MovieChat Forums > Waterworld (1995) Discussion > Melting ice of the sea

Melting ice of the sea


...especially the North Pole and all icebergs of the world, wouldn't raise the sea level one inch.
It's crazy how this bullshit theory is still sticking around.

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The U.S. Geological Survey says otherwise
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-would-sea-level-change-if-all-glaciers-melted

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Nice deflection.
Wasn't talking about glaciers.

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Deflection? You idiot thought north pole and all ice bergs would melt, but not glaciers? So much about your basic elementary school physics expertise...

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Well, idiot, the premise of this stupid movie is all poles melting have flooded the entire planet. There are two poles. The south pole is mainly a continet COVERED with ice. The north pole is ice actually floating in the ocean. Just like any other iceberg. If this specific ice would completly melt, the sea level wouldn't rise one inch.

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What about a name change? Montezuma's Revenge comes to my mind...

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maybe the North Pole ice is so big its touching the bottom , and is consequently building up above sea level

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Interesting comment... I wonder if there's a way to verify if that's true irl?

I consider there would be a lot of technical issues to hurdle over like extremely cold temp, light, water pressures, and other various unknown obstacles. But I'd watch a documentary solving the notion.

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The sea ice at the North Pole is typically around 2 to 3 m (6 ft 7 in to 9 ft 10 in) thick
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pole

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I dont think it'd be that difficult .
Just write all those variables off as "neglible" and use some ice cubes and a bathtub.

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The sea ice at the North Pole is typically around 2 to 3 m (6 ft 7 in to 9 ft 10 in) thick
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pole#Climate,_sea_ice_at_North_Pole

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hard to say really, some of the ice shelves are over a mile thick, guess we wont know until it all melts...

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Not hard to say. Basic elementary school physics. Ever had a drink with icecubes in it?

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REALLY DIGGING YOURSELF IN DEEP ON THIS ONE,HUH?

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when you put ice into a drink, it sinks into the liquid and is at top or below the water line, whereas ice shelves and ice bergs rest above the water line, when they melt it raises the water line, but I think it would be impossible to guess how much liquid is in the glaciers around the world.

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If you put a full glass of water filled with icecubes into the sun and wait for the ice to melt, the water won't spill. Its Archimedes' principle at work.
The myth off sea levels rising due to melting ice in the oceans has been refuted numerous times.
To be fair, some climate change apologist have since moved their tent-poles to other stuff like glaciers and carbondioxid.

Im too lazy to write all this stuff.
Here's the quote with the relevant info
"Sea ice melt contributes very slightly to global sea level rise. If the melt water from ice floating in the sea was exactly the same as sea water then, according to Archimedes' principle, no rise would occur. However melted sea ice contains less dissolved salt than sea water and is therefore less dense: in other words although the melted sea ice weighs the same as the sea water it was displacing when it was ice, its volume is still slightly greater. If all floating ice shelves and icebergs were to melt sea level would only rise by about 4 cm (1.6 in)"

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i get what you are saying, and Archimedes also used to measure objects by putting them in water and see how much the water rose.

but if you filled the same glass with ice cubes that was a mile high, when it melts its going to over flow. the only way to tell how far it would rise would be to measure how much liquid is in every single ice cube that was used.

just saying that its impossible to measure how much liquid is in all the ice in the world, you have different densities, thicknesses, etc... it would be like trying to guess the weight of a semi-truck and not knowing if there was cargo in the trailer or not.

I am going to try the glass with ice and see what happens, I am curious now. will report back...

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report?

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dang ok, yeah I did this a while back. I froze water in a cup and then moved the ice to a same size cup so that the ice was above the top of the glass. the next day when the ice had melted it spilled over some water. of course it was only a few ounces.

it was a simple experiment and concluded my theory.

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Where's that goddamn report?!

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see above...

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Nice!

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I can see Ackbars point here . Ive got a feeling he's wrong , but his science makes sense.

if you filled the same glass with ice cubes that was a mile high, when it melts its going to over flow.
well , yes, because they wouldnt be floating.
If the glass was big enough to float a mile of icecubes then the situation would be the same a sa glass with 1 ice cube.

just saying that its impossible to measure how much liquid is in all the ice in the world
Not really, the density of ice and water are constant values , the volume of water that will result from the melting of a given volume of ice can be calculated exactly.

it would be like trying to guess the weight of a semi-truck and not knowing if there was cargo in the trailer or not.
No , we know exactly whats in the truck - ice , AND we know exactly how much water will be produced when a semi truck trailer full of ice melts.
answer: 91% of the volume of the truck
Water expands by 9% when it turns to ice
Then it floats , and some of it stick up above the surface of your cocktail.
When it melts the portion of the icecube that is under the water contracts to accomodate the bit previoulsy sticking up .
This is Ackbar's point.
That is also how floating works - density.







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When you put ice cubes in a glass of water, that is fresh water ice in fresh liquid water.

The ice in the poles is fresh water, but the sea is salt water. They have different densities. When fresh water melts into salt water, it does raise the level.

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The North pole ice helps cool the ocean, thus lowering the sea level.

However, if the ice melted, the energy required to increase the temperature of the water would be much lower. (heat of fusion: energy required to change solid into liquid). Thermal expansion of the water would accelerate.

Extreme example:
The ocean's average temperature (~5 C). If the oceans average temperature was 30 C it would expand 0.43 %. Average ocean at 5 C depth is ~3500 meter vs 3515 meters at 30 C | 50 foot difference

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"wouldn't raise the sea level one inch."

Actually, it would raise it over 25 feet from where it is today. That actually happened during the last interglacial period which occurred about 100K years ago when the north pole was completely melted.
Interestingly, during the last ice age which occurred about 20K years ago, the sea level was over 400 feet lower than where it is today.
Seems like climate change (and sea level change) is a thing...

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Yeah. The only problem with the Waterworld inundation is that it exceeds anything possible, even if all ice on all land everywhere melted. The movie really has to be seen as fantasy.

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true but the main debate here is the OPs claim that "wouldn't raise the sea level one inch."

It'd be interesting to know which land would be above water if all the ice melted.
or what the actual rise would be .

It would be a good one for this guy to consider https://what-if.xkcd.com

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All the catastrophic predictions of ocean rise are predicated on the notion of land ice melting. Sea ice is pretty much the same as ice cubes in a drink - not quite, but close. If all sea ice melts it will only have a few percent of the effect that the land ice. Land ice sheets and glaciers - That's where the hundreds of feet of maximum rise come from.

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The only problem with the Waterworld inundation is that it exceeds anything possible, even if all ice on all land everywhere melted.


Exactly. Even if all the ice on the north pole melted, there would still be a lot of land, certainly enough that "land" wouldn't be a legend as they characters in this movie believe. My house is 600' about sea level - my land will forever be above water.

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