Water on Mars?

There are two interesting stories about findings on Mars that may well have some significant impacts for the planet we happen to live on.

One story header is:

"Mars Pole Holds Enough Ice to Flood Planet, Radar Study Shows"

Another has:

"Mars Once Had Oceans, New Evidence Suggests"

It is really this second header that is important for what we are experiencing on this planet. The story goes on to say:

"The researchers believe that Mars's poles, along with the axis the planet spins on, have moved about 1,850 miles (3,000 kilometers) during the past two or three billion years. The process, known as "true polar wander" can cause dramatic topographic changes in a planet's surface—in this case making the once-flat shorelines rise and fall over enormous distances.

The phenomenon occurs because planets contain irregular and shifting distributions of mass. Any change in the distribution of a planet's mass, whether on its surface or in its interior, will make it spin around a different axis as it shifts areas of large mass to its equator—the area farthest from the rotation axis."

What interested me in this story was that any change in the distribution of the planet's mass can cause dramatic changes in the topography.

We KNOW that the ice caps on our planet are melting faster than they should, we think we know that the nature of the water trapped in the ice of our polar regions is NOT salt water, but fresh water.

So what will be the effect of the melt?

On the one hand it is blatantly obvious, if it is indeed fresh water, that there is likely to be a change in the salinity content of the oceans of the world.

What effect this will have on life in the oceans is moot.

Another blatantly obvious effect of global warming could be that certain species which are entirely temperature dependent - for example Loggerhead turtles whose gender is dependent on the temperature in the nest into which eggs have been laid could be decimated by the combined effects of the rise in water surface and temperatures.

Another effect could - based on the information we are gathering, be to change the way that mass is distributed on the surface.

A rise in ocean levels alters, by definition, the way that the mass of that water is distributed over the surface of the planet.

Since the mass is no longer contained at the poles, but is likely to spread towards the equator, it seems obvious that the spin rate of the planet will most likely slow. As this takes place - will it be responsible for massive shifts in the molten liquid core of the planet as well? If so what will this mean for life on the surface?

It's not likely to happen in my lifetime - but the possible impacts of such massive geological changes simply stagger the imagination.

When we talk about global warming perhaps what we are NOT talking about is the extent to which we are making changes that will inevitably impact on our ability to continue to inhabit this planet.

Will people with a lot more education about these things than I have actually care to enter a comment that will be reassuring to me and others?

Speaking entirely for myself, it would be nice to know - for a change - that I am not only wrong but simply WAY off base!