So, this is me blogging while listening to my recorded lecture for Oceanography... and what I have learnt so far, is that the sea level rise is not because of the melting of polar ice caps, it is actually caused by the thermal expandation of seawater. Why may you ask the melting of polar ice caps has got nothing to do with sea level rise?? It is because polar ice caps are freshwater and in the world freshwater is 3% of the world's water and freshwater hasn't got any metal ions in them that would expand when heated.