On Dec 27, 2006, at 1:00 AM, John Francis wrote: > 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!
Greenland is also a huge mass of land-based ice, about the same mass as the West Antarctic ice sheet. Another thing to consider is that if these ice sheets disappear or are diminished substantially, the average albedo of the planet is reduced by a disproportionate amount, more heat from the sun is retained ... and that at the polar regions where the changes have the greatest effects on the oceans' current/weather pump. G -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
