Re:Scientists discover fossil plants beneath mile-deep Green...
by exporectomy on Wednesday March 17, 2021 @11:57PM
(#26499556)
It won't melt on human timescales either. Total mass of Greenland ice = 4e15 tonnes. Upper end of predicted melt rate this century = 4e13 tonnes/century. So it could lose up to 1% of its mass this century or at the same rate, take 10,000 years to completely melt.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Scientists discover fossil plants beneath mile-deep Green...
by eloff on Thursday March 18, 2021 @12:52AM
(#26499778)
Those estimates can always be revised as we learn more, and melting ice sheets are not a linear process - it accelerates both as it melts and as the climate continues to warm.
You're right that it will take a long time, but wrong that we needn't worry. Even just a couple feet of sea level rise will wreak havoc in parts of the world.
Re:Scientists discover fossil plants beneath mile-deep Green...
by exporectomy on Thursday March 18, 2021 @01:06AM
(#26499829)
We're talking about the irreversibility of the melting here, not the fact that it's melting which everyone already knows and was even happening before AGW started.