Fuel Prices

True.

But ice can be stacked up in one place causing little harm but then wanders off elsewhere when it melts.  Especially, since whilst the NP is on water, a lot of the ice around it and at the South Pole is on land.

I am no expert, so don't quote me.

But as I recall if floating ice were to melt then the amount of water added to the ocean is approximately 3% more than the volume of the water originally displaced, and so this would result in a 5 cm rise in seal level. However, that's just floating ice, land ice is the real and really big problem.

10% of the world's surface is covered by ice. 90% of that is in Antartica, 10% is in Greenland and the rest doesn't matter very much. The Greenland ice sheet is, obviously, on land and amounts to 3 million cubic metres of ice. If that melts then sea levels would rise by 7 metres.

If all of the land ice melted, then sea levels would rise by about 70 metres.

Your glass of water anology applies only to ice floating on water, approximately 0.1% of the problem, given that is is 0.1% of the world's ice.

I expect I've got some of the figures a bit wrong, it's been a while, but I assure you that my proportions are correct.

So put more ice in your G&T, we need to use the damn stuff up as quickly as possible before it has a chance to melt.

As an after thought...

>>I thought water expanded when it turned to ice not the other way.

Don't forget when it is ice in a glass of fresh water only about 1% of it sticks above the water level. When it is an iceberg in salt water it is more like 10% above the surface, though some of that is that icebergs have more air in them than ice cubes.

I'm no climate change denier what I would like to see (maybe this is more a reflection of my own reading than what is available) are the facts. All this 2 minutes to midnight, 30 seconds to midnight, 2 seconds to midnight guff doesn't do anyone any favours. You hit midnight and a new day begins, not really the end of days the media would like us to believe.

Some of the planet has benefit from fossil fuel the remainder have seen this and like the idea of mechanisation and being told by the industrialised world no, you should not do it, it is wrong while still addicted to fossil fuel.

I’m not sure where you’re looking but there’s plenty out there. Try The Economist, which makes much of its content on major issues available FOC. Everything in the Guardian is free to read, and free from the corporate ownership that biases some other papers. And the dear old BBC’s Fact Check does a good job on this and other matters where obfuscation is a problem.

Tell that to Cinderella. 🤓

[been writing this in between doing something else, haven't had a chance to read it back, hopefully it makes sense]

The world is warming, the ice *will* melt, the Earth will cease to be inhabitable for all. We are absolutely in the business of kicking the can down the corridor, there is no other path. And really we'd like to kick it a very long way down the corridor so that we can not think about it.

The can is sufficiently far down the corridor at the moment that everybody here will be dead before the sticky stuff hits the whirly thing hard enough to kills us. I don't really see how it can be doubted that our behaviour will make it worse (or quicker).  It depends how far into the future you care about, I guess.

For me, I like living in a responsible way, I try not to leave a trail of destruction behind me,  and by and large I think the lifestyle represented as environmentally responsible is actually a way of life and behaviour that I support and like to live. Though that said, I am not obsessive about it - I fly, drive and sometimes use more electricity than I need etc. etc.

Sometimes I think the argument over climate change is not dissimilar to that over vaccination. Those that do not believe in it seem to need to convince everybody else not to believe in it, and vice versa. For me, I don't feel the need to convince others, though obviously I am happy to discuss it. Mostly I just worry about waht I do.