Climate Crisis Comments (Part 5)

Written by admin on 09 September 2011

Archimedes's law only applies to floating objects

Climate Change Myth #010:
“Just like in a glass of ice tea–melting ice from global warming won’t raise the ocean levels.” Other related comments include “Ocean levels won’t rise, since frozen water takes up more space than liquid water, so when the ice melts at the poles it should actually reduce sea levels.”

Rush Limbaugh, is infamous for repeatedly saying that “melting polar ice would not raise sea levels”. Limbaugh’s statement is only correct when talking specifically about the ice in the North Pole. As the Arctic ice is currently floating and thus Archimedes’s law would apply, which relates to floating icebergs and the ice cubes in a glass, in such cases true fluid levels won’t change at all when ice melts since a floating object displaces an amount of water equal to its weight.

However, the problem as it relates to global warming is that all the ice in Greenland, Antarctica and land-based glaciers everywhere else are not floating in water and so when that ice melts it eventually runs into the sea thus increasing ocean levels.

As most of the world’s population lives on the coast the amount of displacement of humanity by flooding is highly problematic. If countries like Australia and USA are currently concerned about a few boat people and/or illegal immigrants now, just wait until later when millions of climate refugees get added to the mix.