Throwing our oceans into space to save from flooding?

Question

i asked my science teacher and she didnt have an answer.

i came up with the theroy that if we were to start flooding from global warming couldnt we have water iced into !HUGE! glachers and then just sending them into space?

Answer 1

Interesting idea but, sorry, won't work.

The Earth has a tremendous gravitational pull. It takes every bit of force we can muster to get any object into space.

The cost of sending anything into space is about $1000 per pound. That includes tools, oxygen, parts for the space lab, water...anything.

If the all the people on the planet put in all their money and work to ship water off the earth, we would use up all our sources of rocket fuel long before we sent up even one cubic mile of it. Losing one cubic mile of water would not make a measurable difference in ocean height.

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Answer 2

No we couldnt do that!  I think your science teacher is stupid because I am a math teacher and I can answer your question... Think about this.  Dark colors absorb more heat and the glaciers are light and the oceans are dark.  If we take the glaciers to space and leave oceans to take up the space the temp of the ocean will rise and cause major climate changes that would be catastrophic.  We may have allready reached a "tipping point" where rise in earth's temps has melted so much of the polar ice caps that they will all eventually melt.  If that happens not only would the water level on earth rise but the global temp would make life on earth impossible.

Answer 3

Remember this: The Earth has a delicate balance - everything cycles and recycles. When the glaciers melt and cause shore lines to recede (and flood) - the balance shifts slightly to sustain life on Earth. It's like ice in a glass...the weight doesn't change, but the volume will when the ice melts or freezes. So if you were to get rid of the ice (water) - the weight along with the volume of the Earth will change.  That will change the speed of the Earth's rotation, its gravitational pull, the distance of our moon... which can result in some catastrophic events and upset our delicate balance enough to  radically change life on the planet as we know it. The best solution? People should stop settling in areas where the flood risks are known. Settle further away from rivers, lakes, oceans, floodplains etc.

Answer 4

Possible but not probable. This is because glaciers would be hard to transport into space. Think about it- no rocket we have would be able to lift so much weight, and water weights A LOT!

Also, what if these giant ice blocks were sucked back into our atmosphere from earth's gravity and hit us, again?

And these iced glaciers...how would they be transported onto the rocket???

Possible, but not probable, at least for the next couple hundred years.