This would be very reassuring if it were not based on bad science and worse math.
1. The ice of concern is not floating. It is mostly on the Greenland and Antarctic land masses, where it is flowing down to sea. It is the ice that falls into the sea that causes sea level rise, but then as it melts of course there is no further change in sea level. 2. If the depth of a sphere increases from R to R+D the volume increases from R^3 to (R+D)^3 = R^3+3R^2D+3RD^2+D^3 (omitting a constant factor of 4 pi/3). If D is much less than R then the increase in volume is 3R^2D, proportional to D (^ refers to exponentiation). Skeptics can work this out directly. Suppose that we have a sphere of water with radius 1000 units. The volume (ignoring the messy 4 pi/3 factor) is 1,000,000,000. If the radius increases to 1001 the volume is 1,003,003,001. The cube of 1020 is 1,061,208,000. The increases of volume are 3,003,001 for a 1 unit increase in radius and 61,208,000 for a 20 unit increase, about 20 times greater. So the rise in sea level is proportional to the amount of water added to the ocean. Of coursethe coeans are not perfect spheres of water, but this is close enough. Bill Silvert ----- Original Message ----- From: "James T. Conklin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 8:39 PM Subject: Ocean Level Rising > Inconvenient Facts regarding rising ocean level: > > 1. The ocean level is unchanged when floating ice melts. > > 2. The ocean is a spherical body of water. The ocean volume varies as > the cube of the ocean radius. Therefore, for the ocean radius to increase > 20 feet, the ocean volume must increase 8,000 times more than for a 1-foot > radius increase. For the ocean radius to increase 40 feet, the ocean > volume must increase 64,000 times more than for a 1-foot radius increase.
