[neverdem]

Volume of water necessary to raise sea-level 20-feet: ~6 x 10²⁴m³

I don't understand where that number comes from, or does it mean anything?

[steelyourfaith]

"Hot Air Cult"

~~Anthropogenic Global Warming ™ ping~~

[clamper1797]

I don't understand where that number comes from, or does it mean anything?

It's the angle of the dangle X the mass of the ass squared by the torque of the pork ...

[SampleMan]

Surface of the world’s oceans in volume assuming a 20 foot deep layer and adjusted for the loss of volume when ice melts into water.

[TChris]

Al Gore's claim that ocean levels will rise 20 feet thanks to global warming seems to ignore the laws of thermodynamics.

That's part of the very definition of a Liberal. A Liberal is one who shows great disdain for laws or plainly ignores them. Whether in physics or economics or any number of other subjects, immutable laws are just too "mean" for a good, feeling Liberal.

"If I don't like it, it must not be true!"

[JRandomFreeper]

Will the Ice Caps Melt?

Yes. They will. Within 10 Billion years the sun will expand to be a red giant and melt the ice caps... And the rocks. That is a given.

/johnny

[SampleMan]

I did the math on this once and came to the rough conclussion that about 35 feet of ice would have to melt off of all land covering ice caps to raise the oceans 1 foot.

[neverdem]

AGW/CC back of the envelope calculation that seems to be correct, but I can’t figure where he got the number noted in my comment# 1.

[JRandomFreeper]

I will be partying elsewhere, during that dire time, and only available by prayers and/or voice-mail. Please leave a message.

/johnny

[TexanToTheCore]

His assumption that the enegy radiating from the sun is constant is incorrect and the variations have been known and quantified for decades.

D-

[willgolfforfood]

I'm trying to answer that question myself. Overall though, a very interesting post.

I have a problem with this part:

"There is a difference of 300* between these two figures. Even if I am wrong by an order of magnitude, there is still an enormous difference. This does NOT mean that ice caps have not melted in the distant past nor that ice-age glaciers have not grown to cover much of the northern hemisphere; it simply means that the time scales involved to move sufficient quantities of heat to effect such melting or freezing occur over what we scientists commonly call "geological" time scales, i.e. hundreds of thousands and millions of years."

We know pretty much for a fact that very large glaciers covered all of Canada and probably 20-25% of the northern tier of United States only about 15-18,000 years ago. Now, virtually all of that is gone.

It obviously didn't take "geologic" time scales to melt those glaciers - i.e. "hundreds of thousands of years". A couple of thousand years got the job done.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

I should first mention that the only source of energy to heat the atmosphere is the sun.

Volcanic activity can contribute as well.

[RightWhale]

Eventually the oceans will boil and no amount of icebergs will help.

[unspun]

No, because the ice caps, unlike FR, do not suffer from the flames of disoriented Huckabee haters.

[fireforeffect]

I don’t understand where that number comes from, or does it mean anything?

Assume that the earth is a sphere (which it is not), Mean Sea Level (MSL) occurs at radius R, add 20 feet. Calculate the volume of the two spheres and subtract the MSL volume from the plus 20 feet volume.

This, according to the author, gives you a volume of approximately (because the Earth is not a sphere) 6x10^24 m^3 or 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic meters of H2O.

Thats a lot of water.

[JasonC]

That line is an error - by sense he meant to write 6 times 3.6 times 10 to the 14th (the two previous results multipled together) - yielding the 2.2 times 10 to the 15th figure he correctly gives next.

[Right Wing Assault]

If the area of earth's surface is 5.1 x 10¹⁴ m², then the area of the oceans is about 3.6 x 10¹⁴ m² as he shows. If you have something with uniform thickness, the volume of it will be the area time the thickness. So, you multiply the area of the Earth's water surface, 3.6 x 10¹⁴ m², by the depth of the water predicted, 6 meters. This gives the volume of water needed: 6 x 10²⁴m³.

So, a similar volume of ice (actually about 10% more) must be melted to obtain that volume of water. He goes on to show how much heat is needed to melt that ice.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Will the Ice Caps Melt?

Yes in my Tanguray

[kgdallen]

Since water and ice have approximately the same density, the volume of ice that needs to melt is (approximately) THE SAME as the volume of water needed to raise sea levels ~ 6m. Schmitt states this, so how come the volume of ice is about 8 ORDERS of magnitude Less than the volume of water???

[upier]

That is the amount of water that needs to be dumped into the oceans from melting ice to raise the seas 20ft.

Another point missed is that if large quantities of South pole ice melts it allows the Antarctic land mass to rise. This is why the sea levels have been relatively constant for thousands of years.

[Redcloak]

Volume of water necessary to raise sea-level 20-feet: ~6 x 10²⁴m³

I don't understand where that number comes from, or does it mean anything?

It means that you would need an extra 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic meters of water to cause sea level to rise 20'. Think of the Earth as a sphere of water with stuff sticking out of it over ~30% of its surface. Now imagine a sphere of water that's 40' wider in diameter. (20' each direction.) That larger sphere has a greater volume than the old sphere. The difference, less the dry bits sticking out, is ~6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic meters.