"Polar Melt In The Big Scheme of Things?" Topic

We often talk about colonizing different worlds that do not always fit into what we would like in an environment.

In the case of a drastic melt like this picture, it would just be a matter of adapting to a new environment, right?

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Would this simply open the way for humanity to move into previously hostile territories, like Antarctica?

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Neat size comparison of Antarctica to Europe:

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I can see the possibility of gaming a military race to the southern continent, followed by government-sponsored colonies and drilling operations, in turn followed by others (refugees) trying to show up uninvited and lots of lots of fighting potential.

Didn't Kevin Costner already LOSE a 'mint' on something like that….'Water-something'??? Ooops…I thought you meant 'Pulp', not REAL sci-fi, (like "Tentacle Apocolypse"…)

Sgt DWW

oh…and it's not the 'meek'…it's either those with most 'firepower' or BEST SWIMMERS that would 'inherit the Earth' in advent to the BIG MELT…(sounds like a great name for a burger with lots of cheese and carmelized onions!!!! or a orangecream shake???)

Sgt DWW

LOL DWW.

I wonder how long these land claims would last in that environment:

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I'd bet that a lot of Inuits (Eskimos) would sign up or be drafted for those operations.

"I'd bet that a lot of Inuits (Eskimos) would sign up or be drafted for those operations."

The South Americans will probably do the same with Fuegians (Tierra del Fuego inhabitants), not to mention the Russians with their Siberian tribesmen.

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It would make for lots of interesting gaming possibilities.

CC

US might help Canada take over melted Greenland, in exchange for allowing US immigrants into Canada while, at the same time, returning former Mexican territories back to Mexico in exchange for oil or something.

The Russians would probably be busy trying to keep the Chinese and Japanese from taking some of their Siberian territories too.

What a mess it would be!

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To discourage uninvited boat refugees, large northern hemisphere bears are given free reign in Antarctica. Even if there are not enough seals, they will learn that they have plenty of people to eat.

For these purposes, there's a problem with your map – it's a mercator projection. From a website to follow:

"Mercator's projection (created at a time when navigators were sailing on the oceans in wooden ships, powered by the wind, and navigating by the stars) was particularly useful because straight lines on his projection were lines of constant compass bearing. Today the Mercator projection still remains useful for navigational purposes and is referred to by seafarers and airline pilots.

The Mercator is also a "conformal" map projection. This means that it shows shapes pretty much the way they appear on the globe. The mapmaker's dilemma is that you cannot show both shape and size accurately. If you want a true shape for the land masses you will necessarily sacrifice proportionality, i.e., the relative sizes will be distorted.

The Mercator projection creates increasing distortions of size as you move away from the equator. As you get closer to the poles the distortion becomes severe. Cartographers refer to the inability to compare size on a Mercator projection as "the Greenland Problem." Greenland appears to be the same size as Africa, yet Africa's land mass is actually fourteen times larger (see figure below right). Because the Mercator distorts size so much at the poles it is common to crop Antarctica off the map. This practice results in the Northern Hemisphere appearing much larger than it really is. Typically, the cropping technique results in a map showing the equator about 60% of the way down the map, diminishing the size and importance of the developing countries."

So a Mercator shouldn't be used when the discussion is one of relative size. What you need is a Peters Projection:

"A different type of projection is an "Equal-Area" projection. This shows sizes in proportion while sacrificing true shape. The Peters Projection is one type of equal area map.

World mission and aid-giving agencies use the Peters map because it serves to represent the developing countries at their true proportion. People feel pride in their country when its relative size is shown accurately. The Peters map has been widely adopted elsewhere, but remains a curiosity in the United States."

Google the Peters Project for more info, or check out this first link here: diversophy.com/petersmap.htm

So the Peters will show you how really large or small something really is. If you head to that site, you will see that Greenland isn't nearly as large as we all "think" it is, while Africa is fricking HUGE – and it was already quite large on the standard maps. You'll also see that Antarctica is relatively small.

But hey, all that aside, this was a theoretical sci-fi topic, so perhaps it doesn't matter what style of map is used : )

Steve

If you want a real mess that'll start wars over land, go with an ice age, instead of a warming period. At the Last Glacial Maximum, Siberia, England, Scandinavia and most of Canada were under ice, and everything within hundreds of miles of the glaciers was unfarmable polar deserts.

The 'ice free Earth' has lots and lots of new farmable, inhabitable, irrigated/irrigatable land. The costal cities will be underwater, but humans can move.

Some links:

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scotese.com/lastice.htm

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Now, in a counter to my premise above, the sea level dropped by 60-100m, and while that'd open up a lot of potentially useful land, there's so much water bound up in the ice sheets that irrigation would be problematic. But hey, you could walk from the tiny bit of England that isn't under kilometers of ice to the tundra of France.

Wow. Grasslands all the way to Costa Rica during the last ice age? Nice maps. Much appreciated.

I wonder if there are similar vegetation map projections for extreme global warming (EGW?)?

CC

Here we go (though a bit crude)!
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Here is another coastal map (this time of North America) after the ice melts:
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Wow! After the Big Melt, I'll be back on the coast of what's left of Texas. I'd better buy some new salt-water fishing gear.

And places like St. Louis will become big coastal cities.

