From: StellrJ at aol.com on 2001.09.08 at 20:47:24(7422)
In a message dated Fri, 7 Sep 2001 1:15:47 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Neil Carroll writes:
When the ice cubes
> in my glass of water melt, the water level in the glass does not get any
> higher than it did when the ice cubes were still frozen. The entire northern
> ice cap is floating in the ocean the whole thing could melt and it wouldn't
> change the oceans level one millimeter. The south pole is only about half on
> land so the oceans may rise a very little bit.
You are right about the north polar cap, but I think you may have underestimated the amount of water rise if Antarctica should melt. When you consider just how THICK is the ice cap over the land half of Antarctica, that is a lot of water. Also Greenland -- again, most of it is over water, but the land part is very thickly covered. Remember that, here in Georgia, the entire Coastal Plain was once the seafloor; the present "Fall Line" (a line running approximately from Augusta, through Macon, to Columbus) was once the coast. Now this may have been partly due to changes in the height of the land, but changes in sea level may have been a factor as well.
Jason Hernandez
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