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Why would the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) use a flock of 90 little yellow rubber duckies to figure out the dynamics of a moving glacier, when they have access to billions of dollars worth of space technology?

Why all this interest in the melting rate of the Greenland ice cap and the even larger Antarctic ice mass?

Well, it took me awhile to figure it all out.

Hopefully, this experiment with the toy ducks will confirm that surface-melt water is actually working its way down through to the glacier's bottom.

Then, as a lubricant, it will increase the rate of the glacier's migration to the ocean.

Shocking

It was quite shocking for me to realize the whole idea of combating global warming is to find a way to speed up the pace of ice getting to the sea.

The main cause of global warming is the heating of the Earth's oceans. As the oceans warm their waters expand, thus raising water levels worldwide. It is only the presence of ice in the ocean that keeps it cool and under control.

The ducks may be just the ticket in developing a method of putting the skids to the polar ice caps at both ends of the globe.

But it has to be controlled or we could end up with another ice age. That means blasting or bombing sections of the ice shelves is not in the cards.

Buy time

Artificially helping along the calving of icebergs into the oceans will buy time for coastal cities to relocate to higher ground.

It need not be done overnight, as there are centuries worth of Earth-cooling ice stored at both the northern and southern ice caps.

Even if only one of the little rubber duckies makes it to the sea and ends up as a priceless icon for sale on EBay, NASA will just have to grin and bear it.

What matters is that it will have the proof to go ahead with developing some type of melting device for lubricating the bottom of the migrating glaciers.

And that means NASA would save the world from worldwide drowning caused by global warming.