Why Do Melting Antarctic Ice Caps Cause Sea Levels to Rise?

[russ_watters]

Only to the point of floating ice if the presumption is that the Arctic cap and sea ice melts first and then the sea ice in the Antarctic melts before the main cap (which it probably will).

Your own link says that that isn't what is happening. You're running close to this being misinformation. But if you want to do it that way, calculate how much the sea level rises or falls if all of it melts.

Land ice melt in the main Antarctic cap will eventualy raise the sea level though until that happens the sea level would lower.
Fresh melting sea ice at 0 degrees would mix with warmer water at whatever temperature, the result would be that the warmer water will end up cooler than it's original temperature.
Sea water becomes more and more dense right down to it's freezing point so the result would be a more dense and lower sea.

Stop claiming it and prove it!

In case you forgot, this was your claim:

Ice sheets and ice caps melting lowers the temperature of sea water makeing it more dense this in turn lowers the volume of water within the oceans unless Archimedes was wrong.

So do the calculation: calculate what the resulting change in ocean volume will be if all of the ice sheets and caps melt and the temperature drops adiabatically. We know this can't happen since the ice melting is caused by the temperature rising, but I want you do do the math that shows that even with your wrong assumption helping you out, your conclusion is still wrong.

Maybe it is still possible for you to learn something here rather than just trot-out wrong claim after wrong claim.

 

[craigi]

Only to the point of floating ice if the presumption is that the Arctic cap and sea ice melts first and then the sea ice in the Antarctic melts before the main cap (which it probably will).
Land ice melt in the main Antarctic cap will eventualy raise the sea level though until that happens the sea level would lower.
Fresh melting sea ice at 0 degrees would mix with warmer water at whatever temperature, the result would be that the warmer water will end up cooler than it's original temperature.
Sea water becomes more and more dense right down to it's freezing point so the result would be a more dense and lower sea.

Some important points, but not an exclusive list, that you're missing in your argument:

* Land ice is already melting. The rate is enormous. I won't discuss this here due to forum rules, but you can search for "Greenland Ice Melt".
* Heat transfer does not only take place through the movement of liquid water.
* Sea ice melts because of an increase in water temperature.
* Sea ice absorbs radiation much more than sea water

 

[russ_watters]

Question is asked and answered and the thread is now going nowhere so it is locked.