Now that Antarctica is Breaking up, How long will it take to Melt Completely?

Question

Date 25/03/08. <start from now.)

Answer 1

My dad says the Beatles breaking up was worse.

Answer 2

It will NEVER melt completely.

Answer 3

That would depend on when the next ice age comes around.

Answer 4

What does it matter? You&#039;ll be dead by then anyway. That&#039;s not something that you can actually pin point anyway... so don&#039;t worry about it.

Answer 5

Antarctica and the arctic are melting fast.  I may very well be WITHIN YOUR LIFETIME that all glaciers will totally melt unless immediate measures are taken to cease C02 and other climate changing emissions.  It is URGENT!

Answer 6

idk

but that movie the inconvient truth with all gore omg it was so scary because like a few years ago mountain tops were covered with snow now there melting

so id think global warming is a huax to get money this is the truth and we got to face the music

Answer 7

The mass of ice in Antarctica, the temperature, the specific heat of ice and the heat capacity of ice are known quantities.  The rate that heat energy is supplied to the Antarctic from lower latitudes is uncertain because it depends upon ocean currents and weather, which are variable.  The magnitude of the greenhouse effect also varies with time.  With some assumptions about the rate of heat transport (that likely err on the high side), I arrived at 8000 years.  The Antarctic ice cap is not going to melt completely, even in the worst case scenario for global warming because the excess CO2 will not persist in the atmosphere long enough to make it happen and man will run out of fossil fuels to add more CO2 in a lot less than 8000 years.

Answer 8

I read the article too. I thing its VERY FUNNY how they dont even mention that the sea ice coverage in Antarctica is way above average right now, 1.281 million sq. km. above average for this time of year. Wilkins sea ice shelf is on the western side of the peninsula, the ONLY area where there isnt much sea ice forming, whereas the rest of Antarctica seems to be icing over quickly. They did not report this though, did they?

Answer 9

Ummm...It&#039;s summer down there.  The ice ALWAYS breaks up in the summer down there.

Answer 10

unless something catostrofic were to happen and something huge completly shifted the earths overall temp. then i would say not in either of our lifetimes.

Answer 11

What&#039;s breaking up now is another large ice shelf, not the entire Antarctic ice sheet.

Ice shelves are more prone to melting due to warming of water underneath, waves, and rising sea levels.  

Some Antarctic glaciers are also showing signs of unprecedented melting:

New Research Confirms Antarctic Thaw Fears - Spiegel Online

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk...

&quot;The paper also states that the thickness of the Pine Island Glacier has shrunk by an average of 3.8 centimeters annually over the past 4,700 years. But the Smith and Pope glaciers have only lost 2.3 centimeters of their thickness annually during the past 14,500 years. Satellite measurements taken between 1992 and 1996, though, show a loss of 1.6 meters in thickness per year on the Pine Island Glacier -- a figure that represents 42 times the average melt of the past 4,700 years.&quot;

It&#039;s generally assumed that most of the glacial ice on Antarctica would take hundreds to thousands of years to melt, but that assumption was based on simplistic models for ice sheet dynamics (one solid block of melting ice) that have not proven to hold true (in Greenland for example).

Answer 12

If the trend continues on the path it is now on, several thousand years. Actually if the trend for Antarctica continues, then we will be in another ice age in a couple hundred years. Antarctica has become colder and ice pack has increased over the past 100 years.

Answer 13

not in our lifetime.

Answer 14

Antarctica won&#039;t break up, bcoz unlike the Arctic it has a solid landmass underneath the ice. The ice may melt, but that&#039;s different.

Answer 15

Notice how GW deniers just give dumb answers.  They don&#039;t think that anything can happen to the status quo, at least, they&#039;re pollution would never cause harm.  We&#039;re seriously going to have to round up that retarded bunch soon.  With a bounty on their heads would be a fine deal.   The place where the devil truly lives is in the hearts of the deniers.