only raise it a couple of feet
" If the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet melts, sea level will rise 8.06 meters (26 feet – referenced shortly). Since this sheet is unstable and could slide much more quickly than melting, sometimes only the unstable portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is discussed. Considering only the portion that might slide off before melting, that part would raise global sea level by 4 to 6 meters
heres the shortly part
"Table: Amounts of water in those planetary ice masses that would raise sea level. Table from Williams & Ferrigno, 1999)
again i cant post links yet
copy and paste time for you
i suppose
(even had to get rid of yours)
(hope that 12 posts comes quick)
We see that committing to melting Greenland commits us to 6.55 m (21 ft) sea level rise, and committing to melting the West Antarctic commits us to an additional 8.06 m (26 ft). Other ice masses, such as mountain glaciers and small ice caps (0.45 m) and the Antarctic Peninsula (shown in Figure 6, adding 0.46 m) will melt more rapidly but have less effect than the major ice masses (these two added together are 0.91 m or 3 feet of sea level rise). (Nevertheless, even 0.91 m would still be a major problem for many coastal cities and towns.)