Let's stick some thinking in here. 44% of the ice is floating. That means it would have no effect on sea level.
38% is resting on ground. However a lot of that is below sea level and would that portion would actually lower sea level if as it melts. The portion above sea level would increase the sea level however. So we can ignor any ice that is below sea level at this time which thins the part we are talking about by nearly 9000 feet. I see no analysis of the percentage of the ice this applies to. Most of the remainder are actually somthing like ice rivers that are moving into the sea slowly all the time, and presumably being recycled to a certain percent. The land area of Anartica if all that ice melted would be something about 50% of the area usually listed. The current theory is that the ice is slowly melting (consistanent with what has been happening for at least he past 10K years). And in a geographically short period of time (measured in hundreds of years, if not thousands, they will be fully melted. Which has happened several times in the past eons. Therefore I submit that you will have plenty of time to pack up and move. However, you will forget your tooth brush. And I am done with this thread, because it has become apparent that I am arguing against some of the people here's religion. Jostein Øksne wrote: > 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 >> PDML@pdml.net >> http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net >> > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
