RE: Only nuclear power can now halt global warming

["Richard L. Hess" <lists@richardhess.com>]

Raymond, I love it when we do math on the back of an envelope here! It's so 

much fun to use approximate (order-of-magnitude) real quantities! Thanks 

for starting!



http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1997/EricCheng.shtml states the area of the 

Earth's oceans are approximately 140,000,000 square miles (with 5 sources).



http://www.mapzones.com/world/europe/greenland/index.php states that about 

708,000 square miles of Greenland's 840,000 total square miles is covered 

with ice.



http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/EmmanuelleStJean.shtml confirms the 

area and provides a slightly higher percentage of coverage (90%) with ice. 

It also shows several sources for the depth of Greenland's ice cap is 

thicker than a mile. Now some of that is below sea level, apparently, so if 

we use a mile (1.5km) as an average as Raymond suggested, let's see where 

this falls.



There are approximately 198 square miles of ocean for every square mile of 

Greendland's ice cap. (140E6/708E3)



If we say there is, on average 5280 feet of ice on every square mile of 

Greenland's ice cap, then when that melts (assuming it's all on rock above 

sea level), it will raise the entire ocean level by 5280/198 or about 27 feet.



That's a lot in many areas. It is not up to the waist of the Statue of 

Liberty, however, although it might lap at the base.



Richard





At 02:35 PM 5/24/2004 -0700, Raymond A Hoover wrote:

>Greenland's ice is not sitting on the water, but on the island of Greenland.

>

>If the Greenland Ice flows cover an area of say 10,000 square miles and 

>are on average 1 mile thick, then the melting of the ice covering 

>greenland would add an additional 10,000 cubic miles of water to the 

>oceans.  Whether this is significant I can't say since I don't know the 

>present volume of the oceans.  However, there are lots of places on earth 

>that sit within a few feet above sea level.  For instance a sea rise of 

>about 10 feet would result in most of Bangladesh being flooded (a good 

>portion of Florida also).

>

>"Riely, Brian P." <brian.riely@ngc.com> wrote:

>In the reference article, it states:

>"...the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which will raise global sea 

>levels significantly..."

>

>On a simplistic level, when a chuck of ice that is floating in a glass of 

>water melts, the water level does not rise; so, why would the melting of 

>the Greenland ice sheet cause sea levels to rise significantly everywhere. 

>I can think of several scenarios where the above would be true--for 

>example, the earth's surface has changed such that the gravitational 

>potential that initially held the water in Greenland would no longer hold 

>the water--but they would be just made up stories. Does anyone know the 

>reason why professor Lovelock 's statement is true?

>

>Brian





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