Ice melts – sea levels rise

The topic of sea levels rising has got to be one of the most controversial within the climate change arena.  The IPCC have stated that a rise of 70cm was likely but this was simply an estimate of the effect of expansion due to a 1degree Celsius rise in sea temperature. They go on to suggest that the Greenland ice sheet combined with the Western Antarctic ice sheet, if melted could cause a rise of some 12 metres. They admit that there is no way of knowing for sure what levels could be or when or how this could come about.

This uncertainty does little to convince sceptics of the potential crisis we are facing. The signs are all there and have been well reported and documented. The glaciers are moving faster, ice sheets are collapsing at alarming rates, extreme weather phenomena is apparent, but all too often labeled as just quirky or cyclical, and conducive with human nature most people will not take this seriously until they are directly and adversely affected.

The potential disaster lies in the snowball effect. rising temperatures melts more ice thus reducing heat reflection, – increased area to absorb heat from the sun and glaciers disappear cutting of valuable irrigation and drinking water to thousands. Permafrost thaws thus releasing more methane (20 tomes worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas), – thus compounding the heat retention in the atmosphere, causing sea temperatures to rise due to a combination of thermal expansion and ice melt. Coastal populations are displaced and massive centres of economic wealth and infrastructure are impacted,- millions move inland to areas with already stretched resources. etc etc.

If you imagine the human race as a small village in a deep valley of the Himalayas, we are now getting reports of a big snowball being made at the mountain peak. we may just have time to stop it before it becomes too momentous to stop or divert before taking on a life of its own and crashing down the mountain.