The guy that wrote the story for The Guardian is a very respected glaciologist. Look.. all I can tell is that is physically impossible for an ice sheet to collapse because it has nothing to collapse into. It covers SOLID ground. Gravity and additional mass can cause that ice to move towards the oceans as a glacier, but the actual sheet is called that for a reason. It covers ground.. Terra Firma..
A glacier can collapse at its leading edge (calving) into a body of water.
An Ice Shelf, floating on the ocean, can break off, which is a form of collapse..
But all an Ice sheet can do is melt, or move its ice mass towards the coast, where it becomes an ice shelf or glacier.
And btw, melting isn't the only thing that causes a glacier to calve.. Put enough glacial mass floating on top of a unstable ocean mass, and it's going to calve icebergs. Retreating glaciers move inland on the landmass they originated from.. leaving moraines..
Call it politics, but an ice sheet, by scientific definition is located on solid ground, and therefore, cannot collapse.
Hawk |
