Crushing Ants... north pole

two questions folks.

firstly do ants (and other insect) feel pain when being crushed or killed.

second, if somehow, ALL of the ice in the north pole melted then would the worlds sea levels rise.

thanks guys.

 

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They probably do feel some sort of uncomfortable sensation, otherwise, there would be no incentive to preserve the integrity of their body.

If you are talking about ice that is floating already, like around the north pole then no, sea levels would not rise. Ice displaces exactly its total weight in water.

 

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Not to mention that water is more dense than ice.

 

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What about giant glaciers that stick 50 feet out of the water whilst floating?
I think if all the ice melted then sea levels would rise alot. I thought that was predicted to happen and I thought it was known that before the ice age sea levels were much higher than they are now.

 

I think that the issue of rising sea levels is from landbased glaciers. Ice that floats on the sea, no matter how much pushes out of the sea, displaces water. So that, if melted, would make no difference in sea levels.

Preacher_X is of course asking about this to try to prove James R. wrong in a thread in the religion forum (and to which James gambled his religious affiliation, if he is proved wrong he will convert to Islam). In this thread, James suggested an experiment that would prove his case.

Take a glass of water filled to the top. Put an ice cube in the water (water will overflow but that's ok). Now, once all the excess water has slopped over, wait for the ice to melt. Does anymore water pour out of the cup as the ice melts? To simulate the iceberg concept, with ice above the water as well as below, you could make a special iceberg shaped icecube.

 

Yes but if the ice is dirty then the water level will change.

 

Will it? Are you sure? The weight of the dirt would still be displacing water right? If this is the case then James may need to buy a Qu'ran.

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reverse the poles
think - Antartica melts

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.. or Greenland

 

Put a dirty block of ice in a glass of water filled to the top. The dirty ice block is so heavy that it sinks rather then floats. As the ice melts the total volume will decrease thus lowering the water level..

 

just out of curiosity, what were the specifics of james r's bet? from the little I've gathered here anyone with grade six science behind them could guess the answer so I assume I'm missing something.

 

WHAT ABOUT THE ICE ABOVE THE SEA LEVEL?

i know ice displaces the exact same level of water but what about the water above the sea level (like the hundreds of meteres of ice that are like mountains above the sea)

can anyone give me some scientific evidence please?

thanks

 

and what about ants can anyone give me some scientific eveideince for that aswell.

 

as I indirectly said - if antartica melts you can kiss London goodbye
some 5 years or so I read that the sea level would rise by ~12m
but it was years ago, so it may be 20 not 12m (had smthing to do with 2)
(Greenland has less ice, but it would also rise the global sea levels)

 

are the actually any SCIENTISTS who can asnwer my question. so far on the internt it is pretty obvious that the worlds sea level WILL RISE becasue;

the real question is that, is the the worlds sea levels rising because of global warming but everyone on this message board doewsnt seem to thinks so.

source:
http://www.megastories.com/warming/cooking/sea.shtml

Sea levels could rise up to 1m by 2100

Trinidad and Tobago's government negotiator Kishan Kumarsingh has a joke he tells at climate change conferences - that in 100 years his country will no longer be represented at talks, because it will no longer exist. Like many other island nations, the threat of rising sea levels could consign Trinidad and Tobago to the history books.
In Kiribati, two small islets have already disappeared. Neither were inhabited, but many local people feel it's a taste of what the future holds in store. Across the tiny coral atoll, beaches are being eroded and ancestral graveyards crumbling into the ocean. Building sea walls can only help temporarily - some people may have to move to higher ground even within the next decade.
According to the IPCC, sea levels have risen by 10 - 20cm during the twentieth century, and are currently rising by about 2mm a year. The generally-accepted prediction is that sea levels will rise during the twenty-first century by between 10cm and 1 metre - with a 'best guess' of about 50cm.

According to figures published by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat, a one-metre rise in sea levels would inundate 6% of the Netherlands, 17.5% of Bangladesh, and about 80% of Atoll Majuro in the Marshall Islands. Flooding due to storm surges already affects some 46 million people a year, estimates the UNFCCC, and this figure could rise to 92 million with a 50cm sea-level rise, and to 118 million people for a 1 metre rise.

Sea level rise is caused by the oceans expanding as they warm, and by the melting of mountain glaciers and ice caps.

http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/19.htm

Over the last 100 years, the global sea level has risen by about 10 to 25 cm.

