| Ron Purvis 2006-03-29, 8:21 pm |
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"Solar Flare" <sfart@hottomale.invalid> wrote in message
news:tIqdnZYlX-_ujLbZRVn-rw@golden.net...
> No sarcasm. only 10% of ice shows above the surface of the water. This
> means 90% is below the surface. If that melts the total volume goes
> down and the oceans recede.
>
> You do know that frozen water takes up more space right? You do know
> that Antarctica is mostly ice and snow and has very little land mass
> above sea level? You do know that the North pole has no land mass
> under it?
>
Yes, there is ice in the water, that doesn't mean that most of it is there.
You should know that much of that ice is on land meaning that 100% of that
ice is above the water. In Antarctica most of the ice is above land and not
water. Same thing is true of Greenland. Same for all the mountain top
glaciers. Even a good part of the ice in arctic circle is on the various
islands such as Ellesmere Island and the land mass from Alaska, Canada, and
Russia. While the north pole does have ice free floating in the middle of
the artic ocean it is typically only 6.5 to 10 feet thick and as large as
the US during it's biggest. That compares to the ice of Antarctica that is
up to two miles thick and covers an area equal to the US AND Mexico.
To summarize, all but a tiny fraction of that ice is over land and not
water. That means that the fact that when the ice is in water that it is 90%
below the surface is not really that important in the scheme of things.
http://www.gma.org/surfing/antarctica/antarctica.html shows the amount of
ice over Antarctica.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...north_pole.html
show the amount of ice in the artic ocean.
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