The Melting of Arctic Sea Ice

According to Archimede's principle anything floating in water displaces its own weight in water.  Thus, an ice cube of pure water floating in pure water will not cause the water level to change at all when the ice melts.  But, the arctic ice is not floating in pure water, since ocean water is saline and a bit warmer than the ice.  According to a study by Professor Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds and colleagues called Recent Loss of Floating Ice and the Consequent Sea Level Contribution and published in Geophysical Research Letters, the loss of about 1.5 million ice bergs the size of the Titanic has resulted in a sea level rise of 49 micrometers!

Al Gore recently bought a home overlooking the beach in the elite Montecito area of Satellite Beach on an Atlantic Ocean coastal island.  He invested $8.875 million in it, so he apparently thinks that all of his dire predictions of catastrophic sea level rise is just so much bunkum for the lowly masses of peasants.  Apparently peddling such bunkum to them is very remunerative, however.  In view of this recent research finding, he may want to change keep an emergency life raft at his new home, perhaps tied to the top of his chimney.

For those of us with level heads, the diameter of a human hair lies in the range from 17 to 181 micrometers.  So, the melting of a huge amount of arctic sea ice still has no significant effect upon sea level.