from Hacker News

Miles of Ice Collapsing Into the Sea

by hrshtr on 5/19/17, 12:20 AM with 23 comments

  • by oldandtired on 5/19/17, 3:24 AM

    The article was interesting in that it use the word "could". In context, the only ice that will contribute to sea level rises is land based. We could lose all the sea based ice and the overall effect most likely will be a drop in sea level.

    To get a 1 metre sea level rise, requires the melting of land based ice of a volume equivalent to the entire surface area of Australia covered to a depth of 45 metres or so. The energy requirements for phase conversion is at least 1 million 25 MegaTonne nuclear bombs going off,

    Based on every relevant paper on the subject that I have been able to find, and it appears that it would take anywhere between 1000 and 3500 years before we would get this 1 metre rise.

    The last set of figures that I saw from the IPCC is that it would be about 1000 years to see this kind of rise, if their measurements were correct.

    The thing I find interesting is that we (as humans) have a very short term memory of what has happened in the past. Especially, when things are driven by authoritative groups such as governments (and attendant bureaucracies) and science committees and panels.

  • by monk_e_boy on 5/19/17, 2:09 AM

    Doing something about global warming (a-hem climate change) always boils down to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, people at the bottom who are struggling for housing, food, safety, etc are not concerned with coal power station emissions (as an example.) So we get short term goals from politicians that are just scary in how short sighted they are.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

  • by propman on 5/19/17, 2:12 AM

    Serious question, if sea level increases are so damaging and feared is it possible to build a water pipeline (like an oil pipeline) from higher coastland to a lower area and then create an artificial river to use in an artificial dam. I think estimates put sea levels rising at around 3 mm a year. I did the rough math and 3mm cubed is a lot but I think it can be doable for $15B and the potential artificial dam might be useful too. I have absolutely no knowledge of any of this though and apologize if the idea seems stupid

  • by binarycrusader on 5/19/17, 2:00 AM

    Mods, can you decapitalize the title please? The original article doesn't capitalize it (although see below for details).