Are the Polar ice caps really going to melt by 2080?
The best estimates I’ve seen call for a 1 meter rise in sea level over the next century, due to ice sheet melting and thermal expansion. Recent measurments from WAIS (West Antarctic Ice Sheet) suggest that it is less stable than assumed. WAIS and Greenland ice might melt a lot in the next hundred years giving a new estimate of 6m. Even if the entire WAIS melted, it would only raise sea levels by about 5-7m. The same is true for Greenland, 5-7m. The biggee is the East Antarctic Ice sheet, which holds the bulk of the world’s ice and would raise sea levels by 60-70m if it melted. It’s unlikely that all that ice would melt in 74 years. It probably would not happen in 740 years. However, I could see some melting that would raise sea levels by 5-15 feet by 2080. A worst-case total-melt scenario (barring asteroid impact) might be increased volcanic activity in Antarctica, possibly caused by a recently detected mantle plume that has not yet reached the surface. This could raise sea levels by 2
