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Countries Plan Land Rush in Warming Arctic
Noel Bourke sent in a pointer to this story about northern nations maneuvering to claim land in the Arctic. Fossil fuels, shipping lanes, and fishing are among the economic interests at stake, in an opportunity opened up by the melting Arctic ice.
"Back off, get your own arctic!" - Canada
And the Antartic freezes back up.
6000 years later everyone will be standing around a block of ice that washes ashore gawking at the well preserved specimen of prehistoric man.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
What no one disagrees with is the riches that would come from the thaw creating a north-west passage. The centuries-old bane of Arctic explorers could become a reality thanks to global warming, cutting thousands of miles off the shipping routes between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and delivering a windfall to any country able to tax its users.
Wars, have been started for less. Also it's nice to see Global Warming getting a good rap for something.
My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
Whoever gets this land, is going to roll in the wealth of minerals and oil...
World War 3, begins this year...
University of Washington
Student
...says a newspaper based in New Zealand. :-)
The world is melting and all we wanna do is milk it for some bucks. Whoever designed the human brain was obviously using windows, cuz smething is seriously screwed up there. One step closer to Capitalism eating itself, friends.
Hey! Lets just allocate the new land as a straight swap for contries that lose land under the raised sea level.
Holland looks lucky (or unlucky if you count the relocation costs.)
...And here in the UK, the English, in the Southern (mostly) flatlands, have to move to the north pole, making Scotland a sunny resort.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
Sometimes I wonder if I really am the only one that gives a shit.
Am I the only one that mourns for all the lost (and soon to be lost) species?
I wonder what will happen if this warming trend only lasts ten or fifteen years and then the ice closes back in. Will they find enough natural resources that are worth risking having the returning ice crush millions of dollars worth of equipment if the temperature starts to drop again?.
It is nice to think that there are still people out there who are so eager to explore this new area. As I watch people going to the front window in our office to trigger the remote starters on their cars (it's 20F here today) I can hardly imagine being able to find enough people to fill a helicopter that would be willing to brave that kind of extreme weather!
Should have been posted in Politics anyway. It might be international politics, but it's certainly politics when Denmark sends a oceangoing geographic team north from Greenland in the dead of winter to plant flags on every little rock they find sticking up from the ice.
A question though- why the heck is global warming still contraversial? After all, it doesn't matter if it's man or nature caused- dealing with it is going to be everybody's concern very soon, and there's very little doubt left that it is happening.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The melting of Ice caps would also create opportunities for beach front property in Nevada. Get the top maps and find the 200 foot above sea level elevation and stake your claim now - or least for your children.
Deploy and send the AT-AT's !!!
Watch for the US military to grab a role in "policing the sealanes" across the new arctic circle routes. Watch for the Russian military to challenge that role, backed by nuclear weapons. Watch for Canada, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland to form a competing coalition that loses out because they're too nice.
--
make install -not war
I thought that the land was already divied up? Wait, I must be thinking of Antartica. International waters only extend 6 miles from a country's shores. Can a country legally stake a claim to international waters?
The Arctic report said polar bears were "unlikely to survive as a species" if the ice disappeared and they were left to compete with their better-adapted brown and grizzly cousins.
I vote that we relocate all the polar bears to Antarctica. For too long have we northern-hemispherer's hoarded all those cuddly big white bears to ourselves. Now that we're unable to sustain their population, we should take them to the coldest continent, where there are no brown or grizzly bears, where they can be the dominant species.
Look out Mr Penguin, looks like there'll be a new kid on the block.
erm.. forgive me here, but isn't the Arctic totally landless? Antarctica is a continent, but the Arctic is simply frozen water. No land. At all.
:) )
(and yes, I read the article, but it was a bit boring really. Why can't Russia control it as it has all those nuclear subs hanging around the place, or Canada that sort-of owns all the cold bits anyway. Denmark.... good luck guys
I guess one of the reasons us Canadians support it is this way we can keep those damn Russians and Danes from stealing Santa's mail. (You all knew Santa is Canadian, right?)
Hubris, arrogance, and lack of foresight are among the karmic interests at stake, in an opportunity opened up by the melting Arctic ice.
Although... maybe Erik the Red can finally make good on the biggest real estate swindle of the last 2 millenia: giving "Greenland" it's real estate-friendly but truth-defying name.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
here are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production- with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas - parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia - where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree - a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. "A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale," warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, "because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century."
