Suppose I could snap my fingers and all the ice that’s slipping off the edge of Antarctica and Greenland were instead neatly piled in the middle. Would global warming still cause accelerated rising sea levels, or would the ice remain frozen solid and stay put?
If it stays put, how much would global temperatures rise due to carbon emissions if we use machines to push all the ice to the middle?
I posted in a closely related thread that sea level rise is also related to thermal expansion of the water in the ocean -
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9169018&postcount=15
In other words, the warmer it gets, the less dense the water in the sea will get, so the more sea level rise will occur.
There are inland areas in both Greenland and Antarctica that are gaining ice as well as some that are losing ice. If you look at slides #8 and 9 in this presentation: http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2004/0615Oppenheimer.pdf , it shows that in general, ice loss is most rapid on the edges of both land masses, and there are more areas that gain ice in the center of the land mass than along the edge, so it’s a good bet that magically moving the ice there would at least slow the loss. However, it’s important to remember that glaciers flow, so the ice would eventually flow downhill to the sea anyway.
I don’t know, but I suspect that it’s likely to be prohibitive in cost.
How much fossil fuel does it take to move a ton of ice 200 miles?