Randall Munroe of xkcd has answered another hypothetical question in his What If? series:
How much would the sea level fall if every ship were removed all at once from the Earth’s waters?
The answer is: a very small amount. Remember that each ship displaces an amount of water equal to the ship’s weight. This is the insight that had Archimedes leaping out of his bath and running down the passage (I speculate) shouting “Eureka!” Yes, there are a lot of ships, but there is also a LOT of ocean. Of far greater concern is the amount that sea levels will rise owing to glacier meltwater and expansion of the seawater as its temperature rises, both caused by global warming.
Read the full article here.