Sea level change is difficult to measure. Relative sea level changes have been derived mainly from tide-gauge data. In the conventional tide-gauge system, the sea level is measured relative to a land-based tide-gauge benchmark. The major problem is that the land experiences vertical movements (e.g. from isostatic effects, neotectonism, and sedimentation), and these get incorporated into the measurements. However, improved methods of filtering out the effects of long-term vertical land movements, as well as a greater reliance on the longest tide-gauge records for estimating trends, have provided greater confidence that the volume of ocean water has indeed been increasing, causing the sea level to rise within the given range.

It is likely that much of the rise in sea level has been related to the concurrent rise in global temperature over the last 100 years. On this time scale, the warming and the consequent thermal expansion of the oceans may account for about 2-7 cm of the observed sea level rise, while the observed retreat of glaciers and ice caps may account for about 2-5 cm. Other factors are more difficult to quantify. The rate of observed sea level rise suggests that there has been a net positive contribution from the huge ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, but observations of the ice sheets do not yet allow meaningful quantitative estimates of their separate contributions. The ice sheets remain a major source of uncertainty in accounting for past changes in sea level because of insufficient data about these ice sheets over the last 100 years.

http://www.megastories.com/warming/cooking/ice.shtml
Melting ice caps and disappearing glaciers

In August 2000 a Russian-registered icebreaker was crunching its way towards the North Pole. When the vessel arrived, the passengers on board were surprised to find open water lapping at the ship's bows and seagulls wheeling overhead. "There was a sense of alarm," reported zoologist Dr James McCarthy, who was there. "Global warming was real, and we were seeing its effects for the first time that far north."

It seems that the melting is going on everywhere. Summer sea ice thickness across the Arctic has declined by 42% over the last four decades. The area of ice is also shrinking. And Greenland, which is covered by an ice sheet several kilometres thick in places, is losing water through melting at a rate equivalent to the annual flow of the Nile river.
Anyone living in mountain regions will also have seen changes during the twentieth century. When the Alpine railway station was built at Morteratsch in Switzerland at the end of the 1800s, passengers could stroll to the edge of the glacier without getting out of breath. Now the glacial tongue is nearly three kilometres away - and is still retreating fast.

In total the Alps have lost over half their ice in the last century, and 100 glaciers have already disappeared completely. It's the same story in the Andes and the Himalayas, where the major rivers watering the Indian subcontinent all rise from the icy mountain peaks. And once the biggest glaciers have gone, there won't be enough water to keep the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers flowing all year round - leaving over a billion people in desperate need of fresh water.

What is less certain is whether Antarctica is also melting. The international scientific consensus is that no clear trend is visible since 1978, when satellite measurements began. But a more recent study has found that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is thinning, and has lost 31 cubic kilometres of ice since 1992. Since the ice sheet is actually grounded below sea level, there are fears that warmer ocean waters could penetrate underneath it - transforming the ice sheet into a gigantic melting iceberg and raising sea levels further.

http://eces.org/archive/ec/globalwarming/sealevel.shtml

07/23/1995) Scientist say collapse of West Antarctic Ice Sheet due to global warming wouldn't just raise sea levels by 6 meters (18 feet), it could also lead to collapse of East Antarctice Ice Sheet, resulting in a catastrophic 60 meter (180 feet) sea level rise. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), now only about 10 percent of the size of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, was one-third of Antarctica roughly between 14 - 20,000 years ago. Since then, two-thirds of the WAIS has collapsed, but there's still enough ice in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to raise sea level by 6 meters (18 feet) if it disappeared.

In the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) there's enough ice to raise sea levels by 60 (180 feet) meters. The question arises why hasn't the East Antarctic Ice Sheet undergone a collapse similar to that of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet? Scientists cannot dismiss the possibility that greenhouse warming could cause something similar in the decades ahead, because they don't know enough yet about the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet probably collapsed in two areas: in the Ross Sea, where the collapse produced the Ross Sea embayment (a shallow sea that floods part of a continent, like Hudson Bay in Canada) where the Ross ice shelf now floats; and the other in the Weddell Sea embayment where the Ronne-Filchner ice shelves are floating. In between these two embayments is the Antarctic Peninsula where ice shelves have been disintegrating recently.

