Global Climate Disruption.

[drone]

What’s so difficult about it?
It's an elementary school problem.

Actually, it becomes a very difficult calculus problem. Since water does not stack, knowing the total volume of water released from the melt only gets you half way. The percentage of the earth's surface covered with water will change as the volume of water increases, in a very not-easily-computable way. How much coastline and brackish riverbank gets eaten with a 20 meter rise in water levels? 30 meters? They have computer models for it, it is not as easy as you make it out to be.

[Tellos Athenaios]

It doesn't but the same holds true for ice as well at those volumes. Given the height of the ice sheets even in terms of order of magnitude this is a non-trivial volume as well.

[Nowake]

@drone
It is already accounted for


Vertically, as I show above, you obtain 76m.
70-75% of the earth is already covered in water.
It appears to me that this, combined with the atmospheric variables I was mentioning above, makes the 61m they are advancing as a figure just about right.


Perhaps it's not 61, perhaps it's 59, or 55, but easily above the 40m figure they were debating about? Definitely.

[Ironside]

Actually, it becomes a very difficult calculus problem. Since water does not stack, knowing the total volume of water released from the melt only gets you half way. The percentage of the earth's surface covered with water will change as the volume of water increases, in a very not-easily-computable way. How much coastline and brackish riverbank gets eaten with a 20 meter rise in water levels? 30 meters? They have computer models for it, it is not as easy as you make it out to be.

10%-20% margin error on quick calculations is usually close enough to be acceptable. If you're toying with really large numbers, a factor 100 is still a small error.
Yes, the good calculations takes that into consideration and as Nowake already displayed, is already considered in the given calculations.

[drone]

But it's not an elementary school problem.

[a completely inoffensive name]

But it's not an elementary school problem.

Pssshhhh, I was calculating this kind of stuff in 5th grade.

[Papewaio]

You could make it a primary school problem. Measuring melting ice in a cup is kitchen physics, cooking is kitchen chemistry.

Get a globe if the world.
Trace Antartica.
Photocopy tracing.
Cut out the photocopies.
Blue tack them to the globe.
Count the number of Antarticas that now cover the globe.

Take the thickness of the ice in Antartica (averages ~ mile)

Divide thickness by number of Antarticas to cover the globe.

You have an approximation on how much the worlds waters could rise.

[drone]

I prefer the martini glass exercise. Take a shot glass, fill it with vodka, and pour it into a martini glass. Mark the level with a marker. Fill shot glass, pour, mark again. Fill, pour, mark again. Notice the lines get closer as more shots are poured in. This is what will happen when the icepack melts. Now drink the vodka.

[Nowake]

EDIT:

But the water doesn't rise all that much since 1981, surely we dutchies must have noticed it if it did. Attenwhatshisnam is full off it, should stick to filming polar bears in Amsterdam's zoo. Nothing to be absolutely terrified about, it ain't happening

It has been explained by half a dozen people already, all replying to you directly, that currently we are observing the melting of the Arctic's floating ice, and not the ice covering the Antarctic land.
It was also explained exhaustively why the difference is crucial.
Come on, now that we even proved there is plenty of solidified water to raise the sea level way above your threshold, are we going to just repeat the whole discussion for the sake of it?




@drone, ACIN
Look, my remark was a reply to Frag’s insistence that calculating mathematically that the sea level could rise by 40m is impossible.

drone: But it's not an elementary school problem.
ACIN: Pssshhhh, I was calculating this kind of stuff in 5th grade.

Thus I really don’t see where’s the cause for irony
We were taught about buoyancy and how to calculate its force (hence also establish displaced volumes) precisely in the 5^th grade, which inaugurated our first year of physics classes.
We were taught about density in the 6^th grade.
Normal kids in a normal school in a normal 250.000 people town in a normal east-European country.


Now I will give you that perhaps that is middle school, not elementary, I am always fuzzy when it comes to your system – we go through general school (1^st to 8^th) and lyceum (9^th to 12^th) here, so we don’t really make a distinction.


Oh well, I guess we really needed the off-topic, you meanies ganging up on poor old Nowake

[Fragony]

But the water doesn't rise all that much since 1981, surely we dutchies must have noticed it if it did. Attenwhatshisnam is full off it, should stick to filming polar bears in Amsterdam's zoo. Nothing to be absolutely terrified about, it ain't happening