Where can you find more than 92% of the world's fresh water? Go south...as far south as you can and you come across the Antarctic Ice Sheet which is more than a half million years old and holds 92% of the fresh water in a sheet more than 3000 meters thick.
What would happen if it melted? Or better than that, considering that it is melting...with huge sections breaking off and dropping off into the ocean, what will happen when it all melts? Simple really, the seas will rise by as much as 200 feet...and the world will be changed as will mankind. It would not be the first time, every Ice Age has had a subsequent warming cycle...and water marks on coastal mountain sides demonstrate water levels achieved in the past.
As the overall temperature of the planet inches up half a degree at a time we find the Arctic Summer ice receding...with projections that it will all be gone by 2050, making it a seasonal freeze instead of year round.
And if all that water were to end up in a warmer ocean, well there goes the fresh water in many of our rivers because they will back-flood with salt water changing the nature of things...and the planet for a long time to come.
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