POLAR CAPS

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33408, 14 December 1973, Page 9

POLAR CAPS

Fear of melting

! GV.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) ‘ SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 13. ! The Earth’s polar ice caps (could start melting from thermal pollution a century (from now and eventually ! flood New York and London, la group of scientists was told | yesterday. i In about 15 years, the ;melted ice caps could have (released enough water to > raise sea levels 200 feet, (flooding 10 per cent of the I earth’s land surface and many major cities. “The scientific danger signals are rising and the entire world will be alarmed over this problem 100 years from now,” Dr Howard Wilcox, a physicist and United States Navy consultant told the American Geophysical Union. Because all heat produced by man did not escape into outer space, if man continued to increase energy consumption at 4 per cent per year, he said, the mean global temperature a century from now (would have increased one(half degree Fahrenheit. ; One-half a degree may not (seem much, he said, but it was enough to start a selfaccelerating process of melting. As a polar cap shrank, (the earth would absorb more solar heat and the cap melt (faster, he said.