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras - and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the "little ice age" conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 - years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. "Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data," concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. "Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions."
Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of west
I have heard several 'experts' argue about whether it's nature or man causing the global warming. Doesn't anyone have a real answer yet?
It doesn't matter- either way it looks like it's here to stay, at least until the natural end of the potential warming cycle a century from now.
For all we know, the warming trend might drastically end within a few years.
So shouldn't we get busy and have a few plans in either direction? Like large ammounts of commonly owned land in Northern Russia and Northern Canada and Antarctica by the UN in case of global warming, and similar reservations in the tropics in case of global cooling? This ain't rocket science people. The key here is to plan for ALL possibilities- and then make sure you have disaster plans for the worst. It matters none at all whether it is man or nature caused- time to move past the blame game and into the action phase.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Here's a little experiment:
- fill a glass with ice and put some water in it. Come back in a few hours and see if the glass has overflowed water all over the table.
It won't. It's a thing called displacement.
Melting the arctic ice pack is of little consequence to sea level. Note: melting the northern ice pack would certainly have MASSIVE ecological consequences, but raising the sea level isn't one of them.
HOWEVER
Melting the Antarctic glaciers WILL affect sea level. A lot. They're not displacing much of anything - most of it is on top of rock - and if it melts it will contribute to a rising sea level.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
> I have heard several 'experts' argue about whether it's nature or man causing the global warming. Doesn't anyone have a real answer yet?
Has it occured to you that it might be both? I remember hearing someone saying how we're only responsible for 50% of the greenhouse gas emissions. Well boy howdy, we only doubled them then, yeah, so let's all hop in the SUV...
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
It's quite simple. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
Perhaps I will explain using examples on a smaller scale.
Do you criticize the autobody man that makes a buck off someone haveing a car accident? Yes, he profits off someone's misery, but he fills a need.
Do you criticize a factory that starts making jerry cans and body bags because a nearby country got washed out by a tsunami? Yes, the factory makes money out of the misery of others. They also fill a need.
Melting ice caps and the openning of the northwest passage is an issue of national security in Canada - our waterways and shores need to be protected and that is incredibly difficult to do if the north is unpopulated.
Nobody will pretend that the tsunami is a good thing and nobody will pretend that global warming is good, but every challenge presents a need and every need presents an opporunity and that is the essence of capitalism.
- Thomas;
___ This sig is in boldface to emphasize its importance!
Greenland looks pretty damn big on my globe. And it's only a mile or so deep in ice.
Melting that would cause a sea-level rise.
I know they're in a rush to claim the North Pole and all, but it's just a bunch of ice floating in the ocean. That's hardly valuable to me. All the minerals would probably be found on the arctic islands, which are already claimed mostly by Russia and Canada.
I'm sure if someone other that the U.S., good ol' G.W. will "melt their hopes" with lasers from his newfangled missile defense system that he's planning.
Either that or the current tendancy of the U.S. government to ignore things like greenhouse gasses and global warning will do the job without having to fire a single laser.
Anyone find it ironic that the New Zealand Herald is reporting on this? That's about as far as you can get from a country with arctic interests.
Maybe if you had read the parents post you would have realized he was talking about icepacks that AREN'T floating.
You're right though, most of the ice in the arctic is already floating. The antarctic glaciers are the ones we should worry about as far as sea level is concerned.
AccountKiller
Actually, modern diesel boats are the reason why the U.S. Navy has been developing the ultra high-powered low-frequency active sonar. Because when running on batteries, the newer diesels are often too quiet to hear until they have you in range, quite to the chagrin of American commanders who learn that they've been "sunk" by a Japanese or Australian submarine during a naval exercise.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
Science is not a democracy. A theory's predictions check out or not...it does not matter at all what the majority of scientists think about it. When was the last time you heard about a 'consensus' around E=mc^2 or the like?
Michael Crichton's latest book, State of Fear, is quite thought provoking on this stuff. As he says, "scientific consensus" is not science, it is marketing.
erm.. forgive me here, but isn't the Arctic totally landless?
erm...no. If the ice were to melt away it would expose the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and northern coastal areas of Greenland, Siberia and Alaska, among other places. The corresponding rise in sea-levels might put some of the Canadian islands underwater but there would still be a considerable increase in exposed, above-sea landmass.
