Peter Muehlbauer wrote:
"John M." wrote:

On Nov 1, 6:36 am, wrote:

Incidently if an iceberg melts it doesn't raise sea levels one single
millionth of a meter. That's called archidmedes principal. The ice
contracts as it melts and so the level can't change.

Idiot. Learn some science before posting to science oriented NGs.

Dittoheads don't do science.

When the iceberg left the land and entered the ocean, it displaced an
amount of water equal to its own weight. Simple experiment will show
this to be the case. Put an ice-cube in a brim-full glass of water. Or
melt the cube and add that water to the glass. In each case the water
that spills over is the same quantity. But in fact water always spills
over.

Adding water to a brim-full ocean means water will spill over - onto
the land, of course.

And where did the water initially come from, eh?

Do the same experiment, but make an ice cube from the water in the glass
first, and then put the ice cube back into the glass.

You are wrong as far as the oceans are concerned. The polar ice flows
and icebergs are of essentially pure water and are floating in ice cold
*brine* with a typical density of around 1.028 g/cm^3 at 0C.

The ice displaces its own *WEIGHT* of water which when floating in ice
cold brine is 0.972 cm^3. When it melts its maximum density as cold
fresh water is ~1.000 g/cm^3 is reached at 4C. And at all other
temperatures it occupies a greater volume.

So every cubic metre of floating ice that melts creates a roughly 3%
increase in total oceanic volume. But it doesn't hurt half so much as
the overall expansion of the bulk sea water as it warms or land glaciers
melting. Greenland has the potential for being a real nuisance if
glacial melting of land ice speeds up.

Regards,
Martin Brown