These days, the doomsday prophecy has been playing the starring role in the secular theaters. Anti-Climate-Change activists have taken over the schools, politics, academia, and media.
Their theory is that as we consume fossil fuel, carbon dioxides (CO2) level in the atmosphere will go up; the increased CO2 will have a green house effect and trap the light energy inside of the earth; the earth’s temperature will go up; the raised temperature will melt the icebergs in the arctic and Antarctic oceans; the ocean level will go up; and finally the cities nearing the seashores will be submerged under the sea.
I contend that such theory is misguided. I further contend that, even if 100% of all the ice in polar regions melt away, the sea level will not rise, not by a single centimeter. Actually, the sea level will go down by a little bit. Though perhaps this contention may come as a shock to many, it is based on science. Let us examine.
Let us conduct a thought experiment. It won’t take an Einstein to know that if you freeze water on an ice tray, the volume of the water expands as the water freezes and form an ice cube. If you look into an ice cube, it has many bubbles in it. Also, even if ice has no bubble, the rigid structure of the ice has a bigger volume than fluid water, because in water, molecules slide by to minimize the volume, while in ice, molecules cannot move around like they can in water. For these two reasons, the density of ice is less than water’s density. Not all matters in nature behave this way but water certainly does. The solid form of water, ice, has less density than water.
Because ice is lighter than water per volume, i.e., because ice has less density than water, if you put ice in a glass of water, ice floats. And if you recall, about 10% of the volume of the ice floats over the water, while 90% of the ice is submerged under the water. Now, the question is, will the level of water rise in your glass, after the ice is all melted away? You may experiment it for real easy, but a thought experiment will suffice, because it is an easy concept.
You may want to online search the term “buoyancy” and familiarize with the concept. Basically, the reason why 10% of ice is floats the water is because ice is 10% less dense than water. It means that, if you had 100 cubic inches of water and freeze it, the ice will have the volume of 110 cubic inches.
Now. Imagine that the base of your glass vase has the shape of a 10-inch by 10-inch square and its height is 20 inches. You fill the vase with water up to 10 inches high. Now, you pour 100 cubic inches worth of water into a jar. Now your vase’s water level is 9 inches high. Then you freeze the jar that contains 100 cubic inches of water. After that, the ice will have expanded its volume by 10%, and thus the ice’s volume will be 110 cubic inches. Next, you put that ice block into the vase. What will the water level be, after you put that ice block into the vase? 9 inches? 10 inches? 11 inches?
If you ask Mr. Archimedes, an ancient Greek physicist in 200’s BC, he will say 10 inches. The water level did not change because 10% of the ice is above the water level, and the submerged 90% of the ice has the same volume as 90 cubic inches of water. If you push down the 10% above-the-water ice into the water, the water level will rise by 1/10th of an inch, making the water level 10 plus 1/10th of an inch. But if you let the ice go, the 10% of the ice will float above the water, and the water level will go back down to 10-inch level. What happens when all the ice melts down? 10 inches. During the whole process of the ice melting, the water level will stay the same as 10 inches.
This is what’s known as Archimedes’ Principle, which I learned in a high school when I was about 15. As I have no kids, I do not know what young people learn in America or Europe or even in Asia, as they don’t seem to know this very basic physics concept. Even if they learned it, they don’t know how to apply it. What do these young people do? They think the melting ice will raise the sea level and they have to stop it, even if it means they should walk out of classrooms and do the “School Strike for Climate” activism.
Now, if all icebergs melt down because the earth is too hot, then what will become of the sea level? It will actually go down, because hotter air can contain more moisture, and more sea water will be in the atmosphere.
See? Yes, Children should stay in classrooms.
