[old3030]

Here's the way I look at it:

1) I've never had the melting ice cubes in my tea cause my glass to overflow. So I'm not worried about all the ice in the Arctic and Anarctica that's already in the water. The melting of that ice will actually lower the ocean levels.

Ice floats precisely because water is one of those few odd compounds that is actually less dense in the solid state than in the liquid state.

2) Say there really is a slight increase in global temps -- that means what? Not deserts. More evaporation, more water vapor in the air. More rain, more snow. Cooler temperatures.

It's, uh, like a cycle, man.

[Jakenuts]

That's an interesting point (the icecube metaphor). I tried searching around for some scientific discussion of the reasoning behind "melt=rise" and didn't find much. One of the things I noticed though was alot of discussion about Greenland and the fact that it is melting which makess me think that the flaw in the ice cube idea is that it assumes the ice cube is floating in the water and not resting on top of something. If the glacier is resting on land, then any melting would definitely add to the water in the seas and would account for sea-level rising, no?