Melting ice could cause gravity shift

It has lower density, because it expands when it gets solid. Or something like that. I haven't had science in a very long time.

BUT:

If you take 1 litre of water (i.e. 1kg) and freeze it, it is still going to weigh 1kg. It will just crack the container :)
 
koffiejunkie said:
Remember that the arctic ice sheet is 4 km thick in some areas (or was that 6km?), and covers a larger area than the continent itself. That's a lot of weight. If I'm not mistaken, the SANAE base (the old one) was built on permanent ice, a long way out at sea. I'll have to check on that though.
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The Arctic ice sheet does not rest on a land mass.

Consider this:

# 2/3rds of an iceberg's mass is submerged (already displacing a huge volume of water)

# ice is less dense than water (ice occupies more space than the same mass of water)

My question is: does the melting of the arctic ice sheets really pose that much of a threat wrt sea levels?

I think that the biggest effects of the melting ice sheets are the release of harmful gases trapped in the ice and the decrease in salinity of the waters (the Arctic ice sheet is 100% fresh water) surrounding the Arctic.
 
porn$tar said:
The Arctic ice sheet does not rest on a land mass.

Consider this:

# 2/3rds of an iceberg's mass is submerged (already displacing a huge volume of water)

# ice is less dense than water (ice occupies more space than the same mass of water)

My question is: does the melting of the arctic ice sheets really pose that much of a threat wrt sea levels?

I think that the biggest effects of the melting ice sheets are the release of harmful gases trapped in the ice and the decrease in salinity of the waters (the Arctic ice sheet is 100% fresh water) surrounding the Arctic.
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As far as I can remember, it is the ice that has been resting on land that carries all sorts of gunk with it when it melts, and THAT has an effect on the water levels.

Your biggest problem with ice melting in the Arctic foir example is the fact that it then cools down the warm currents in the surrounding see and that then plays havoc with the weather...apparently that is a fairly major cause of the last Ice Age.

I'm no expert however, so feel free to shoot this one down in flames if I am wrong.
 
Fazda said:
As far as I can remember, it is the ice that has been resting on land that carries all sorts of gunk with it when it melts, and THAT has an effect on the water levels.

Your biggest problem with ice melting in the Arctic foir example is the fact that it then cools down the warm currents in the surrounding see and that then plays havoc with the weather...apparently that is a fairly major cause of the last Ice Age.

I'm no expert however, so feel free to shoot this one down in flames if I am wrong.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure the Arctic is just ice and the Antarctic is a land mass covered in ice.

Yes, the melting ice does affect the currents which in turn affects the weather, but it's a natural process, fast or slow.
 
porn$tar said:
Pretty sure the Arctic is just ice and the Antarctic is a land mass covered in ice.

Yes, the melting ice does affect the currents which in turn affects the weather, but it's a natural process, fast or slow.
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That's correct as far as Arctic and antarctic are concerned, but if Greenland, for example were to lose its ice, there would be a change in climate pattern as a result of colder seas. Trouble is, is that Greenland has been losing a hell of a lot of ice recently, and that is going to bugger around with European climate big time.
 
About time things warmed up a little. Greenland used to have vineyards in Viking times, and then it froze over. I'm all for the earth warming up. Of course it has absolutely nothing to do with human beings (the warming, not the vineyards).
 
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