On Jul 22, 2006, at 8:30 PM, John Francis wrote: >> The silliest doomsaying is the flooding from emlting icecaps idea. >> Ice >> is less dense than water. Melted icecaps are as likely to result >> in sea >> level drops than rises. > > True for the North polar icecap, which displaces pretty much it's own > weight of water :-) But Antarctica is a different story - a > significant > quantity of water is tied up there, and melting it would indeed > lead to a > considerable rise in mean sea level.
One of the projects I worked on at JPL in 1984-1988 was interrogating the Greenland and Antarctic ice packs with imaging radar systems. Antarctica and Greenland ... Many many many cubic miles of land-based ice. Melt it and sea levels will rise catastrophically. Never mind the effect that the loss of those big reflecting mirrors at both ends of the planet will have on ocean currents and air flows... Godfrey -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
