Ice cubed

All over the planet, with just a few exceptions, our ice is melting.  "So?" you say.  Well, not good.

Large parts of Asia above northern India, and areas of South America, rely on glacial ice for the majority of their fresh water.  To be sure, they have quite a bit of rain which would make even "dried up" rivers run occasionally.  However the buffer that held their water instead of dams and lakes was vast stores of glacial ice.

So, just to start with, losing our northern hemisphere glaciers will cut down on the reliable annual fresh water supply of vast land areas.  This will make agriculture to say the least difficult, especially for rice based cultures that rely heavily on water.

Ice also is white.  By it's nature it is a great reflector of light and heat.  Take away large areas of white (what scientists call lowering the albedo or making things darker/less reflective) allows the earth to absorb and convert to heat more light.  So losing our north polar ice cap during summer (when light hits it almost 24 hours a day) makes the earth absorb vastly more heat.

The ice we see is also not the worst to lose.  In the vast areas of the north there are huge frozen plains called the tundra.  This is earth so cold on average that even in summer it is frozen all year just a few inches beneath the soil.  This layer is called the permafrost.  Perma = always and frost = well, frozen.  Well, it isn't always frozen anymore.

The increased warmth and ultraviolet I mentioned earlier have melted it deeper and deeper each year.  Stuff, organic debris of all kinds, has built up in the north in that permanent freezer simply not decomposing for hundreds of thousands of years.  This decomposition has the potential to release more methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than mankind would ever be capable of.

So, imagine a freezer that has stored food and accumulated "stuff" for a few years suddenly the victim of a summer power failure.  If you open it after sitting a few days the rot and decay will make you wish you had thought better of the idea.

Well folks, the permafrost is melting and the rot has set in.  They are losing whole houses to sink holes in Alaska caused by permafrost melting deep under the surface.  Don't just trust me, google it.  The greenhouse gasses released by that melt and decay of OLD organic matter make the tipping point argument moot.  We didn't reach a tipping point in the carbon dioxide and methane levels as much as we started a whole new process adding to it at speeds we haven't even begun to correctly account for.

What is surprising about the ice melting at the south pole is the apparent shock it is causing among scientists.  More energy is hitting the poles during their long almost 24 hour summer days.  Hmmm, that makes things melt.  Wow, big chunks the size of states break away and float off.  Huge amounts of melted fresh water is tunneling strait down through the ice to bedrock and flowing away under vast thick ice sheets.

I wonder if any of that melted water is flowing into geological faults under all that ice and melting long frozen earthquake faults... pretty likely.  If the ground under all that ice shakes, with lubricating water flowing between the rock and ice, will vast sheets of ice slide down hill into the ocean?  Maybe.  Would that be bad?  Am I going to buy land in Florida in the near future?  No, I think not.  A shack in any quaint coastal fishing village?  Nope.

Well, enough about ice.  I might not sleep tonight very well.