'Horrible' Sea Level Rise Of More Than 3 Feet Plausible By 2100, Experts Say - NBC

[muriel_volestrangler]

101. Well, to take the first result from that search

It doesn't say the ice shelves contribute or not to sea level rise themselves; it says "West Antarctic ice shelves that restrain the region's natural ice flow into the ocean" ... "the Antarctic's Larsen B Ice Shelf, where glaciers at the edge discharged massive sections of ice into the ocean that contributed to sea level rise".

The shelves, being attached to the land ice, hold back the glaciers that are above sea level, and which would otherwise flow faster (thus taking more ice from land into the ocean, where it melts).

The next one that talks about ice shelves says: "Several ice shelves - thick ice floating on the ocean and linked to land - have collapsed around the Antarctic Peninsula in recent years. Once ice shelves break up, glaciers pent up behind them can slide faster into the sea, raising water levels."

Or the next: "The increasing temperatures have caused instability in the Antarctic leading to several significant ice shelves collapsing and disintegrating over the past few years. this then means that the glaciers originally held in place by the ice shelf is given a free path to the ocean and starts to move much faster, increasing the contribution that the glaciers make to global sea level rises.

Andrew Monaghan, from the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research, said that “the stakes would be much higher if a similar event occurred to an ice shelf restraining one of the enormous West Antarctic ice sheet glaciers.”"

So, no, 'those guys' aren't wrong, at all; but they aren't talking about what you were, at all.