My rudimentary and poorly-remembered knowledge of physics suggests that if the entire North Pole ice-cap melted, there would be not one single millimetre rise in sea-level - if anything, given the expansion of water around 0 degrees, there might even be a tiny shrinkage in world sea-levels. Why do AGW proponents use such scare tactics ? If the case for AGW is strong, that sort of thing shouldn't be necessary.

Joe Lane

Loudmouth, my distant memories of physics agree concerning floating ice. Since it displaces its own weight of water, when it melts and reaches the temperature of the surrounding water, there is no resultant change in volume.

However, there is all the ice on land--in glaciers and ice sheets. There is melting snow and the failure of snow to fall. And there is the expansion of the oceans as they warm up. Those are meant to be significant.

If that is right, then if global warming continues--and the latest figures indicate that it is (see the smh.com.au material today)--then the issue raised by Stephen Keim is a real one. There can be none of the vicious nonsense that is spouted about refugees--no rubbish about countries of first refuge or queue jumping.

While the North continues to freeze up again and the Mawson aircraft, not seen since the ice melts of 1931 and 1975, is exposed again, the physical change is very visible to all without the flawed environmental science. A science that could not prove enough for a consensus to guide 120 Heads of State in Copenhagen to spread the wealth and provide billions as conscience money to poor nations. The following is an extract from http//pointofviewSA.wordpress.com. "In the Wake of Copenhagen and the Tribal Thugs"

Copenhagen’s collapse. In a local discussion about it, I was asked, “but with so many poor people in the world, shouldn’t we share our abundance—global warming or not?” Maybe, if it is for the people but has “spreading the wealth” been the hidden agenda of the hard-left through the whole global warming campaign? Spreading the wealth has been a social ritual among many tribal nations apart from our own aborigines. But why would anyone vote to give money to Africa’s tribal thugs or to any despot regime?. It would simply disappear, as have so many billions in government handouts, enriching Swiss bank accounts, not creating sustainable prosperity for the people.

They are nnt poor because we’re rich,nor are we rich because they’re poor. In the Pacific Northwest too, early Indian tribes had a culture based on “potlatch.” Like our aborigines, whenever anyone had good fortune from the hunt or the gathering of food, they threw a party for the tribe. The wealth was spread, but no one was better off after the party than before.