Quote:
Quote:
Greenland will melt, dumping huge amounts of water into the Atlantic. I cannot help but believe that that water will most likely be only slightly warmer than freezing, and therefore couldn't do anything but cool the oceans.


That big ice-cube, Greenland, is already in the oceans, and it is already melting (I've seen it with my own eyes from above). This means that the ocean is warming up enough to melt it, *quickly*.


Well, kinda-sort of. The way I understand it (and I'm not a climate scientist, but I do read National Geographic, and they had an article on the Greenland glaciers last year), Greenland isn't really "in the oceans." The glaciers are actually sitting on land, and though the ends of them do overhang, or sit in the ocean, it's not the ocean that's warming up the glacier, causing it to melt. The melting is due to the rising air temperatures.

However, that melt water has two effects, which exacerbate the problem. First, it pools on the surface, creating darker spots that capture the sun's energy better than the surrounding ice (which reflects the sun's rays), increasing the temperature of the "melt pool". That, of course, further increases the rate of melting, in a feedback loop. Second, at some point, those pools either create, or drain into, a crevasse leading underneath the glacier. There, the water acts as a lubricant between the ice and the land, increasing the rate at which the glacier slides, which, naturally is into the ocean.

The warm ocean problem is not so much evident in Greenland's glaciers, as it is in the open Arctic, where ice no longer forms where it used to, and, when it does, it's neither as strong, nor as long lasting, as it was in the past. <insert picture of drowned polar bear here>

edit: Fixed run-on sentence.