If the ice caps melt what will happen?

One reason that you can't get all the information that you need is that no one knows what will happen. This world pretty much has checks and balances built into it. When something major occurs it generally affects something else that works in the opposite direction to balance things out. BUT, we don't know what will happen if the ice caps melt except that, yes Ocean levels would rise. Islands and coastal areas would reasonably be expected to have flooding. What we don't know is how long this will last. As mentioned above, we also have to consider how the salt and freshwater will affect ocean currents. Another thing we don't know is how the warmer ocean water will affect the currents. (PBS had a show that mentioned this as a distinct possibility as to why Renaissance England ended up with the famous Mini- Ice Age.) The thing I find scary is that the earth has 'albedo'. That's a natural reflectivity due to a large degree by the amount of ice (white and therefore highly reflective) that is at the polar ice caps. As this melts, the reflectivity of the earth goes down. Therefore the earth receives more of the suns rays and becomes warmer, thus melting more ice. The more ice that melts, the less reflective the earth, and the more ice that melts. This is just the opposite of our normal 'checks and balances' and could get things out of whack pretty quickly. All-in-all there's a lot we don't know, but enough we do know to tell us that this isn't an experiment we ought to set in motion.

Sea levels would rise, the salinity of the oceans would drop, weather patterns would change, and the mass extinction we currently appear to be experiencing would probably get much worse. Now here's the tricky part. The weather patterns would undoubtedly change, but it could be in any direction. With our current knowledge there are entirely too many variables in global weather patterns for anyone to make even a decent w.a.g. about what happens when key changes take place. So don't feel left out that you don't fully understand global warming, nobody does and the only ones who are positive one way or the other are fools. We can see glaciers, icefields, and ice caps are melting faster than they were when we first started recording such things. We can see trends that show the global average temperature is getting warmer. We just don't know what exactly the basic cause is, or what it means for the future. It's something we should devote a major portion of our resources to understanding, because even small natural changes in climate that we have nothing to do with have the potential to devastate civilizations more effectively than all the terrorists in the world combined, and possibly even more than the worst disease epidemics. Even if we could do nothing to change it, if we could predict it we might be able to prepare ourselves for a changed world. On the other hand, we might find out it is a normal temporary fluctuation that will have nothing but beneficial affects for us, then we could stop scaring the crap out of half the population and let Al Gore retire.

THINK The north pole in a floating sea ice if and I do say IF it all melted not one inch would be add to the seas. If you have a glass of ice water and let it melt does the water over flow the glass. Arctic winters are long and cold, and summers are short and cool. Temperatures vary with latitude, ice and snow cover, and proximity to the ocean. Ice covers most of the ocean surface year-round, causing subfreezing temperatures much of the time.Minimum temperatures of - 90° F are reached in Greenland and northern Siberia; maximum temperatures of about 23° F to 36° F are common on the ice sheet, and highs of 70°F 100° F are common on land areas in the day but drop fast at night. maximum temperatures of about 23° F to 36° F are common on the ice. That is a max in the day time.

The water level will rise wiping out most of indosenisai and other small islands. New york city, the san fran bridge, and Miami will all, unfortunatley be flooded

everybody get ready to become extinct!!!

Entire earth will be submerged b coz the ocean water is less than 1% ot total water on the earth.

Read your bible (Noah) or watch Kevin Costner's Waterworld! The one thing you can be sure of is "we won't have no hose pipe bans no more" Be prepared and safe. Buy a house boat!

As indicated by others, the sea level will rise. Some people speculated that this could lead to an ice age since the available moisture in the Arctic would be much greater with a water surface than with an ice surface, and the nearby land areas would still be cold enough that snow would fall, etc. I wouldn't look for seafront property in Minneapolis, but I wouldn't rule out Vicksburg, Mississippi.

when water caps melt the water level in the world increases