So, not only would there be land to use, much of it would be waterfront property. Considering the Canadian Arctic has sizable diamond deposits, the receding glaciers might expose some lucrative opportunities--I wonder how much "ice" is under all that ice...
And to be On topic, Look at a map! wow! I live in Alaska! Where I can see Arctic warming and laugh about it while other people speculate what might be happening! Here is a recap of what I know, This Year!
In Barrow, Alaska. The 5 feet of costal erosion a year Is really helping the economics of a town based off of nothing. And underling the town isliquid water below the permafrost, sounds like GREAT land to build upon!
According to my family Its Raining in Nome, AK. Also the Icepak that came in late is leaving early, not to mention the storm that almost wiped out all the businesses this summer (ps, The Icepac was supposed to be in thick at that part of the year, almost a natural breakwater, but it decided to recide. but i got a day off of work for it =).Thats not a good sign in the middle of an "Alaskan" winter.
Here in fairbanks I have been enjoying 29 degree farenheit weather, and the birds I never seen this time of year are enjoying it! Also the permafrost at houses and buildings near the chena river is shifting like crazy, due to the water melting and the water table extending its reach.
Sencirly
the whitest eskimo that hates eskimo's
Pie, A magical delicetessant!
Now, you know, I've never ever seen a Mercator projection on a globe, since I would have thought it was quite unnecessary.
I would be interested in knowing how that's done.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
There was a discussion regarding this in the letters section of a recent _Physics Today_. You're right, according to Archimedes; but the concern is whether the temperature rise will be sufficient to melt the floating ice AND cause significant thermal expansion of seawater. This paper touches on the latter: http://sedac.ciesin.org/mva/WR1987/WR1987.html "FUTURE increases in the atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons) are expected to result in substantial global-scale warming in future decades. In response to this warming, global mean sea level should change owing to thermal expansion of the oceans and the melting (or accumulation) of land ice" From the abstract: For the period 1985-2025 the estimate of greenhouse-gas-induced warming is 0.6-1.0C. The concomitant oceanic thermal expansion would raise sea level by 4-8 cm.
Science is not a democracy. A theory's predictions check out or not...it does not matter at all what the majority of scientists think about it. When was the last time you heard about a 'consensus' around E=mc^2 or the like?
Sorry, but consensus is extremely important in science, for a variety of reasons.
First, it's important to remember that experiments never prove anything, they only support or disprove. A theory can be supported by thousands of experiments, but if the thousand and first demonstrates an error in the theory (and if that experiment can be replicated and verified by others) then that theory is disproved (or at least needs to be modified). In one sense, all widely-accepted scientific thought is just a consensus on the current interpretation of the experimental evidence. It could (and very, very often does!) change in a few months, years or decades.
Second, some theories aren't very amenable to testing. The cause of global warning is one of these. Ideally, to test it you need to take a few identical planets and pump billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmospheres of a subset of them, then measure the results for, say, 100 years. Since we can't do that, we have to take a more observational, statistical approach, measuring everything that may be relevant and using statistical methods to attempt to isolate correlations, and then logically determine causes and effects. That's a complicated, difficult process, and different researchers use different methods, consider different factors and get different results. If those results vary wildly, then you really don't know anything conclusive. If the majority of them indicate roughly the same thing, then you begin to obtain a consensus among the researchers in the area.
Science is done by humans, and frankly it's not uncommon that the primary mechanism for building consensus on major new theories is retirement and death. Specifically, the retirement and death of the scientists who hold to the old theory, allowing younger adherents of the new theory to begin dominating the discussion, literature and allocation of research grants.
Consensus-building is a very real part of science. "Consensus" is often abused by people who claim there is a consensus when there is too much diversity of scientific opinion for any side to rightfully claim a consensus, but that doesn't mean it's not a real, and important, phenomenon.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Yeah, gosh. If only the Democrats had controlled both houses of Congress for the last 60 years, we'd never have had these pollution problems!
