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Old 02-07-2013, 02:19 PM   #472 (permalink)
NeilBlanchard
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Not necessarily - it was a lot warmer 130-125,000 years ago than it is now, and yes "only" about half the ice melted then.

But read the Note: at the very end - today the carbon dioxide is *much* higher than it was back then. And remember that we know that the warming back then was caused by changes in the earth's orbit and angle of the axis of rotation; and it is the warming that then caused the carbon dioxide to be released from the ocean.

The warming we are now seeing is caused primarily by us burning fossil fuels which is increasing the amount of carbon dioxide - and the temperature is increasing because of that. So, we may see the temperature go up much more quickly in the near future, and it then might go much higher than it did 125,000 years ago. And we don't know how long it will take for the ice to melt quickly enough to cause the sea level to go up.

By the way, when half of Greenland's ice was melted 130-125,000 years ago, a lot of Antarctica was also melted, and the sea level was about 23 feet/7m higher. So we really do not want this to happen...



There are other factors too - Jason Box is going to be studying "dark snow" i.e. what effect all the soot from fires around the globe (both natural and what we humans are burning) has on the melt rate:

http://climatecrocks.com/2013/01/31/...nd/#more-13806
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Last edited by NeilBlanchard; 02-07-2013 at 03:17 PM.. Reason: corrected some data