HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to How much have we raised sea level by burning fossil fuels.

Crude oil is not gasoline

What I was trying to express before. Depending on the type of crude oil, the amount of gasoline is only a percentage of that. Sweet Brent Crude has a lot, Canadian tar sands, not so much. The rest of that barrel is tar, diesel, oil, methane, naptha, and a bunch of other hydrocarbon molecules of different sizes, weights and properties.

So it is my opinion that if you want to say that a gallon of gas equals a gallon of water, you'd have to factor that into your math. If you want to state that a gallon of petroleum resulted in a gallon of sea level, that's better. Not convinced that you can make that comparison either, but that's my initial critique.

Plus, as I mentioned, some of sea level rise is due to thermal expansion of water. And sea level rise is not uniform.

Qualitatively, the burning of fossil fuels, not just gasoline, have caused warming which has resulted in rising sea levels. Quantitatively, I don't think you can tease out that claim with a back of the envelope calculation. Too many variables.

Just my opinion.

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