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If we're going to believe Wolfram Alpha, why not ask it for the area of all the oceans? Oops. Looks like you're off by a factor of 1000, since Wolfram is sayin

If we're going to believe Wolfram Alpha, why not ask it for the area of all the oceans? Oops. Looks like you're off by a factor of 1000, since Wolfram is saying the total is 131.6m sq. miles (487k sq. km). [1] But what's three orders of magnitude among friends... The Antarctic Ross ice shelf is about 188k sq. miles, and up to 750m thick. Again according to Wolfram Alpha, that makes 3.653×10^17 L (liters) of ice. 92% of that is 3.36×10^17 L (liters). And if you spread that many liters over the (Wolfram Alpha) area of the the oceans, you get nearly a meter sea level rise (0.9856). That's one (albeit large) shelf. The Greenland ice sheet comes to almost 4.27×10^18 L (liters) of ice (based on numbers from Wikipedia and an average thickness of 2.5km) [2]. We're up another factor of 10 here, with 12.530 meters of rise now. According to WikiPedia, the Antarctic Ice Sheet contains 30m cubic km of ice, and they claim it's worth 70m of ocean depth. [3] But let's crunch some numbers. If you assume 92% density you get 2.76×10^7 km^3. Again in Alpha I get 80.96m [4], or 265'. The truth is that, as the sea level rises, the SURFACE AREA will change (because so much land will be flooded), and so even though the combined rise of all ice melting might be 300' at the current area of the oceans, the estimates are that it would only rise about 200', plus or minus. So how do the numbers not agree with me? THIS is why it's useless to take an engineer's view of something like climate change. Misplace a decimal point (or cube when you really mean 4pi r squared) and suddenly you're making all kinds of crazy assumptions. And yes, I forgot the surface area of a sphere too, but the more serious error is assuming your rusty memory of a math equation can prove that ALL THE EXPERTS are wrong and you're smarter than they are. [1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=area+of+all+oceans&asynchronous=false&equal=Submit http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=area+of+all+oceans&... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Ice_Sheet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Ice_Sheet [4] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2830+million+cubic+km+*+0.92%29%2F%283.409%C3%9710%5E8+km%5E2%29 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2830+million+cubic+km+...

ChuckMcM 15y ago
Awesome! See this is why I like to put all my steps in so that when their is a bug in them we can figure out where they go wrong. So the volume vs surface area, doh! 4-pi-r^2 does change the rough calculation from 200 billion to 151 million. Cool. So a 200' rise is only 5.7M cubic miles of water, or 6.2 cubic miles of ice. Or a North American ice sheet that is only 2/3rds of a mile thick (about 3500'). Well that is better, for the nominal 6M square mile greenland/antarctica region its basically needs to be a mile thick. Ok so that is an interesting correction to my numbers, now lets look at yours. "The Antarctic Ross ice shelf is about 188k sq. miles, and up to 750m thick. Again according to Wolfram Alpha, that makes 3.653×10^17 L (liters) of ice. 92% of that is 3.36×10^17 L (liters)." Ok, how much of the shelf is already in the ocean and how much is supported by the antarctic continent? (the reasoning being that melting ice that is displacing an equivalent volume of water results in no net change in water level). We can make that a factor in the numbers or not. Using it as a variable, 188 thousand square miles 750m (.466 miles) thick is 87,608 cubic miles, spread across our 151M square miles of ocean its .0058 miles of rise or 3' or nearly 1 meter. Nice I like being able to come at the numbers both ways and have them agree. "So how do the numbers not agree with me? THIS is why it's useless to take an engineer's view of something like climate change. " No need to be snippy, I appreciate the corrections, the base issue was the volume vs area starting formulation. It is never "useless" to corroborate claims by starting from some known facts and doing the math on them. Many outrageous claims fly by all the time. It also helps ground the conversation in a testable way.
- SomeCallMeTim 15y ago
  OK, sorry about being snippy, though you were telling me that I was spouting unrealistic lies, so I wasn't feeling very happy about it. I misspoke when I mentioned the ice shelf. That part IS at least partly floating, and therefore already displaces as much sea water as its mass can account for. I thought it wasn't, but I was wrong. BUT...the other numbers still stand.
  - ChuckMcM 15y ago
    Some of my best conversations have started with "Chuck you're full of shit, and here's why ..."

ChuckMcM 15y ago

Awesome! See this is why I like to put all my steps in so that when their is a bug in them we can figure out where they go wrong. So the volume vs surface area, doh! 4-pi-r^2 does change the rough calculation from 200 billion to 151 million. Cool. So a 200' rise is only 5.7M cubic miles of water, or 6.2 cubic miles of ice. Or a North American ice sheet that is only 2/3rds of a mile thick (about 3500'). Well that is better, for the nominal 6M square mile greenland/antarctica region its basically needs to be a mile thick. Ok so that is an interesting correction to my numbers, now lets look at yours. "The Antarctic Ross ice shelf is about 188k sq. miles, and up to 750m thick. Again according to Wolfram Alpha, that makes 3.653×10^17 L (liters) of ice. 92% of that is 3.36×10^17 L (liters)." Ok, how much of the shelf is already in the ocean and how much is supported by the antarctic continent? (the reasoning being that melting ice that is displacing an equivalent volume of water results in no net change in water level). We can make that a factor in the numbers or not. Using it as a variable, 188 thousand square miles 750m (.466 miles) thick is 87,608 cubic miles, spread across our 151M square miles of ocean its .0058 miles of rise or 3' or nearly 1 meter. Nice I like being able to come at the numbers both ways and have them agree. "So how do the numbers not agree with me? THIS is why it's useless to take an engineer's view of something like climate change. " No need to be snippy, I appreciate the corrections, the base issue was the volume vs area starting formulation. It is never "useless" to corroborate claims by starting from some known facts and doing the math on them. Many outrageous claims fly by all the time. It also helps ground the conversation in a testable way.

SomeCallMeTim 15y ago
OK, sorry about being snippy, though you were telling me that I was spouting unrealistic lies, so I wasn't feeling very happy about it. I misspoke when I mentioned the ice shelf. That part IS at least partly floating, and therefore already displaces as much sea water as its mass can account for. I thought it wasn't, but I was wrong. BUT...the other numbers still stand.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  Some of my best conversations have started with "Chuck you're full of shit, and here's why ..."