http://eces.org/archive/ec/globalwarming/sealevel.shtml

(03/28/2002) New study determines that an abrupt, 70-foot rise in sea levels 14,200 years ago was caused by the partial collapse of Antarctic ice sheets during a time of increasing temperatures, sea levels and atmospheric carbon dioxide similar to the present. A massive and unusually abrupt rise in sea level about 14,200 years ago was caused by the partial collapse of ice sheets in Antarctica, a new study has shown, in research that solves a mystery scientists have been heatedly debating for more than a decade. In less than 500 years at the end of the last Ice Age, the event caused the Earth's sea level to rise about 70 feet. That's about four times faster than sea levels were rising most of the time during that period and at least 20 times faster than the sea level is currently rising. The findings are reported the journal Science by researchers from Oregon State University, the University of Toronto and the University of Durham in the United Kingdom.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&... global warming


Results 1 - 10 of about 164,000 for sea level rising global warming. (0.16 seconds) on GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_123631.html
Melting ice sheets 'would threaten billions'

Large areas of the Earth's most densely population regions could be washed off the map by future sea level rises, according to a report by climate scientists.

The process, partly caused by the melting of Greenland's ice sheet, may take 1,000 years or more but once under way will be "irreversible". a report by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims.

New Scientist magazine, which mentions the report, says: "If sea levels were 10 metres higher than today by the year 3000, it would cause the inundation of a total area larger than the US, with a population of more than a billion people and most of the world's most fertile farmland."

Four years ago the IPCC forecast that sea levels could rise by half a metre this century, and by a maximum of between 1.5 and three metres over the coming 500 years.

But the new assessment suggests a rise of seven to 13 metres is more likely. Such a change would be disastrous, swamping immense areas of land and many cities.

These rises will occur even if governments succeed in halting global warming within the next few decades, the report says.

Two factors are causing higher sea levels - the slow spread of heat to the ocean depths, and the destabilising of major ice sheets.

It will take about 1,000 years for warming in the atmosphere to reach the bottom of the oceans. The resulting thermal expansion "would continue to raise sea levels for many centuries after stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations," says the report.

One of the biggest threats is posed by the ice that covers Greenland, experts claim. Models predict that after any climate warming above 2.7C, the Greenland ice sheet eventually disappears. The report says nearly all forecasts show Greenland warming more than this.

http://fpeng.peopledaily.com.cn/200...413_93966.shtml
Global Warming Accelerates China's Sea Level Rise

Large sections of Chinese coastal regions gradually disappear under rising sea levels because of global warming, severely impairing the country's social and economic progress.

Large sections of Chinese coastal regions gradually disappear under rising sea levels because of global warming, severely impairing the country's social and economic progress.

According to the latest observations from domestic tide stations, the sea level along China's coastline has maintained a rapidly rising speed over the past five decades. The elevation even accelerated in recent years with an annual increase of 2.6 millimeters.

Meteorologists predict that in the next 30 years, the sea level will continue to rise by one to 16 centimeters. By 2050, it will be six to 26 centimeters higher. The increase will probably reach 30 to 70 centimeters by the end of the 21st century.

Ding Yihui, a climate expert with the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), said, "With comparatively-advanced social, economic and cultural developments, China's off-shore regions will suffer great losses if the sea level doesn't cease rising."

Ding also attributed a series of potential ecological problems,such as the deterioration of shoals and marshes and the salinization of the groundwater-bearing layers, to the sea level increase.

"It will ruin the ecological and environmental balance along the coastal areas."

China's long coastline is the base for about 70 percent of the large cities, over a half of the domestic population and nearly 60 percent of the national economy.

Du Bilan, a researcher with the National Bureau of Oceanography (NBO), said that the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Yellow River Delta -- regions located along the coast with the

country's most developed economies -- may all in part be flooded if the sea level kept rising at the current speed.

Statistics from the simulation experiments show that only 65 centimeters more over the highest historical tide level will lead to a submergence of about 3,400 square kilometers in the Pearl River Delta, causing an economic loss of 180.8 billion yuan (about 21.9 billion U.S. dollars).

CMA director Qin Dahe said that not only China, but the whole world is threatened by rising sea levels. In the next 100 years, the average global temperature will rise by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius, which will result in a sea level rise ranging from nine to 88 centimeters. It is predicted that the consequent annual economic loss will amount to over 300 billion U.S. dollars.

