Arctic Ice Sheets Melting, So Ocean Level Rising (Snicker)

I'll be coming back with more in my series on culture, but there's something that has my attention. You all love the truth, don't you? You enjoy the scientific method, right? Well, let's think about something together, OK?

Haven't you read that the Arctic ice sheets are melting? The Northern Hemispheric Arctic ice cap is a big piece of floating ice. Global warming scientists tells us that this is melting faster and causing the ocean levels to rise.

So when ice melts, we're saying that the liquid that it turns into takes up more space than it would if it were solid, right? How does water freeze? What happens when water gets really cold? Don't you think that heat causes things to expand and then cold causes them to contract?

Not so with water. Here's what actually happens. When water gets really cold it somehow traps air in it that causes it to expand, which makes it light. This results in it becoming buoyant and floating on top of the water, because it is lighter than the water. If it were heavier, of course, it would sink. This would cause it to kill everything at the bottom. Nice, huh?

So here's an experiment you can do. Simple one. You know, if you want to find out for yourself. Fill a glass half full with warm water. Float a a few ice cubes in it. Draw a line on the glass where the surface of the water in the glass is. Come back and see the glass after the cubes have melted. Is the water surface higher or lower? Whatever it is will be what melting ice in the water causes to the water level. Whatever it is will tell you whether the melting arctic cap will cause the ocean water surface level to rise.

This is a common scare tactic among global warming people. It is also a fourth grade experiment.