Jesse

According to this NOVA page (which I found googling 'water levels antarctic ice melted'), no one expects that global warming could melt the East Antarctic ice sheet, but if it did it could raise sea levels by around 200 feet. On the other hand, they say it's quite possible that the West Antarctic ice sheet could melt, and that would raise sea levels by 20 feet. The page also has graphics showing the effects of each...for example, here's what Florida would look like if the West sheet melted:


(click here for larger version)

And here's what it would look like if the East sheet melted:


(click here for larger version)

Stu

Are you after something like this:


BIG







?

I just tried messing around with topographic maps of the earth, taking different thresholds - I'm not sure what the scales were (you might be able to pick out some key features), but if you can figure it out, it isn't difficult to try with some relatively simple image processing tools.

Edit: Shrunk first one, linked to bigger one - my guess is that is a hell of a lot more than 10 feet, though.

WinAce

For the record, both I and Jess enjoyed Waterworld. As soon as I learned that--a bit before we openly declared our love--I put together this parody at LordCo Centre. (Check the dedication.) A day later, she posted this.

The moral of the story? No matter how silly an idea may seem, it could help you woo the girl.

thoughtful

Most of California? :huh:

Norseman

We have some mountains.

Amen-Moses

Well IIRC from a documentary I watched the bits of California with all the farms and major cities at least, the mountains of course would stick up like big islands (so Hollywood is safe at least).

Amen-Moses

Agemegos

True-- because there is nowhere near enough water.

Well, yes. But the mantle material is very viscous, and it takes millennia for it to adapt to the imposition of a load. We could 'temporarily' raise the sea level thirty to fifty metres, and it would take fifteen to twenty thousand years for the ocean beds to sink the necessary fifty to twenty metres and restore the sea levels. I have a friend who was in this field (modelling of post-glacial rebound and what have you) for twenty years, and he told me that northern Europe is still rising to recover the equilibrium disturbed at the end of the last ice age.

Meanwhile, the geochemical carbon cycle is expected to clean up the CO2 we dump into the atmosphere withint only two to three thousand years. That is likely to restore the climate, and start ice-caps re-accumulating on Antarctica and Greenland. The water would re-emigrate from the oceanic reservoir before the plastic accommodation of the mantle material would be able to restore isostatic equilibrium.

Yggdrasill

Yup, very true. Most of Norway is actually rising faster than the water levels are rising, so Norway is increasing in size. So you're on your own, world.

Of course, if the rising water levels were to accelerate, we'd be affected too, but nevermind that...

Berthold

It's really a lot of land mass that is submerged; could that have been approximately the proportion of land and sea during the great cretaceous transgression? I am aware that that had other causes.

CanoeMan

Hah! Take that, Denmark!

(Of course, I'll be under water too, but I can move north...)