Facing the growing menace of the sea level rise, meteorologists advise to take more scientific and active preventive measures, including strengthening the construction of protection embankments,

enhancing the design criteria of littoral projects as well as strictly limiting groundwater exploitation.

http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=1708

Alaskan glacier melt accelerates sea level rise
Posted: 19 Jul 2002

by Jim Lobe

In one more piece of evidence that the Earth's climate is warming rapidly, a new study published in Science magazine (July 19, 2002) has found that Alaska's glaciers are melting more quickly than previously believed.

Johns Hopkins Glacier in Glacier Bay, southeast Alaska, melts into the sea.
© Commander John Bortniak/NOAA

The resulting meltwater is also contributing much more to the rise in sea level than previous estimates, according to the study by a team of University of Alaska researchers in Fairbanks, who found that both trends are accelerating.


"The rate of thinning has doubled in the past five years, compared to the 40 years before," said Anthony Arendt, of the university's Geophysical Institute, the study's main author.


Sea rise


As a result, the Alaskan contribution to sea-level rise has also doubled, to about 0.27 millimeters a year during the past decade, or about twice the amount assumed by an international panel of scientists that last year predicted sea level would rise up to 11 centimetres (4.3 inches) by the end of this century due to global warming.


"It's a big deal if those rates have been underestimated," said Tom Janetos, an expert at the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. "If these results are correct, the rate of sea level rise has probably been underestimated in all international assessments."


More than 100 million people live on land within one metre (three feet) of sea level, and storm surges can devastate coral reefs and low-lying islands and coastlines around the world.


"Although some degree of sea level rise is anticipated in the coming decades, the greater the rise and the faster it occurs, the greater the impact will be on human population," said Benjamin Preston, a researcher at the Washington DC based Pew Center on Global Climate Change.


Despite their relatively small land mass - about 13 per cent of the world's total mountain glacier area - Alaska's glaciers contribute about half of all sea level rise caused by glacial melt and about twice as much as the amount of water lost from the entire Greenland Ice Sheet, according to the Arendt team.


Warmer temperatures


A second study published in Science will also add to concerns about the impact on oceans of faster ice melt. Using records compiled over the last 40 years, researchers at Columbia University have found a sharp decline in the salinity of waters in the Ross Sea near Antarctica, as well as warmer air and water temperatures in the area.


The warmer atmosphere appears to have caused more rain and snowfall, less sea ice, and faster melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet, the Columbia scientists say.


Previously, low salinity found in masses of seawater flowing from the Antarctic to the South Pacific was attributed to more precipitation, but the new study confirms that increased melting of the ice cap itself is also a major factor.


Declining salinity could affect major ocean currents, such as the Gulf Stream which warms the waters and climate of the North Atlantic region, according to oceanographers. One prominent theory suggests that a large flow of fresh water into the North Atlantic could reverse the Gulf Stream, as it has in the past, causing an abrupt plunge in water and air temperatures in northeastern North America and northwestern Europe.


Preston said, "If scientists have underestimated the amount of fresh water likely to enter the oceans in coming decades, they may have also underestimated the risk of such a phenomenon occurring."

© Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All Rights Reserved. Republished with kind permission from ENS. This article was also published in co-operation with the OneWorld Network.

http://www.awea.org/wew/647-2.html

WARMING COULD CAUSE MASSIVE
SEA LEVEL RISE

from Wind Energy Weekly #647, 22 May 1995
A number of polar scientists have suggested that global climate change could trigger a substantial melting of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, causing world sea levels to rise by 50 feet or more, the New York Times reported May 2. Such a change would mean inundation of many low-lying areas, including some that are now heavily populated.

At a meeting sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in April in Woods Hole, Mass., specialists from around the world debated the issue without reaching a conclusion.

Previous discussions of global warming and sea level rise have focused on the thinner West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which if melted would cause seas to rise by only 20 feet. But some scientists argue that in the geologic past, the East Antarctic sheet has repeatedly expanded and diminished, suggesting that it may also be more vulnerable to climate shifts than previously thought.

The sheet has basically been stable since the end of the Pliocene, an extremely warm period three to four million years ago when summer temperatures in the Antarctic were 10 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they are today. At the end of the Pliocene, the great ice sheet, which today is more than three miles thick in some places, was formed.

