What If All The Ice Melted?

As we discuss climate change, most of the discussions center on the next 50-100 years.  But what if we don’t fix the problem?  What if the climate keeps warming and all of the ice on land melts.  National Geographic has a series of maps that show how the world would change:

“There are more than five million cubic miles of ice on Earth, and some scientists say it would take more than 5,000 years to melt it all. If we continue adding carbon to the atmosphere, we’ll very likely create an ice-free planet, with an average temperature of perhaps 80 degrees Fahrenheit instead of the current 58.”

Obviously this is over an incredibly long period (from a human perspective . . . it’s a drop in the bucket from the earth’s perspecitve) and presumably we will deal with climate change long before then.  Still, it is scary to contemplate.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.