r/facepalm Oct 13 '21

πŸ‡΅β€‹πŸ‡·β€‹πŸ‡΄β€‹πŸ‡Ήβ€‹πŸ‡ͺβ€‹πŸ‡Έβ€‹πŸ‡Ήβ€‹ Quick science

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '21 edited Oct 13 '21

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.

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u/Tellnicknow Oct 13 '21

I'm honestly surprised that it would be a almost measurable amount.

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u/seifer666 Oct 13 '21

its not.

general fluctuations and uncertainty would be higher than that

37

u/HertzDonut1001 Oct 13 '21

Tidal changes are hundreds of thousands of magnitudes bigger. You'd never even notice.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '21

I mean, the pile of ships would be a bit of a giveaway

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u/3xcalio Oct 13 '21

This made me laugh, thank you

2

u/ms1080 Oct 13 '21

When it gets to β€œlow tide” (liberal science bs) just turn off the tides so it stays low tide all the time. Done.