"Well actually I was just trying to educate mhaze,"

Yes, because I clearly didn't know the answer. My question was rhetorical, trying to get those who constantly fret over the arctic melt to think about the consequences or lack thereof of such a melt.
Clearly I'll have to simplify my rhetoric in the future.

"I would give up arguing/debating if I were you and I am pleased to say I am not."
Wow, quite a tantrum. Don't be so shy, tell us what you really think.

I will explain it in very simple terms. When the Arctic ice melts there will be a large area of water where before you had ice. The ice is white and reflects sunlight. The water is dark and does not reflect sunlight. This means that the sea will heat up more than if it was covered in ice. The heat from the sea will gradually spread to all the oceans and also radiate heat to the air. This will cause what is called positive feedback. This not a good thing to have when we have a gradually rising average world temperature.
I think that will do for the first lesson

mhaze,

Hope you don't mind if I put this here.

I was doing some reading, mainly interested in the amount of CO2 we've accumulated in the atmosphere, and came upon a stage in the Jurassic period called the Toarcian, where CO2 levels were elevated (possible through volcanic outgassing of methane)...anyhooo, the upshot was that all that was followed by ocean anoxia and mass extinctions.

So none of this is going to affect us here and now, but is interesting in the notion of climate in the future being as we're projected to warm by perhaps 2 or 3 degrees C.

So I was trawling around looking for something on the Toarcian that could be absorbed by my layman's brain, and surprisingly I came across this recent post http://www.skepticalscience.com/jurassic-global-warming.html (I know it's from Skeptical Science, but it really does address my interest)

So it seems that the greatest danger for the long-term may be a sudden outgassing of methane - not particularly likely just from warming in the near-term as even with permafrost thawing, the release is fairly slow, yet pertinent to global warming in general.http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/06/methane-game-upgrade/

Fascinating

Just wanted to add that to my way of thinking, the human induced release of CO2 could be construed on a geologic time-scale as a "sudden outgassing".

Poirot, you'd be right that it's a sudden outgassing in geologic terms. It's probably in those terms an 'instant outgassing'. Of course, whether that matters depends on the extent to which CO2 has any effect on climate...

Robert LePage, I've not done any reading on what the loss of Arctic ice might do, so this is shooting from the hip. But here's my thoughts. Firstly, the suggestion is the loss of summer ice. As far as I know, we are a long way from losing winter ice. Still, given there is really only sunlight there in summer I guess that's neither here nor there. Next, the area covered by Arctic ice... I dunno, but is it very big in relative terms? And given that the angle of incidence of the sun's rays at the north pole is pretty shallow, even in winter, you'll be getting a pretty small amount of heat to absorb into those oceans I'd imagine. The sun's rays will be attenuated a lot by the actual amount of atmosphere it has to traverse to strike the surface and once it does, it'll be at a very shallow angle. How absorbent is sea water at those angles?

So, weak sunshine striking dark water at a shallow angle over a relatively small area. Is it really likely to heat the rest of the world's oceans, especially when you note that the currents tend to bring warm water there in the first place?

I don't know - I'm just examining your claims. Got some figures to back that?

Duhhh...

"And given that the angle of incidence of the sun's rays at the north pole is pretty shallow, even in winter"

Should read, of course, as "And given that the angle of incidence of the sun's rays at the north pole is pretty shallow, even in summer"