Melting ice caps will cause the oceans to rise and flood land? Watch Mr. Wizard, debunker!

Originally posted by tkwasny
I don't have the link at the ready but the math does not work. The cubic meters of land based ice in a ratio of how much world-wide ocean cubic meters currently exists puts all such frozen ice on Earth to be at less than .0001% of the existing ocean waters. (Result: less than an inch if ALL melted)

Ummm...no. Not even close.

The Greenland Ice Sheet alone covers 1,710,000 km2 and has an average thickness over 2km.

So that's 3,420,000 km3 of H2O.

The world's oceans meanwhile cover about 360,000,000 km2.

So without even pulling out a calculator I can tell you that ratio is quite close to 0.01 km - or in other words 10 meters of sea-level rise.

It turns out the actual number is closer to 7 meters (Page 648, Table 11.3) once you factor everything in, but that's still MUCH higher than your "I don't have the math but it works out to less than an inch" theory - and that's just for Greenland.

If you melted all the ice sitting on top of Antarctica you would raise sea levels by more than 60 meters.

reply to post by mc_squared


Well I think it's established that this is a cycle of freeze and melt so I don't believe we'll see all of that melting into the oceans.. but much will

We're indeed seeing a climate shift.. only reason I say that is because in my region we saw a horribly long winter with ice storms and below average temperatures for months.. prefixed by a super mild summer.. in fact this summer so far we've only had what I would call a few hot days.. compared to my youth seeing it reaching into the 100s several times..

What we seem to be seeing is temperatures dropping in regions while it rises in others.. I don't see an actual "global" warming .. in fact that seems rather absurd because it is saying that temperatures are rising globally.. and it's not ..

Surely it will have huge impact, but I think where we see ice now, within the next few hundred years ( or more ) will be habitable and full of life while some of the nicer regions we're in now will be harsh and cold.. that seems to be where it's headed in actuality ..

Some flooding in some areas will probably happen.. it will reshape our land mass .. and the ice regions will be in new locations... it won't end the world, it will force a change.. it won't happen over night, so I don't expect it will kill millions... it will just force migration over time.. it's absurd to think it will be tomorrow where we see a 10 meter rise.. ( if we ever do for that matter ) .. it will take place over many years and we will have time to adapt.