Oh wait.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Glacial rebound over the course of a few millenia, sure. Continents "bobbing up" (you know, like my rubber duckie in the tub), rendering the melting of continental ice shelves irrelevant...hogwash.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
--Actually, I'd be curious to know the ratio of Internet Explorer users to people who spent the last ten years in environmental denial. --As well as to people who think torture in Iraq is no worse than college 'hazing'. And to those who bought into the whole WMD thing. Indeed, I wonder how many common threads there are among people who still have their heads plugged into the Matrix.
-FL
You're forgetting that big hunk of glacier sitting on greenland.
.
Think of it like this: take a glass of water and put a rubber duck in it. The duck floats, yes? Now push the duck down so that it's top is even with the top of the water. What happens to the water? Same thing that will happen to our oceans when that freshwater melts.
So you are saying that a glacier weighs the same as a duck and is therefore a witch?
It depends upon whether it's an African or European glacier.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
> (you know, like my rubber duckie in the tub)
You know, Moofie, thaere are some things that you just don't admit to on SlashDot.
And weirder, but not surprisingly, the responses here on /.
For those of us in Canada this isn't news. There's a special branch of the armed services that patrols the far north, made up primarily of natives. This is done not only to 'keep an eye on things' but to maintain sovereignty.
There's also more effort being put into patrolling the waters now. The Russians have made a play for shipping, and the US too, trying for a new NW Passage. Canada isn't enthused about this considering it'd have to handle any rescues and should there be an accident, likely in those challenging waters, the environmental consequences would be catastrophic for the region.
A bit further down the melt is having terrible effects. The famous ice highways that have been an important means of supplying northern communities and projects are experiencing unpredictable weather and dramatically changing 'ground' conditions. Routes that have been reliable for 40 years are now unusable and new ones difficult to find.
Outside of deep winter the thaw line is wreaking devastation on communities as roads and foundations heave and subside. Inexorably moving northward the land is turning into the half-frozen tundra-bog that used to be typical of further south.
Along with this change the animals and plants are struggling to keep up as seasons alter, new competitors emerge, and interdependencies fail. Rodents, owls, plants, insects, all sorts of things are showing up in places they haven't been for thousands of years and affecting what had been there. That this is alarming the cultures who've also lived there thousands of years is an understatement.
Heck, even in 'southern' Canada the warming is having a direct effect. Snow cover is less every year. This is actually kinda good news for the ski industry as the expectation is US resorts will suffer in comparison and business will move north. However along with this the hydrology of areas is changing as the spring flood are also less and less every year.
Agriculturally Canadian farmers are increasingly adopting plants they couldn't successfully raise before. Crops are going into the ground earlier and the growing season keeps getting longer. This isn't all a panacea though, for instance PEI potatoes benefit from the cold that kills soil pathogens every winter, without that blights could become a huge problem.
Climate-wise Canada is getting very concerned for what the future holds for it. Planning for large projects now regularly includes future climate considerations. Even trade is affected: Already bulk international water sales have been outlawed for fear of setting precedent.
This newish century is shaping up to be an interesting one on planet Earth. Where much of the big history of the last century was human events this one may well be that of human effects.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I think you're underestimating both humans and the environment.
As a canadian I can tell you that even if the temp. raises more than a few degrees, the earth will still be very inhabitable, and in places, even pleasant.
It's been a long time.
But glaciers aren't made of wood?
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Any attempts to use our waters and resources is a violation of Canadian sovereignty.
International law dictates that, unless Canada makes an effort to assert its sovereignty by, for instance, maintaining settlements, conducting patrols and challenging trespassers, then Canada would lose its right to the territory. And there are currently vast swaths of uninhabited land up there that we don't regularly patrol.
I suspect many people don't realize this. And as a fellow Canadian, I'm quite worried. Just because we make maps that declare it to be a part of Canada, doesn't mean other countries have to agree. And we mustn't get complacent just because we think that friendly countries wouldn't try and steal our territory if they felt they could get away with it. If we want to keep it, we have to work for it.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
Like noise output has anything to do with how new US subs detect other subs. There's this fancy thing called "sonar" that's been around for 50+ years now, maybe you've heard of it?
Thats fucking hilarious. You should be a comedian.
>Greenland ain't that big.
g l.htm
Land Area 2,166,086 sq km (839,999 sq miles)
http://worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/namerica/
Claimed by Denmark in 1380, Greenland is geographically considered part of the North American continent, and is the world's largest (non-continent) island, approximately 85% of it covered with ice.
by comparison, Antarctica is 13,209,000 sq km, 5,100,021 sq miles
>it's not made of floating ice, either
doesn't that make it worse? If floating ice melts, the level of the surrounding water shouldn't go up (water expands when it freezes).
