How much will the oceans rise if all the sea ice melts?

No it won't. The experiment is easy enough to reproduce in your own kitchen. I encourage you to reproduce it, and to report back to us once you have.

Thomas-Don't you know that Herr Diest was expelled from the Gymnnasium?

He flunked Basic Science!

EDIT***
Thomas, I just want you to read back. You are correct. The statement you quoted of me, I withdrew. I had forgot that the experiment I was thinking of was not about the ice above water but the variation of the density of the liquid water into a more dense solvent (salt in this case).
EDIT***

As per your request, I did, and as I stated before if you increase the density of the water the the water level DOES rise.

Take a cup and put water into it. take a marker and make a line where the water level is. Mark it "0"

Place an ice cube in the water and the level will rise. Mark this level "1"

let the ice melt and mark the water level "2"

If the water is pure, level 1 and 2 will be the same. However if you repeat the experiment and this time increase the density of the water with something such as salt, 1 and 2 will NOT be at the same level.

In either case the end water level (level 2) will represent the total volume of the system. The difference between the two experiments is that level 1 represents the amount of water displace by inserting the icecube. The ice is more buoyant in the "heavier" water. Level 1 for the system in which the water is more dense is lower. In either case level one represents ice in water--floating ice. The fact that the water level is affected by buoyant forces shows that there can be a difference in water levels 1 and 2.

What I had forgot earlier was the addition of salt (or something else that would effect the density of water) that would make the ice float higher than if it was in distiled water and thus displace less water initially.

I hope that clears things up.

My roommate, another engineer and also quite well versed in fluid dynamics proofread this, and agrees this is sound.

T
K
O

Hey Possum,

Isn't it about time you created a new screen name and started making more posts about things you don't know shit about? You've kept this one too long.

T
K
O

Yes you did. I responded to the posts of the thread as I read them, so I hadn't caught that when I answered.


Oh, I see -- the water displaced by the ice before it melts has a higher density than the less-salty water you get after the ice melts, so the same mass of water occupies a higher volume after the melting.

The effect on Earth is probably too small to measure. The volume of the oceans is huge compared to the volume of the floating ice, so the change of ocean water density must be tiny. But I grant you that in principle, there's an effect.

Talking about this has raised a few new thoughts in my head though. Does dissolved CO2 make a salt water solution more or less dense?

T
K
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Like what happens to ice meltin, in yer gin and tonic?

Well, alcohol makes it more dense, actually. Sadly, that's not what oceans are make of.

Someday I'll tell ya about my beer shark.

As a matter of principle, that's an interesting and hard question that I cannot answer offhand. But as a matter of practice, the the number of CO2 molecules is small enough compared to the number of water molecules, sodium ions, and chloride ions. Small enough that you wouldn't see a significant effect either way.

Here's a good one, Thomas( off the subject but still talking about water).

Richard Dawkins--in his book "Reweaving the Rainbow" P. 179 writes:

"...every time you drink a glass of water you are imbibing at least one molecule that passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell. This follows by extrapolation that there are many more molecules in a glass of water than there are glasses of water in the sea"