it comes in pints?

IIRC, 6" or less?

Arctic ice? Very little if any rise.

Greenland and Anarctica ice? Could be trouble.

Antarctic ice = trouble.

Greenland - maybe, but it's pretty small compared to Antarctica.

But Arctic ice is floating on the Arctic Ocean. Even if it all melted, sea levels would rise precisely "not at all".

Still, I have seen it lumped into the "sea level" horror shows by some of the more rabid warm-mongers.

(And yes, I recognize that if the Arctic ice cap melted, some ice currently over land would also melt, but that's pretty miniscule.)

Actually, I was just wondering if artic ice was at sea level, or if it's sitting "atop" sea level.

No, it's just basically a giant ice berg.

I suppose it's possible that edges at land are held up slightly by ice on the land but I don't think that matters.

Yup, essentially a giant ice cube in a really tall cool drink. I've run though a little demonstration where you take a measureing cup, put some cubes in, fill it with water so that they float (no touching the sides), and darned if the thing refuses to overflow after the ice is gone.

Yeah, amazing, isn't? Basic physics (as applied to buoyancy, for example) flies right over the heads when global warming hysteria is involved.

I feel I have to point out that a good deal of the ice on the planet does sit on land. Greenland, for example, has 1.75 million sq.km. of it.

True enough, Bill. And Antarctica has about 10 times the volume of Greenland (all else is miniscule).

I'm just tired of people lumping in the Artic when it is irrelevant.

Even the ice on Antarctica would have a differents effect than most people suppose. As it is now, the earth's surface is pressed downward by the ice. If the ice melts, the earth's surface there would bulge back out (like a partially deflated basketball sitting on the floor). The bulged southern hemisphere would rebound, creating more space for sea water (at the cost of some flooding in Chile, Australia, Africa). Northern Hemisphere would be pretty much unchanged.

There would be earthquakes that accompany that melting, but they would be a long ways away from where anyone lives.

Has anyone run a simulation on what would actually happen if all the ice melted?

It's pretty easy to calculate, if one ignores the depression of land by ice sheets that Don mentioned (it's interesting that the area near Skagway, AK, is still rebounding from the glaciers that melted thousands of years ago; the edge of the bay has receded several hundred yards in the last century alone as the land rises). With complete melting (and ignoring the land rebounding), the Greenland ice sheet would raise ocean levels as much as 20 feet, Antarctica would raise it about 200 feet.

An unrelated phenomenon that also affects sea levels: if the Atlantic ridge stopped being active moving the continents apart, it would drop and sea levels with it; its activity is what makes it rise and drive sea levels higher than otherwise. I don't recall the estimated amount but I think it was several hundred feet. Conversely, if the Pacific subduction zones "clogged up", sea levels would rise.

I lived in Finland a couple years ago and the land rising (like a sponge) because of the melting of glaciers thousands of years ago was one of the things they liked to talk about alot in the classes I took. The shore line on the Gulf/Bay/Sea of Bothnia has expanded by quite a bit over the centuries and they even theorize that Sweden and Finland could eventually have a pretty long land border.

I have always thought the inclusion of Arctic Ice in the whole "sea levels rising" arguement is ridiculously ignorant, but I know a lot of the global warming scared-of's are concerned about the amount of fresh water it adds to the ocean. Anyone aware of the content of the arctic icecaps? Are they made up of ocean water or fresh water?

The salt content of the ice is much lower than sea water but probably not zero; the ice is almost certainly fresh water for all intents and purposes.

Still, the volume of Arctic ice can't be great enough to materially dilute the ocean except locally, and I doubt it's possible for the ice to melt so fast as to do even that to any appreciable degree. But if anyone has other information let me know.

Ice, salt - where's my Margarita? With Espolon reposado please.

~0

Hmmm... Whats more compressible, land or water? That's interesting.

Could ice on land displace more land than it would water?

Water is virtually incompressable. That's why near-misses can sink ships too....

IIRC, Billy Mitchell demonstrated that near-misses can often be more effective than hits.

Land is (mostly) incompressible too. I suspect that the glaciers were deforming rather than compressing the land.

Oh, and BTW, I've also read that global warming will melt the glaciers but that the Antarctic icepack will get bigger (as it is currently doing) because of more snow, which means that the sea level scares are not true even according to the global warm-mongers.

Dear genius club: any thoughts about what to do about starving polar bears?

Um...feed them?

Anyone have any thoughts on what to do about smug, condescending assholes?

We could always club a passel of seals the feed them...