
Miles of Ice Collapsing Into the Sea - hrshtr
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/18/climate/antarctica-ice-melt-climate-change.html
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oldandtired
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.

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flukus
> 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.

These shelves are built from ice that has flowed from land to out over the
ocean, the more it melts the more that flow increases and the more ice goes
from being on land to being in the ocean.

> 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,

There was a thunderf00t video very recently on this topic (sorry I can't link
to it from work), I forget the exact figures that he came too but the energy
effect of global warming was on the order of thousands of megatonne bombs a
second.

~~~
oldandtired
My comment about the 1 million bombs is related to just the amount of energy
required to convert solid water to liquid water at 0 degrees Celsius.

The figures that I have seen from various studies indicate that only a very
small amount of the energy stored in water ever gets to actually meting ice.

In regards to the ice flows, the flow is caused by evaporated water from the
oceans being deposited on the land at the glacier. Without that depositing of
water vapour, there is no flow. Hence, until a determined study is made on the
full dynamics of this cycle, mayhaps one should not be using this as the
driving example or even as an example.

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monk_e_boy
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs)

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propman
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

~~~
therealdrag0
If I understand you correctly you're suggesting treating the ocean like an
elevated lake, and putting a pipe to a lower place so the water pressure could
generate electricity.

The two things that come to mind for me are:

1\. It's hard to find land lower than the ocean
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_on_land_with_el...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_on_land_with_elevations_below_sea_level))

2\. Piping salty ocean water inland will make a lot of people unhappy. It
would totally change the environment that was already there.

But interesting idea. Death Valley might be a valid place for it, since it's
already a salty waste land.

~~~
propman
Yeah so the Afar Depression would be feasible and would stop 12 years worth of
ocean rises and create a lot of power, but would cause a lot of costs and
issues to the area. I thought Death Valley was huge but only stops around 3mm
of ocean so just 1 year of the current rise rate

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

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misnome
Although it probably shouldn't be capitalized here, the article title
definitely appears in an all-caps style on my browser (the html <title>
doesn't, which is possibly what you mean, but I'd probably argue that in any
normal conflict the actual content-title would win)

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grzm
I dug into this a bit as my curiosity was piqued. The actual HTML h1 element
is title case, and styled via a CSS text-transform to uppercase.

That said, regardless of how it was applied, the all-caps is for style, not
the proper title of the article.

