An explanation please! If ice has a volume greater than water then why would ...?

Question

the polar icecaps melting cause sea levels to rise?? It should be the exact opposite. If you freeze a bottle of water it expands.
Just would like to know where the global warming crowd is coming from on this.
I believe in localized warming caused by concrete, blacktop, lack of trees etc, but global??? In any realistic view they cannot accurately predict weather patterns from year to year. What makes me think they can predict what the earth will do in 50 years? There are a vast number of variables to be factored in.
But I would like to know about the ice.
Any takers with real knowledge???

yupchagee - Actually I did also post question in scientific section also, but since global warming is such a political topic these days wanted to hear what all camps have to say !

Answer 1

The real truth is that most of the ice is in glaciers on the land .Antarctica is a land mass,The ice in polar ice on arctic will hardly make any difference,but glaciers in Alaska ,northern Canada Siberia,Iceland and green land will make a lot of difference if they melt all together.That is also the reason that sea level falls when Ice Age comes to Earth.Despite all this Carbon Dioxide talk I believe that Earth is still coming out of ice age and there are so many other factors like Methane gas{Marsh Gas} volcanoes,Sulfur dioxide,and the cycle events in the Sun.It has happened many many times before and will happen again,Let us learn how to live with it.I HOPE IT WILL HELP>DONOT WORRY THE WORLD IS NOT COMING TO AN END,SLEEP TIGHT.

Answer 2

First answering the rise of sea level if polar ice melt, very basic, polar ice melt becoming water and adding sea volume, so if water volume in a glass rise, then the level 2...

Hmm... about global warming, other causes you mentioned, the effects are very local, but speaking of the polar, it has a great impact on the whole earth temperature... Do u know the cool from polar balance out the heat from the sun.... So if it is melting... no cool from polar could then balance the sun heat... causing global warming...

Lastly talking about the weather and climate patterns... Those scientists have researched for years, studying patterns back from hundreds years ago til now... Resulting in a 50 year prediction... Should learn science survey stats more, gal!!!

Anyway, this information is made on basis that knowledge should be shared among, so people could choose, starting to notice, to being cautious, to anticipate, to plan a plan B, or even to ignore it... and this prediction would then be used by maybe some organizations or even governments to plan their environmental guideline plans for future....

Anyway prediction is prediction... who knows Earth will???

Answer 3

This really belongs in science rather than govt. Since i have an engineering background, I'll answer it here.

There is a lot of ice above sea level. Were it all to melt, it would flow int the oceans causing them to rise. Ocean depth has changed over time, rising & falling with the temperatures. There was a lot more land during the ice ages.

Answer 4

The volume and mass of ice and water is irrelevant because the total amount of water contained in the ice is sufficient to alter the chemistry of the oceans, the geomorphology of land masses and global climate. It is not just that sea levels will rise – which they will – but the water released from the ice is colder and less saline than ocean water. The latter two variables are enough to change ocean currents, which we know are powerful climate variables that influence El Nino, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and other similar events.

You are correct that the ‘heat island effect’ is, in some cases, a confounding variable. Being aware of that, it is possible to avoid allowing it to interfere with climate studies. The historic climate record is, at best, only a couple of hundred years long (obviously somewhat less in America where records have not been kept as long as they have in Europe and some of regions).

There are reliable high-resolution proxy records of climate stored in natural phenomena such as tree-rings, coral, varves, and ice sheets. These records have allowed us to reconstruct climate for thousands of years. In many cases we have annual records that cover most, if not all, of the Holocene (the most recent period following the last ice age). Other proxy records allow us to study climate over periods of millions of years (although obviously with lower resolution).

Global temperature warming is certain for the last half-century, and there is an upward trend beginning coincidentally with the onset of the Industrial Revolution (approximately 1850). Global warming is not the best descriptive term for the climatic consequences of increasing global temperature. This hypothesis also predicts greater and more severe extreme events such as drought, floods, hurricanes, etc.

