So, if you read the climate history of earth, you will feel as confused as a dog trying to catch its own tail. Apparently we have passed an "Ice age" where most of the northern hemisphere was under glacial ice. And then from 13th century onwards, we started a mini "interim" which is a "mini" Ice age. Further, within the "mini" Ice age, roughly about 100 years ago, in the late 18 th century, there is a warming period where the temperatures globally are going up. There is also a claim, questionable however, that the temperatures have not gone up significantly. I feel there is a context which is missing here.
And the doomsday predictions! God help us, if we actually believe them. One particular headline riled me up like a steak on skewer. It goes like this, " If ice in polor caps start melting, then the sea level across the world will increase by x meters." x could be 5 if you are a relatively "play it safe" kind of researcher and 50 if you are particularly averse to world and want/hope to show your anger against it. So why does it rile me? Well, a simple fact rather. You see, water has a unique property among the liquids. ICE is lighter than water. For the same weight, ICE occupies more space(9%) than water. This is also the reason why ice floats in water and also why you are able to enjoy certain drinks "on the rocks".
So when ice melts in the caps, what will happen? well for the starters, the melt volume is lower than the ice volume. And when the melt runs into the ocean, which occupies 79% of earth's surface, the increase will be too low to notice. Actually, an interesting thing happens when we apply law of mass conservation to water in earth. this can be written as follows
Total amount of water in earth = Total amount of sea water + Water in circulation as rain clouds = constant, presumably.
From the 13 th century, there is evidence that the sea level has actually gone down, meaning more coastal land has been reclaimed. So if the total mass of water is conserved in earth, and if total amount of sea water has gone down, then by the above law it means that we must have higher amount of water circulating in the atmosphere. This also coincides with the warming period witnessed from 13th century and could be theorized that warmth = more evaporation. So it is possible that the warming period caused an increase in rain fall thereby indirectly stimulating life to grow in abundance which also increased human population drastically. And this increase in human population is now causing further increase in global warming which means more warmth and more evaporation. You see where this is going?