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What would happen if all ice on Earth melted?

So basically nothing.
 
Water goes up 70 m. Our civilization was based on a stable climate. Goodbye almost every major city.
 
Carbon13 said:
Water goes up 70 m. Our civilization was based on a stable climate. Goodbye almost every major city.
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Gameface said:
Hello to all the new major cities.
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This. Our economy was originally, hundreds of years ago when most of the major cities were established, based on trade routes. Trade routes that of a necessity were largely on water ways: rivers, coastlines, large lakes, etc. If those cities were wiped out cataclysmically like this it would really just redefine those routes. New cities would rise up to take their place. People would move and adapt. The interesting thing is that now those major cities aren't necessarily the most important cities any more. More and more manufacturing and distribution and food production is occurring inland as in our prosperous times coastal cities bring in more revenue from tourism than trade.
 
Zombie said:
FTFY
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Right, humanity would never recover.

Obviously it would be a huge mess. A generation or two later and things would be back on track. Humanity isn't fragile. Humans live on tundra, in deserts, in forests, on the sides of mountains, on sunny beaches, everywhere on this planet. We'd recover just fine and we'd build new cities and build up existing cities that were not affected.
 
Gameface said:
Right, humanity would never recover.

Obviously it would be a huge mess. A generation or two later and things would be back on track. Humanity isn't fragile. Humans live on tundra, in deserts, in forests, on the sides of mountains, on sunny beaches, everywhere on this planet. We'd recover just fine and we'd build new cities and build up existing cities that were not affected.
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Youre probably right, but i think were just breezing over how difficult that transition would be. I mean, really think about how difficult it will be to replace nearly every major city on earth.
 
Another thing to consider is that sea level rise disproportionately affects poor countries. People in poor countries are still heavily reliant on agriculture and mariculture and have very little infrastucture like a national guard or any kind of mobilized medical care. If billions of people were displaced, rich countries like ours would be fine but poor countries would be hit hard. It would be brutal.
 
Anyway, talking about this stuff sounds so abstract and not applicable to my own life. I hear all this nutty stuff that's usually highly politicized (al gore et al.). Really, none of the arguments are all that scintillating but one thing that did hit home for me was the documentary "Chasing Ice". It's on netflix. Basically it's about this guy that films glaciers retreating over the last decade. It hits home.
 
Gameface said:
Right, humanity would never recover.
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Well I don't know about never but the impact would be tremendous and millions would perish. I mean think of the 2004 tsunami, that was a relatively local event compared to this and it claimed the lives of a quarter of a million people. This would be far far more catastophic.

Gameface said:
Obviously it would be a huge mess. A generation or two later and things would be back on track. Humanity isn't fragile. Humans live on tundra, in deserts, in forests, on the sides of mountains, on sunny beaches, everywhere on this planet. We'd recover just fine and we'd build new cities and build up existing cities that were not affected.
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I have little doubt of our ability to survive such an event but just surviving is setting the bar pretty low. Also I think it would take more than a "generation or two" to get back on track, obviously there is no way to know for sure, that just feels a bit optimistic to me.
 
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