From U.S. News, Feb. 8th, comes the story, “Earth’s polar ice melting less than thought”, based on information from the GRACE satellite. GRACE is short for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, a satellite that is a joint venture between NASA and Germany. According to the story, the data supplied by the University of Colorado is far superior to previous estimates, which were from a small number of measurements and then extrapolated over 200,000 glaciers. According to the story 230 Billion tons of ice has melted annually averaged over an 8 year period. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?
So, how much sea level rise can one get from 230 Billion tons of melted ice? That seems to be the unanswered question, so I decided to find out. It is a relatively simple calculation to determine the thickness of water that would weigh 230 Billion tons given the seawater surface of the planet is 361 million square kilometers. So I converted the tons of water to kilograms, converted that to cubic millimeters, converted the surface area to square millimeters and, finally, divided the volume by the area. And voila!
The answer turns out to be 0.58mm. That equates to 23 thousandths of an inch (0.023”) To compare that to something we can all relate to, that would be approximately one fourth of the THICKNESS of a Popsicle stick. After all the hype about climate change and the runaway CO2 emissions causing melting ice all over the world, I now understand why we need to expend $Trillions, destroy the global economy, use curly light bulbs, drive electric cars, turn down our thermostats, tax sources of carbon dioxide and cease using the energy sources that have led to the standard of living some of us used to enjoy, all to prevent this degree of catastrophic sea level rise.
I am really concerned!!
NOT!
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