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.

Here’s an attempt to figure it out. I sometimes make mistakes dealing with a lot of zeros so feel free to check my math.

We’ve pumped an estimated 135 billion tons of crude oil. The article I read doesn’t specify whether it’s metric of imperial tons so I went with the later to be on the conservative side.

135 billion x 2000 lbs. = 270 Trillion pounds.

Crude oil density is 7.2 lbs./gallon.
Converting from pounds = 37.5 Trillion gallons.

Using an online calculator- that equals 142 cubic Km’s of water.
There’s 1,000,000 mm per Km so that’s enough water to cover 142 million square Km’s. The surface area of the world’s oceans is 510 million square Km’s.

So humans have raised sea level 0.23 mm.

That’s insignificant like ER said, but it’s something…

Edit: got to thinking. It’s likely some of that ended up as cloud cover and ice

And they accuse all those who oppose them as Socialists.

It’s all of us. People need and want things. And we are destroying the ecosystem beyond our viability. In the geologic record I can think of only one other example of a species of life that destroyed its own ecosystem on a global scale.

They were bacteria.

The unsuccessful ones are terrified they might lose what little they’ve achieved.

https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/

https://scripps.ucsd.edu/bluemoon/co2_400/mlo_full_record.png

James Watt introduced the modern steam engine in the late 18th century.

https://scripps.ucsd.edu/bluemoon/co2_400/co2_800k_zoom.png

Back when I was working for a major mining company, I had a discussion about the environmental ethics of mining, well several actually, with one of my bosses, a mad Scottish mentor.

Basically, it boiled down to, “If they didn’t want it, we wouldn’t mine it.”

There are few stronger examples of selfishness and greed, except possibly the people who resisted the medical evidence on carcinogenic cigarette smoking–or those who made excuses for slavery.

Its one thing to be conflicted, to recognize how difficult and expensive getting off a fossil fuel economy is going to be, how many jobs it will cost, perhaps even how many lives it will cost. And every day we delay finding a solution will only make the final price we’ll pay that much higher.

But this isn’t natural hesitancy or desperate hope leading to strained and confirmation-biased conclusions. This is complete disregard for mankind’s future. They just want to live in air-conditioned, irrigated Las Vegas and hope the world doesn’t come to an end until after they die of old age.

après moi le déluge