Proponents of the melting theory say the Earth will soon be warmer, thanks to climate change from fossil fuels, than it has been since the Pliocene, and worry that up to one-third of the sheet could melt or flow into the sea as a result.

Efforts to determine whether their concerns are justified or not, by looking for evidence of past sea levels around the world, have been hampered because of changes resulting from other causes such as erosion and ice ages.

In other climate news, a team of researchers led by Thomas Karl at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., reported in the scientific journal Consequences that weather in the U.S. has become more unstable during the past 15 years. The team has developed a "Greenhouse Climate Response Index" to measure climate variability that is consistent with what might be expected from global warming, and U.S. weather has been ringing up high numbers on the index since around 1980.

Although previous periods--in the 1930s and 1950s--have also seen high scores, the recent episode has lasted longer, with high levels on each of five index components.

"As a result," said the journal Science in an article on the findings, "Karl and his colleagues estimate a probability of only about five percent that the index's latest surge toward the greenhouse side is just another fluctuation of an otherwise stable climate."

The index combines data on warm daily temperatures, high winter precipitation, extreme or severe drought, intense periods of rainfall, and day-to-day variations in temperature.

http://www.enn.com/features/2000/09...gseas_31228.asp

Sea-level rise

Thursday, September 21, 2000
By Claude Morgan

Does a rising tide lift all boats?
Scientists studying the real rising tides say, no: A large-scale rise in sea levels, triggered by global warming, is lifting some boats and swamping others.

Worldwide, the oceans are currently rising one-tenth of an inch each year. The extra water comes from melting glaciers and ice sheets, and swelling of the oceans as they heat. In the next 50 years, scientists warn, the seas will rise a foot. In 60 years, coastal erosion in the United States could swallow one out of every four homes built within 500 feet of shoreline.

"No one wants to live in Nebraska anymore," frets Richard Poore, a government oceanographer who studies the geological record for modern-day clues about sea-level rise. He and colleagues at the United States Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia, are currently investigating a 400,000 year-old rise in sea level that placed the surface of the ocean a full 65 feet above where it stands today.

Migration from the heartland, therefore, worries Poore. He laments that the places where people do want to live — the coastlines — are increasingly vulnerable to small changes in sea level.

"The loss of life and property from major storms is rising exponentially," warns Poore. "And that has everything to do with the number of people living on the coast."



With the attraction of coastal living comes danger. Thousands of residents were threatened by waves from the October 1991 storm along the shoreline of Monmouth Beach, New Jersey.
So many people are living on the coast, in fact, that if the sea rose 30 feet today, one quarter of the U.S. population would be living underwater tomorrow, according to the USGS.

But as scientists point out, not all boats are lifted equally by rises in sea level. Some coastal areas of the United States are more vulnerable than others. The coast of California, which sits higher off the water than most Atlantic coastlines, for instance, could easily weather a sea-level rise of several inches. Coastlines along the Gulf of Mexico and Florida, on the other hand, would be devastated.

Jim Titus, project director of sea-level rise at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, helps map the nation's most vulnerable coastlines.



Coastlines that sit lower to the water such as West Palm Beach in Florida are most vulnerable to sea-level rise.
"Four coastal areas pop out immediately," says Titus: "South Florida, coastal Louisiana, the Pamlico and Albemarle sounds in North Carolina, and Maryland's Eastern Shore."

In fact, says Titus, many of those areas may already be feeling the subtle effects of sea-level rise. A rise in the ocean elevates groundwater tables and increases the risk of flooding during rainstorms. Likewise, the salty ocean water can spoil important freshwater aquifers.

Titus's map, however, tells only one side of the story: the geography of sea-level rise. Human reaction to the rising tide has complicated that picture significantly. Floridians, who have long suffered the ravages of hurricanes, for instance, have in many cases already moved their houses back from the water's edge. Other coastal dwellers, who see but one major storm in a century, have not — and may not even know how vulnerable their shorelines are.



Homes line the Louisiana shore at Holly Beach west of the Calcasieu Ship Channel along the Gulf of Mexico.
"There are an awful lot of people living in areas that aren't currently flooding," explains Titus. "If you don't have floods or big tides now, you might actually be living only a foot above high water and not know it."

