The ice sheet that covered America was larger than the Antarctic ice sheet is now, and it took 4000 years for the American ice to melt. It might take upwards of 3000 years for the Antarctic ice to melt, so we won’t see an 80 metre sea-level rise in the next century. But there will be other significant effects, without a doubt.
Useful distinction, thanks. So many terms have acquired slippery meanings in this discussion (the greater one - not just this thread) that it’s nice to have some agreed-on meanings.
sbunny8, I wasn’t picking on you in particular, just had my mush-language detectors go off.
My understanding is that earth’s biomass would shrink, at least in the near term. The lush Amazon basin would become more arid. Oceanic life, already focused in higher temperate latitudes, would shrink as less ocean is available at extreme latitudes.
However the big elephant in the room is being ignored. As usual.
By about 2050 or 2060, as climate change becomes more clear, and clearly undesireable, a political movement will grow to reduce the earth’s temperature by artifical means. This may be doable at modest economic cost. For example, sulfate aerosols act as a coolant in the atmosphere and slowed warming in the 1960’s. There would be negative economic cost to rescinding clean air rules and reinjecting sulfates. Cleaner aerosols could also be researched.
Such a solution has its own drawbacks (ocean acidification would continue), but AGW itself might reverse, and any risk of melting the major icepacks and ending the Pleistocene Glaciation perhaps be averted.