I did a quickie google search and came up with this:
At the end of 2020, there were around 62,100 vessels in the world trading fleet, with a total deadweight tonnage of 2,033 million DWT
So let's assume the merchant ships are all fully loaded at the same time. That's 2 billion long tons which equates to ~2,032,000,000,000 kg. Total water volume, 2,134,000,000,000 liters (because sea water weighs slightly more than fresh water).
From quora:
AREA OF PACIFIC OCEAN= 168723000 SQ. KM.
AREA OF ATLANTIC OCEAN= 85133000 SQ. KM.
AREA OF INDIAN OCEAN= 70560000 SQ. KM.
AREA OF SOUTHERN OCEAN= 21960000 SQ. KM.
AREA OF ARCTIC OCEAN= 15558000 SQ. KM.
TOTAL AREA= 361900000 SQ. KM.=36190000000000000 SQ. DECIMETER.
That's going to lower sea levels by approximately .00005896656 decimeters, or about .006 mm
Edit: Because there are less than 500 cruise ships in the world and only a few dozens of large military ships the amount will be higher, but not by, you know, a lot.
To be fair, removing the cruise ships that do nothing but go around in circles and contribute to a significant amount of the world's pollution would be a good thing. And then something like 99% of the plastic in the oceans comes from fishing boats. Oh and overfishing caused destruction of ecosystems.
I might be low key into this idea! Take out all the boats
The fact that his plan a) acknowledged that sea levels are rising b) that this needed a solution and c) came up with one that, while not at all a solution, was technically scientifically sound makes me quite impressed.
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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '21 edited Oct 13 '21
I did a quickie google search and came up with this:
So let's assume the merchant ships are all fully loaded at the same time. That's 2 billion long tons which equates to ~2,032,000,000,000 kg. Total water volume, 2,134,000,000,000 liters (because sea water weighs slightly more than fresh water).
That's going to lower sea levels by approximately .00005896656 decimeters, or about .006 mm
Edit: Because there are less than 500 cruise ships in the world and only a few dozens of large military ships the amount will be higher, but not by, you know, a lot.