Scott,
Actually, Archimedes and I completely agree. Notice that the Archimedes Principle references weight, which is not really applicable here. I was referencing volume. Note that my numbers come to a 2.11% increase. This is based only on fresh water ice floating in fresh water. This is based on the ice cube challenge. If you have a large glass, then that 2.11% of gain from the cube will be spread around the entire surface area and you will likely not notice it.
All melted floating ice will add somewhere between 2.11 and 2.6% (depending on salinity) of its volume to the total surface area of all the oceans. It's really going to be just a drop in the bucket (pardon the pun
).
To get the total rise from the Arctic: Multiply the total volume of ice in Km3 by something between .0211 and .026 and divide by 335,258,000. That resulting number will be the volume of water each square KM of ocean will increase by.
Don't forget, though - that number is going straight up - it does not take into consideration any sort of spread due to geographical circumstances.
For the Antarctic - there is roughly 30,000,000 cubic Km of ice (according to a number of sources). If you divide that number by the total area you get a volume of 0.089Km3 per Km2 of ocean. That equals 89 meters of rise per square kilometer. Again, this is straight up, and does not take into account the spread of water as it occupies more surface area. The acutal number will be less because of this spread, and because there will be backfill of water into some areas occupied by the Western Ice Shelf (which is sitting on submerged land).
If the entire Antarctic ice melts in the next 100 years we have much bigger problems (like 500 degree days) than just rising water levels. Don't worry, it is not going to happen in Al Gores lifetime.
Steve
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