Why is it bad if all of the icebergs melted?
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it will raise water levels and flood major urban areas cause mass migration events from coast lines and will also increase our global temperature
It’s not icebergs melting that’s the problem it’s glaciers.
There is the albedo effect which is the measure of reflectivity.
Glaciers reflect infrared radiation back into space which means when glaciers melt it causes a feedback loop of Earth warming since the albedo lessens.
Well, technically, to be pedantic, icebergs are already in water so melting won’t contribute a sea level rise via the melting itself.
I think you mean glaciers where are masses of ice *on land*. Yes, when that water melts it will increase the global sea level and that will be bad.
But the glaciers themselves aren’t the worst part of the story.
First off water expands in volume as it heats up, increasing the average temperature of the oceans by just a degree or two will cause a MASSIVE change in the sea level simply via the expansion of water.
Secondly a lot of the areas that, like glaciers, are currently kept frozen will thaw for the same reasons the glaciers will melt. These areas full of greenhouse gases (CO2 and methane, mostly) that will now compound climate change in a snowball effect, we warm the Earth a teensy-bit with anthropogenic green house gases, the Earth takes the wheel from there and finishes itself off.
[Here](https://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/tools/slr.html) is an interactive map of what coastlines look like when sea level rises a bit.
If all the icebergs melted, it would be very bad for many reasons. For one, the extra water would cause sea levels to rise by over 200 feet! This would cause flooding in coastal areas around the world that could displace hundreds of millions of people. The extra water would also mess up ocean currents and disrupt global climate patterns, leading to extreme weather conditions like more droughts, hurricanes, and typhoons. And finally, all that fresh water flowing into the oceans would make them less salty and affect the delicate balance of marine ecosystems. So basically, melting all the icebergs wouldn’t be great for anyone or anything.
And what can we “are we” going to do to make any significant change? Don’t call or text me 30 min. before an asteroid takes us all out. Ignorance of that knowledge is a blessing.
Constant discussion without any action, or model to reflect an accurate view of what the changes will look like, makes for a theoretical conclusion which is causing public and political divisiveness. I thought it was decided a few years back, that it was already to late to make any noticeable changes using the model we have.
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