On Tue, Dec 26, 2006 at 09:27:36PM -0500, graywolf wrote: > > > >> On the other hand, here is some homework for you. How many gallons of > >> water would have to be added to the worlds oceans to raise sea level 1/2 > >> meter? Next question, how many gallons of water are in the worlds ice > >> caps. > > > > You mean above sea leel? > > No all of it, after all ice is bulkier than water.
If the North polar icecap melted entirely, there would be effectively no difference in the level of the oceans - a floating iceberg is already displacing its own mass of water. The problem comes with the Antarctic ice sheets (and, to a small extent, glaciers and snow/ice cover in other parts of the world). The average thickness of the Antarctic ice is well over a mile. Even the smaller West Antarctic ice sheet contains enough ice to raise mean sea level by 20 feet. The larger East Antarctic sheet contains an order of magnitude more ice - enough to raise sea levels by over 150 feet! > >> One of the things that we forget is just how big a place the world is. > >> We think in terms of our town, our city. I have crisscrossed the US by > >> car, train, bus, and a lot of it on foot. Even with that experience it > >> is so big I have a hard time imagining it. The US is a only a small > >> portion of the land in the world. The oceans are 3 times as big as all > >> the land combined. Think of that. Yes, they are. But Antarctica is a pretty big place, too. It occupies between 2% and 3% of the total area of the earth. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
