our coastal cities (80% of major metropolies are at sea level) will get gradually flooded and the infrastructure be damaged or eroded very costly! but if the ice caps melt, less sunlight is reflected away and temerature rise is accelerated, only 1.5% average global increase and many trees stop seeding and die out without replacing themselves, without trees 7 billion of us breathe up all the oxygen real quickly and the co2 we exhale is not converted back into O2 as the trees are dead! we suffocate much faster than we and our farm animals starve to death, even the fish die as with to much co2 the oceans turn acidic as co2 is very water soluable forming carbonic acids that destroy food chains. melting ice caps are a potential chain reaction as they increase global warming by maximising solar radiations warmth and is close to becoming irreversable

According to "Inconvenience Truth" the world only had until 2008 to stop global warming. Now it is TOO LATE.

90% of humanity will die HORRIBLE deaths from floods, hurricanes, droughts, blizzards, asteroids, tsunamis and earthquakes.

They might effect those living around the coast, slightly. but there really isn't enogh water packed in them to damage us as a species.

Imagine that the ice-caps contain 25% of all the worlds waters, that would mean if they melted completely we'd see a rise in sea level by about 12%. ok, so we move further inland.

I'm not cinvinced that a rise in CO2 is causing this anyway. and w/o concrete evidence, you shouldn't either.

We have to start of with a few basics, because the deniers will try to distort the facts. The facts are that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that without greenhouse gases the earth average temperature would be 33C colder (a giant snowball) and that we have added 40% more CO2 to the atmosphere. There is not one scientist who denies these facts.

The loss of albedo causes the earth to retain even more heat then the increase of CO2 alone and the thermal expansion of the water causes the sea levels to rise. Between 1870 and 2004, global average sea levels rose 195 mm (7.7 in). From 1950 to 2009, measurements show an average annual rise in sea level of 1.7 ± 0.3 mm per year, with satellite data showing a rise of 3.3 ± 0.4 mm per year from 1993 to 2009, a faster rate of increase than previously estimated. The ice cap on Antarctica is very cold and won't melt until the temperatures are above freezing and it will take some time yet before we reach that point. Right now the oceans are absorbing a lot of the extra heat that the CO2 won't let escape back into space. The ice on the North pole is sea ice and even when it all melted, it won't affect the sea levels, The top layer of the surface ice on Greenland did melt briefly last summer and seems more vulnerable as the earth warms.

There are also some positive effects, for instance last summer both the Northern passage as well as the Northern sea route was open for shipping for the first time in recorded history. This however will not outweigh the long term cost of having to raise the dikes and eventually having to move entire cities and ports inland.

Very little, cheaper sea transportation, freeing up large oil and gas reserves. more fish and marine life due atmospheric oxygen penetrating sea surface plus more light for marine photosynthesis.

The arctic was forecast to be ice free by the summer of 2013 goggle it.

Here is NASA's report on Arctic Sea Ice : http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/feature...

There was a report from the University of Washington that showed that it was a normal cycle but it has disappeared. NASA is hard to trust any more. They have been caught several times manipulating data and research results. Pretty bad when you can't trust your own Government

.http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/29/ac...

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/12/bi...

Research by geologists has shown that The Arctic has been 10 C higher in the past. The Global Warming crowd will have you believe that a 0.75 C rise in temperature is catastrophic and will lead to more unpredictable weather. All propaganda.

In 1988 Margaret Thatcher paid scientists to prove Global Warming was happening because she didn't want to deal with the Coal Miner's Union or the Arab Oil Cartels. She wanted nuclear energy and also wanted energy security for the United Kingdom. This is where most of the hysteria comes from. This is where the IP CC came from also. Paid scientists to prove Global Warming. I don't know why people believe them. They now blame oil companies for paying scientists to prove them wrong. Go figure!

Human population before the melting of the ice caps, less than a million, after the melting of the ice caps, 7billion plus.

it is affecting us, the weather is unpredictable, there are more storms coming in and towns that are now lakes. with this kind of problem we also have many clients getting our services to do analysis on certain area before they put up establishments.

Haven't so far.