[philip symonds]

philip symonds asked the Naked Scientists:
   If all the ships in the World were removed from the oceans and seas, would it make much difference to sea levels?

Thanks,

Phil
What do you think?

[syhprum]

I think it would be in the order of microns!
Assuming 72% of the Earth is covered by water 3Km deep weight 1.1*10^18 tons 9*10^8 tons of shipping would displace it .08 Micron.

[Chemistry4me]

There are about 55,000 (give or take 1-2 thousand) Merchant ships in service around the world as of today 10/10/2008. This figure includes bulk carriers, dry cargo vessels, MPP's, container vessels, tankers, LPG's, LNG's, and most cruise ships.

Do some rough calculations to work it out (if you assume these figures are correct)  []

This Figure does NOT include all the small ro/ro's that service islands (short trips/tourism) or river barges, or oil barges, or floating docks, or drill ships, service vessels, tugs, AHTS's, crew boats, restaurant vessels, etc..

Not that these boats are going to matter anyway.


http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_ships_in_the_world_are_in_service_today

[syhprum]

Let us have some more questions like this simple arithmetic is much more fun than all that business with non commutation, tensor's and matrix,s