Assume that the earth is a sphere (which it is not), Mean Sea Level (MSL) occurs at radius R, add 20 feet. Calculate the volume of the two spheres and subtract the MSL volume from the plus 20 feet volume.
This, according to the author, gives you a volume of approximately (because the Earth is not a sphere) 6x10^24 m^3 or 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic meters of H2O.
Thats a lot of water.
The total mass of the earth is in fact 6 times 10 to the 24th kilograms.
But that figure is not required anywhere in the calculation.
Incidentally, the earth's density is about 4.5 times that of water...
The correct conclusion of the article is that the same operating new power term sufficient to heat the atmosphere 5C in 100 years, would need 30000 years to melt the ice caps.
Heat doesn't explicitly consider how much would be needed to heat up the oceans. But the mass of the oceans is 1.4 times 10 to the 21st kilograms - with a specific heat of 3850 J per degree per kg. This gives a figure close to this errant line - 5.4 times 10 to the 24th Joules of energy, would be required to raise the temperature of the entire ocean water mass by 1 degree C - and 2.7 times 10 to the 25th to raise it by 5C (all the way to the bottom).
In other words, the heat sink of the oceans themselves, has another 4 orders of magnitude, on the energy needed to melt the ice caps. Meaning oceans 5C hotter from top to bottom, are something with a time scale of tens of millions of years, if the operating power takes 100 years to heat the mere atmosphere.
The atmosphere is a rounding error in the stored latent heat of the ice caps. And the ice caps are a rounding error in the heat sink of the oceans themselves.
Thats a lot of water.
You haven’t seen my water bill in the summer months.