You are also correct that we cannot predict with high certainty specific climate regimes or patterns at specific points for specific future times. This does not mean that we are ignorant of broad patterns or that we should ignore the evidence we find through scientific study. Contrary to some general perceptions, there is no longer a great debate about global warming and the contributing role of human activity in the scientific community. The evidence is so powerful and overwhelming that it really cannot be ignored or discounted.

Can we effectively do something to mitigate the possible consequences of this? That is less certain. However, that does not argue for giving up or not making prudent decisions to try and deal with it.

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Jack -

The politics are driven by politicians and special interest groups. The Bush administration has, in fact, altered and falsified scientific findings, and friends of the administration have been retained to hound and harrass scientists - to the point of being professionally and personally threated by federally elected officials.

You should not claim to have an informed opinion about something you admit you know nothing about.

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jmminnc –

You really do not know anything about this at all, do you? You just copied and pasted that from the idiots at Center for Science and Public Policy, didn’t you? You oppose it for whatever political/philosophical reasons and just repeat any crap that sounds semi-authoritative and act like you know what you are talking about. What you posted is so bad and inaccurate that I actually thought you wrote it. If you are going to use other people’s ideas you should at least choose smarter people to get your ideas from.

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Answer 5

Coldest: -129° F at Vostok, July 21, 1983 (World low temperature record.)

Claim: Proof (“canary in the coal mine”) of man-induced global warming can be found in the recent,
rapid rise of Antarctic surface temperatures.

Wrong. The temperature history of Antarctica provides no evidence for the CO2-induced global
warming hypothesis. In fact, it argues strongly against it.
The IPCC, environmentalists, the Media and recent Senate hearings have for years crafted the public
focus only on a tiny area of the Antarctic, the Antarctic Peninsula, a mere 2% of the total area of the
continent. That little area has experienced a recent natural warming due to interaction with the Southern
Ocean. However, the other massive 98% of the continent has been in a cooling trend over the last 35
years in complete defiance of what the man-made theory of global warming says should happen.
A major blow to the CO2-induced global warming hypothesis comes from the instrumental
temperature record of the more recent past. This setback is manifested in the contradiction between
observed and model-predicted Antarctic temperature trends of the past three decades. According to
nearly all climate models, CO2-induced global warming should be most evident in earth's Polar Regions;
but analyses of Antarctic near-surface and tropospheric air temperatures tell a radically different story..

Answer 6

Yes, if the polar ice melts, sea levels will rise. Beyond that, there is a difference between meteorologists and climatologists. The first are your local weatherpeople, who don't seem to be able to tell you the weather if they're looking out the window. Climatologists look at long-range weather patterns over long periods of time, and are better predicters of what the general weather will be like under certain conditions.

Answer 7

I think what they are saying , and they have been saying it since the 1980's, (global warming) , is that the so called polar ice caps have always been frozen....so therefore, if melted it would add additional water to the sea levels,,,,,,,
Yes if you freeze a bottle of water, it will expand, but it will also,
begin to melt and go back to its origonal shape.Same amount of water.....Try it.........measure water and place in quart container.
Once frozen,just place the container in a dry plastic container bigger than the quart container to collect the water so you can measure it..........

Answer 8

The thing is, when the water is frozen as the ice, it adds its volume in the sea itself, but also the air. There's so much of the polar icecap is above the sea. When they melt, the volume of the water goes entirely into sea, hence, increasing the sea level. but that's just my 2 cents

Answer 9

The real eyeopener is that the polar icecap is floating anyway so if it melts there is no change in the water level.

Try it yourself get a big glass bowl and a large chunk of ice. put ice in bowl and fill till the ice is suspended. mark the water level. when the ice melts it will still be at the same mark.

Answer 10

Right now the polar ice caps are above sea level and are thus not contributing to the volume of the ocean. If they melt, the water from them will descend into the ocean, thus increasing its volume, which will then of course raise its level.