Report: Sea levels to increase by 20 ft does that mean......

[diver_geek]

Your experiment is missing one big part. If just sea ice melted, I'm not sure that would be much of a problem. The trouble is land ice is melting and adding water to your glass.

 

[Randy43068]

More shore diving. More stuff to see underwater!

 

[all4scuba05]

there are experts that agree that there are too many experts with too much expert opinions : )

 

[lamont]

I still can't see how slowly melting ice caps increase water levels. The ice, is composed of gases and water. As the ice melts, the gases escape into the atmosphere, and the overall level of water is negligible.

Try this experiment: Fill a glass of water to the brim. Freeze it, then bring it out of the freezer and put it on the table. When the ice thawes, the glass doesn't overflow; why? Because of gases in the water/ice.

Not sure what your point is about gas in the water, that's actually negligible...

But the problem is the ice shelfs on greeenland and antarctica melting. Those are all water that is trapped up on land and which will cause the ocean to raise something like 10ft (greenland) and 30ft (antarctica) if it melts completely. Try this experiment: put an ice cube on the edge of the table. Then hold a completely full glass under the edge of the table and push the ice cube into it and watch water splash everywhere...

The north polar ice cap is over water already so if it melts that won't affect sea levels. However, I think it will decrease the salinity which could help to shut down the atlantic conveyor belt...