Actually, mean thickness is closer to a nautic mile than an English mile. Source: http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/Resources/schoolzone/resources/Factsheets/factsheet_geostats_print.pdf
On 12/27/06, graywolf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Some of the ice seems to be melting, some of it seems to be getting > thicker. I have found nothing to confirm that the ice cap averages over > a mile. I do know that it is over a mile think in some places, but that > is hardly an average. Any realistic information I have found about the > ice caps overall melting faster than normal can be translated to "Who > knows?". Remember where the ice caps extended to 10-20 thousand years > ago; whoops, who can remember that far back? > > And interesting, but related, aside: We think of forests as resources > and recreational areas. To prehistoric (before metal tools) man they > were a real threat slowly encroaching upon their tiny fields and their > hunting areas driving them into the recently melted glacial tundras > along with the game they depended upon. For many thousands of years > mankind was caught between the retreating glaciers and the advancing > forests. The evil forest of folktale was very real. And that long slow > war may be the cause of the rise of modern man as the dominant species. > > > > 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! > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