In Louisiana, missing the signs of sea-level rise would be impossible. Steve Dunn, a deputy project manager at The Heinz Center in Washington, D.C., which recently completed a major study of U.S. coastal erosion, says that coastal areas along the Gulf of Mexico and southeastern United States are far more prone to coastal erosion than other parts of the country.

"Louisiana is already losing about 25 square miles of land to coastal erosion each year," says Dunn — a loss of about one acre every 24 minutes.

A river delta, Louisiana relies on flooding from the Mississippi River to replenish its dwindling landmass. But since man tamed the mighty river more than a century ago, the state has been sinking steadily at a rate of three feet per century.



Steadily shrinking, Louisiana relies on flooding from the Mississippi River to replenish its dwindling landmass.
Titus says living in a state that's dipping below sea level may have some advantages over living in coastal areas that are, by all appearances, stable.

"If you're living in an area where the land is sinking, the idea that the sea is rising doesn't strike you as improbable," says Titus. As many states have failed to heed the call of sea level rise elsewhere, troubled states such as Louisiana might have a head start combating coastal erosion and sea level rise.

With a good land-use policy and plenty of preparation, says Titus, knowing the sea is rising — and by how much — could mean the difference between rising with the tide or sinking beneath it.

 

why was this -sheet- needed?
you didn't ask anything about global warming
neither did anybody else

 

Avatar, i was asking about what would happen if somehow if the ice in the North Pole melted, then would the sea level rise.

now global warming IS CURRENTLY melting the ice in the north pole* so my question does have something to do with Global warming.

and how does ice melt? - the temperature increases

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what does global warming do? - raise the temperature.

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*actually, some science dude said, that global warming doesnt melt the ice in the north pole to water becasue the north pole is too cold but it DOES melt the ice enough for it to BREAK AWAY from the north pole and float away to warm land and then it melts.

 

no, you just asked

it's clear that you ask only if the water level would rise, not what would cause it
and that "science dude" was nobody from this forum (or this thread at least)
so there is no point proving us that the global warming rises the sea levels because everyone knows that already
and what area you call "north pole"? north pole is just a spot , I presume you mean artic

 

I stopped at this point, you'll have to forgive me. After making it halfway through a very long list with nothing relevant, I think I'm justified. Seriously, do you read these? Do you understand what we're talking about? Greenland and Antarctica are land. They are covered in ice. If this ice melts, sea levels rise.

The north pole is not land. It is ice floating on water. The ice floating on water displaces water proportional to it's weight. I don't have archimede's law in front of me, someone else here should post it and a link to a good site explaining the principle in layman's terms. The experiment with the ice cube in a glass suggests that ice actually takes up more volume when frozen than when in liquid state; so, if anything, the sea level wil sink (if even by a tiny amount).

The point of dirt being trapped in the ice does need to be addressed. What weighs more? A gallon of water or a gallon of dirt? I think the water weighs more but I'm not sure. So one would have to figure out how much solid matter is trapped within the northern ice sheet. Even with this, I seriously doubt that there is enough solid volume within the northern ice sheet to make much difference. I mean what would be up there? Dirt, insects, birds, and whatnot blown in on the wind (there are stories of the strangest things being carried around the world by the wind, frogs, beans...

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). And maybe some animals that died on the ice sheet. Maybe a viking ship or two. While this might make for interesting research, highly doubtful that it would add any significant volume. It actually might cancel out the lesser weight of any particulate matter trapped within (another interesting line of thought).

As to ants feeling pain. That's a tough question. Their nervous system is pretty simple. But I'm sure they get some type of damage signal. Lobster's are boiled alive. The excuse for that is that they don't really feel it. Although, I think this has to do with the sudden shift from cold to boiliing.

edit: just reread the third quote, this may seem similar to the northern ice cap, but here, the ice is frozen all the way to the sea floor. In this way, it acts as if it were land. Ice above sea level would behave as ice on land. If the northern ice cap were frozen all the way to the sea floor, then you might have an argument. But, it's not.

 

by North Pole, i dont mean the small pole on the top of the earth, i mean the ice in the northern area.

as for the north pole, yes i do know that theory about ice displacing water (like that guy did to find out if gold is real of fake)

but ice in the north pole is higher then the sea level and in some areas by a great amount.

 

it's height is irrelevant, if it's floating on water it's volume has already been displaced. That h2o has already added it's mass to the level of the oceans, wether it's frozen or not doesn't matter.