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Hey, what do you think would be the next U.S. capital? Vegas?

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I see some good points to all this. Florida would never cause problems in a presidential election again. And the citizens of New Orleans would already know what to do.

Australia is apparently already getting ready for it. link

A 100m rise? Erm…I'm terribly curious as to where that water is going to come from. I don't think that even with a total ice cap melt (Antarctica's the only one that matters for sea levels), you'd get that much water.

Does anyone but me remember that in the Traveller timeline the Terrans/Solomani *deliberately* raised the temperature to avert another ice age and open up more farmland? The map on Invasion Terra reflects that.

Huh…he didn't model the rise for the Great Lakes – that's too bad, that'd be interesting.

Wasn't artificially and purposely enduced global warming also the premise for "The Arrival" (1996), in preparation for an invasion?

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"A 100m rise? Erm…I'm terribly curious as to where that water is going to come from. I don't think that even with a total ice cap melt (Antarctica's the only one that matters for sea levels), you'd get that much water."

Exactly. Whenever you run into one of the "global warming" cultists getting all histrionic that large areas of land will be drowned out when the icecaps melt, just point out the analogy that, if the icecaps and oceans are like a full glass of ice cubes and water, and the ice cubes melt, then why doesn't the glass overflow…?

True – it's only the Antarctic sheet over the actual land that would cause sea level rise – which might be a good amount, but 100m? Has anyone figured out what the sea level rise would actually be if all of the ice caps melted? Would the melting of all the glaciers contribute appreciably to the level?

Regardless, I like the Ice Age War idea myself – lots more pressure to migrate, changes in land utility, significant sea level drop – I have this image of vast farms populated by migrant workers from Canada off what used to be the coast of Florida, the towers of Miami in the middle of a hill on a grassland slope.

That ice-less Antarctica map (and most similar maps of Greenland) also doesn't account for rebound. The land mass has been pushed downward by the ice, and would rise to a new equilibrium if the ice melted. How fast and how far is an open question, however…

I wish this article had been written in plain English:
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This one makes more sense (170 feet, apparently):
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The answer is still unclear to me. Do they mean 170 feet if ALL ice melted (Artic AND Antarctic)?

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This is it!

"Most of the current global land ice mass is located in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets (table 1). Complete melting of these ice sheets could lead to a sea-level rise of about 80 meters, whereas melting of all other glaciers could lead to a sea-level rise of only one-half meter."
pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs2-00

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Okay, now we have a number, 80m. Thanks!

The land mass has been pushed downward by the ice, and would rise to a new equilibrium if the ice melted.

Yep – apparently the Great Lakes are still rebounding from the Last Glacial Maximum…

Also, if we're talking about maintaining the current rate of sea level rise (2mm/year) 80m will take…

…40,000 years.

So the Glorious Emperor of Mankind, sitting on his Golden Throne on Holy Terra, protecting Humanity from the Horrors of The Warp with the might of his Space Marines, will have lots of nice waterfront property.

Ok. Assuming it is a "case of a drastic melt", say, within our generation . . . by 2050 or sooner . . .

CC

80 meters in 40 years? Based solely on the amount of current "breadbasket" land and large city locations that wipes out in only two generations, the population shifts will be brutal.

The US (the location I'm most familiar with) loses pretty much all of its specialist agriculture (much of which is in California and Florida) and a significant chunk of the staples (when the Gulf Coast moves waaay north). With the land loss also comes the climate shift, meaning that the vast wheat fields of the northern plains are no longer suitable for the same crops. Add in the detail that those climate zones (with their particular ranges and seasonal patterns of temperature and precipitation) would probably still be on the move, and the prospect of getting anything like current yields from the same land gets very slim.

Now add the drowning of the great port cities to the equation, and you have a recipe for disaster in those parts of the world that have become net importers of food.

Farstar said: "That ice-less Antarctica map (and most similar maps of Greenland) also doesn't account for rebound. The land mass has been pushed downward by the ice, and would rise to a new equilibrium if the ice melted. How fast and how far is an open question, however…"

Isostatic rebound takes places up to 10,000 to 100,000 after the "load" is placed on the earth's lithosphere (or in this case, after the load is removed). Northern Europe and North America are still rising as a result of the removal of the icesheets over the period 20,000 to 12,000 years BP (Before Present).

Zephyr1 said "…if the icecaps and oceans are like a full glass of ice cubes and water, and the ice cubes melt, then why doesn't the glass overflow…?"

As others have pointed out, it's the icesheets on land that we should be worrying about, as they do not already displace seawater as the oceanic sheets do. The ice cubes in the drink are fine, but it's the extra ones you push in from the side…

I knew that PhD in geophysical crustal dynamics would come in handy one day…

As for how much rebound occurs, a rough estimate would be that for each 1 km of ice removed, the land will rise up to 300m (depending on the strength of the crust underneath). Rate decreases exponentially over time, so much of the rebound will be in the first few thousand years after the "unloading" event.

"80 meters in 40 years? Based solely on the amount of current "breadbasket" land and large city locations that wipes out in only two generations, the population shifts will be brutal."

For a sci-fi scenario, that is exactly what I would want, "brutal". :)

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Check out this other map of a melted Antarctica:

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A more realistic perspective here:

TMP link

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