4 ms·

If the whole ice sheet disappears, we disappear.

• cmurf 9y ago
  I don't see the correlation. The disappearance itself doesn't seem to be the problem, but the accumulation of consequences of even the process of it disappearance that are the problem; not least of which is the cost of adaptation.
  • blondie9x 9y ago
    If it disappears sea level would rise significantly. Therefore we would disappear because most of our civilization would be effected that lives around sea level.
    • lambdadmitry 9y ago
      That's a non-sequitur right there. It's not like the entire Antarctica melts in a year or two; in the worst case, it's multi-decade process. It's pretty easy to adapt to such change; we (obviously) built cities before and can do that again.
      • godshatter 9y ago
        At the time scales we are talking about, our cities can ooze away from the sea slowly just by abandoning property that is currently flooding. The sea is rising at around 3mm / year, which is about a foot a century. Even if we multiplied this ten-fold, that's still only about an inch and a quarter a year we'd have to cope with. We'd have to raise some levies, abandon some property, and maybe update some other infrastructure. Not great, but not the end of the world.