before this get any more painful and embarrassing:
the obvious flaw in the glass of icewater example is that the ice is - compared to the size and general heat input/output of the earth - very small and local. you can have most of earth being rather unaffacted by the cooling effect of this little bit of melting ice while at the same time the ice is massively affected by even little changes to this huge planet.
Dude, we are not talking about a little bit of ice. While the ice-in-a-glass analogy has obvious flaws, the effect would certainly have a dampening effect upon the global averages, for no other reason than the area that is 'local' to the polar ice does make up a significant portion of the globe, and cannot much exceed 32 degrees F lest the melting of the ice absorb that heat.
We are also not talking about a little bit of water...
Ice:
Sea Ice Volume is calculated using the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS, Zhang and Rothrock, 2003) developed at APL/PSC. Anomalies for each day are calculated relative to the average over the 1979 -2011 period for that day of the year to remove the annual cycle. The model mean annual cycle of sea ice volume over this period ranges from 28,700 km3 in April to 12,300 km3 in September. The blue line represents the trend calculated from January 1 1979 to the most recent date indicated on the figure. Monthly averaged ice volume for September 2012 was 3,400 km3. This value is 72% lower than the mean over this period, 80% lower than the maximum in 1979, and 2.0 standard deviations below the 1979-2011 trend.
Water:
"The average depth of the ocean is about 3,796 meters (12,451 feet), the volume of seawater 1.37 billion cubic kilometers"
So using 2012 numbers and just polar sea ice we have a ratio of
385,294:1 in favor of water. Mean numbers since 1979 give us
45,644:1.
If we add in Greenland and the Antarctic Ice in the water (along with all other water-borne ice) you still "only" get 620,000 km3 (2005 numbers, fun paper to read:
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/environment/waterworld.html) for a ratio of
2112:1 in favor of water.
Even if we dump every last icicle and snowball in the ocean and clear every mountain and continent of all ice, we still only get down to
44:1 water to ice ratio.
Any way you slice it it's 4.4cm (polar-ice model) ice cube floating in a glass the size of a 20' Conex container. Even the "all-in" scenario only has a 90cm cube, and one end of the container is at 70+ degree tropical water. Do you really think you will reach equilibrium at 32 degrees in this system? Even if we turn off all external energy sources that ice is doomed.
THIS is why I'm sure FirstAscent was positively giddy when that analogy was used, it is so ridiculous if you look at the numbers that it beggars belief.
Thanks for the laugh guys,
Scrybe
PS, I just watched this today, please consider the points he makes at the very beginning related to his views on GM Food and the issue he encountered when he tried to rationalize that view and his views on Climate Change.
An environmentalist apologises for opposing GM and talks about how learning about Global Warming have demanded a science literacy that his anti-GM views could not survive. Mark Lynas » Lecture to Oxford Farming Conference, 3 January 2013
http://buff.ly/TMDkzTPPS, did someone just seriously refer to Climategate as if there was any actual damning evidence found? It was an abject failure actually detecting any fraud or ethics violations after 8 major investigations. Using that as your ammunition is like choosing the Nerf sword instead of a real one. Of course the first paragraph of the quote above shows how insane this mindset is, it does not even slightly reflect the reality in the US where we have finally gotten to a bare majority of the population believing that humans are responsible, and far less than half of our Federal, State and Local politicians.
The people are pushing our leaders to accept the scientific consensus, not the other way around.
House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (UK); Independent Climate Change Review (UK); International Science Assessment Panel (UK); Pennsylvania State University first panel and second panel (US); United States Environmental Protection Agency (US); Department of Commerce (US); National Science Foundation (US)