OTOH, when ice that is not floating (ie glacier over land) melts, it would eventually add to the volume of water in the sea (fozen or otherwise).
Not saying that all the ice on greenland melting is going to make the sea level on the earth rise by 100 feet, but still...
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Why is it that everytime a new piece of land is found either on this planet or even explored on the Moon or Mars some white guy has to stick a flag on it and call it theirs?
Actually, it's a staggering example of a nearly instantaneous change in mass culture. Think about it... for decades (LONG before the Russians, or even the Germans for that matter) invaded Poland, it was on the receiving end of jokes (particularly in America). In less than one generation, Polish jokes ceased to be funny (to Americans, at least). Not out of increased sensitivity, political correctness, or because people in Poland bitterly complained that they were unfair or offensive... simply because the whole unspoken and underlying premise that made them funny in the first place vanished.
Even people who thought they were funny 20 years ago have a hard time now trying to figure out why they were funny.
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side. Yeah, believe it or not, people apparently thought it was outrageously funny a hundred years ago. Why? Who knows. The whole set of cultural references that made it funny are gone, and nobody even knows what they were.
Science is not a democracy. A theory's predictions check out or not...it does not matter at all what the majority of scientists think about it. When was the last time you heard about a 'consensus' around E=mc^2 or the like?
... consensus that it applies in nature.
Not all theories have predictions that are easy to check. In that case, the only sensible thing to do is to ask the opinions of as many scientists in that subject as you can, and see what the majority think. There is no realistic alternative.
By the way, E=mc^2 is just an equation. It is still under debate, but there is a
Michael Crichton's latest book, State of Fear, is quite thought provoking on this stuff. As he says, "scientific consensus" is not science, it is marketing.
Why believe what he says? He has never published anything that is accurate science.
What if all the ice on Greenland melts? It doesn't float, so it will make the sea level rise. By seven meters, according to current estimates
To make matters worse, greenland is on the far end of the
North American plate.
If the downforce of all that ice disappears into the oceans, the tectonic plate might start to balance itself, causing giant earthquakes while lowering the US and Canada.
The same thing happened to Scandinavia after the last ice age.
It's difficult to predict exactly what will happen and how strongly, but it's a dangerous possibility you don't hear much about.
Uhm, how do you go from 1200 Km * 100 Km * 10m to 1200000 Km^3? Your off by several orders of magnitude. Using the 10m assumption, that 1200 Km^3 (100 Km * 10 m = 1 Km^2)
On the other hand, your ice cap volume looks right, so, we are talking about over 2000 tsunamis worth of water (on average with the potential energy of a kilometer of altitude)
Realities just a bunch of bits.
That's not quite true. The signatory nations of the Antarctic Treaty have agreed that noonee owns the continent or portions of it. A few of the countries actually do have staked claims, but they don't actually defend them or reasonably expect anyone else to. See http://tea.rice.edu/deaton/12.2.2004.html for more info.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
This isn't exactly a new discussion, at least not if you're from Denmark. Claim of the pole has been a subject of discussion for quite a while now. The only countries with a "real"(or at least geographical) claim to the pole are Canada and Denmark. And as a consequence the two countries have started a joint venture to find out where one starts and the other ends. The only thing there's really left to do is for Canada and Denmark to place a border, once measurements and readings have determined where the continentel socket really is. In the less serious end of the topic a lot of ridiculous claims have been made to try to secure claim of the pole. The worst was when a group of "independent" scientists said that Greenland wasn't Danish territory, thereby excluding Denmark from the claims race. Only problem was that we could document that Greenland has been under Danish rule for the last ca. 1200 years. Since Leif den lykkelige and Erik den røde first sat foot on greenland.
I wasn't suggesting all at once, more like, if it goes over a 20 year span (quick I know, but inside some of the worst case estimates), then thats 1 Tsunami equivelent volume every 4 DAYS, now, most of that will be greatly spread out melt, but occasionally it will be the more violoent 'entire glacier slides into the north atlantic' sort of thing, and it just takes a few of those to wipe out large chunks of the UK.
Realities just a bunch of bits.