they 2 answers

Asked by neilbee 7 months ago

1. 
   neilbee

   I made a mess of asking my first question on Edenbee, so here it is again.
   We are being warned of rising sea levels with global warming. With billions of tons of oil being taken from the seabed around the world doesn't water get sucked back into the place the oil was and shouldn't this counteract some of the melting ice? Or is all this oil a drop in the ocean?

2. Brutus

   Current worldwide consumption of oil is approx. 80 million barrels/day or 29 billion barrels/year. There's 159 litres of oil in a barrel, so that's a yearly total of about 4.6 trillion litres = 4.6 cubic kilometers. However, the volume of the world's oceans is 1.37 billion sq km and it's surface area is 361 million sq km, giving an average depth of 3.8km. So, even if we were to assume all the volume vacated by oil extracted was filled by sea water, this would consume 0.000000336% of ocean water, leading to a drop in average depth of 0.0128mm. So, even if there was enough oil to keep extracting at current rates for the next 88 years, it would only lead to a 1mm drop in average sea levels. So, to answer your question, yes, it is a drop in the ocean and will not counter the rise in water levels caused by the polar ice caps melting due to global warming - which could be several metres in that period.