NOTE: (I had this at the bottom of the post some people missed it so I moved it up to the top) I’m not convinced that this idea has any merit whatsoever, as I see more conventional reasons (like silting) for land recovery such as at Rome’s original harbor and in New York, but thought it was worth posting for the discussion that would ensue. Even bad science deserves to be discussed/disproven. See also a note below. – Anthony
Isostacy is a major Geological error.
Guest essay by Richard Guy
The Governments of the United States and Canada are concerned about the ebbing water levels in the Great Lakes. For years the water levels in the great lakes and other lakes have been declining without any signs of ever returning to previous levels. The best news is that there is no hope that the water levels will ever return. The bad news is that we have our heads stuck in the sand dunes which have been created on the shores of the great lakes as they recede.
What we have also failed to notice is that the process is speeding up faster than our ability to grasp the reality. The fact is that this process of ebbing lake and water levels has been going on since pre history but we are just becoming aware of it as more and more shoreline inhabitants observe the phenomenon.
Another major deterrent to our overall realization is that our thought processes are hampered, among other things, by the media hype of rising sea levels and Post Glacial Rebound. Post Glacial Rebound is a geological error which has been foisted on us for a long time. It is time that we outlaw this false concept of Glacial Rebound and release a new era of exiting discoveries which have remained hidden by this mistaken premise.
Isostatic Rebound was introduced into Geological theology over one hundred years ago and it has lead us astray. This theory of Iostacy was based on an original error in deduction. The error in deduction was that the land rose from the sea. This original error was compounded when the theory of Post Glacial Rebound was built on it. This led us even further away from the truth.
We will never solve the disappearing water problem until we face the reality that we have been mislead by Iostacy. We have to face this reality because this reality is now facing us: we are losing water all over the planet while we continue to harp on rising seas levels.
Once we abandon Isostatic Rebound we will see the reality of receding seas. This path will also lead us to other interesting discoveries such as why the seas recede.? Once we accept that seas are receding that acceptance will automatically eliminate Post Glacial Rebound. There is no time to waste because our survival depends on this acceptance.
What is really occurring is that the sea levels have been falling from pre historic times. Rivers have been draining the land and the lakes since pre-historic times. As Sea levels fall lower and lower the draining process moves faster and faster and we lose our wetlands as more and more land is left behind by the receding seas. Sand dunes now line the shores of the great lakes where people used to swim and boats used to be moored. Many marinas have been deserted leaving boats stranded on sand bars. This is also a cause of the amount of arid land which is increasing worldwide.
Graph from: http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/now/wlevels/dbd/
So it is wise at this stage to give the lie to rising sea levels and accept receding sea levels. This will not stop the water loss but it will make us understand what we have to do in order to preserve what little water we do have left.
New York is learning about receding seas because the marshes in Jamaica Bay are disappearing and drying up. New Jersey is dealing with the receding sea by selling off the new land left by the sea to Donald Trump and Playboy Hotels and Casinos. Donald Trump built his Taj Mahal Casino on these lands left by the receding sea.
Now that The State of New Jersey has discovered the land bonanza they are gaining as the sea recedes they have been looking over old survey maps to find out where the sea was back in 1776. They are proposing to claim retroactive taxes from landowners who have occupied these lands back to those historical times. They estimate that they have accumulated 830000 acres of land from the sea since 1776. The State of New York can make a similar claim as it includes long Island the Sounds and Brooklyn Shorelines. An exhibition by the New York Library in 2010 showed the mapping of the New York shoreline over three hundred years. The entire New York coastline has gained a quarter mile of land over that period.
So when we see the water levels falling in the Great lakes that is only the tip of the iceberg. Those levels have been falling for a very long time and will continue to do so. If we want to get a picture of what our earth will eventually look like just look at the face of the Planet Mars.
The first order of business is to get rid of the Isostatic Rebound theory and accept that our seas are receding as our planet expands. The sea is not rising. We will then see why our lakes are going dry. We will also understand that the only thing we can do about it is to keep dredging our waterways harbours and lakes to keep things moving. That was all three Emperors of Rome could do to keep the Harbour at Ostia open: they were finally defeated. It took Nero, Trajan and Articus one hundred years of dredging before they gave up the fight against the receding sea. Today Ostia is three miles from the sea and twenty feet above sea level.
The Port Authority in New York is having to blast bedrock, for the first time, to keep the harbour channels open. The sea keeps getting shallower and the seagoing vessels keep getting larger. Ships keep demanding deeper depths.
Our Planet Earth is dynamic. It is a masterful creation not unlike other planets in the Cosmos. The earth does not reveal her secrets readily and her secrets are often presented to us as a mirror image of what is really happening. So when we observe that land is rising it may just be a mirror image: our seas are receding.
###
Richard Guy is a Structural Engineer. P.Eng, Mse, West London University. He has worked in several countries worldwide. He has written three books on Receding Seas and allied Phenomena. He lectures, writes and does radio and TV interviews. He has built Airports, Refineries, Highways on lands left behind by the receding sea
See: The Mysterious Receding Seas on Amazon
===============================================================
UPDATE: for those who never read past the first few paragraphs to see my caveat, I’ve now moved it up top for better visibility.
Some people asked why I should publish “rubbish science” like this. The reason is the same that I often publish some “rubbish science”from climatology; it deserves ridicule for the ridiculous premise of the idea.
At some point, when the next ice age kicks in, we will start to see the seas recede. We are nowhere close to that.
The new land that Mr. Guy sees is from silting deposition. For example the delta of the Mississippi river continues to grow each year for that reason.
Plus, with GPS enabled altimetry systems, we can now actually measure isotasy changes. – Anthony
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Anth0ny:
I read your explanation for posting the above article; i.e.
OK, but the article contains no science; it merely makes an assertion (repeatedly).
And discussion of an assertion is difficult, especially when the assertion is daft. Refutation is all that can be achieved by reason and evidence. A good scientist needs to keep an open mind, but not so open that his brains fall out.
WUWT is your blog and you can choose to publish whatever you want. But the best science blog on the web has to maintain standards if it is to retain the deserved respect and credibility which you have earned for it.
With all due respect, I submit that the above article is below the high standards achieved by WUWT.
Richard
“a new era of exiting discoveries”
Hard to exited over your ideas with that level of proof reading.
This is the unabridged version of my article on sea level variations from the Holocene to the Romans, of which a large part deals with Britain
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/document.pdf
On page four is a link to an academic study by Durham university describing the rebound or depression round each part of britains coast caused by glacial action, deposition, subsidence etc.
There are many aspects of climate science we Should query but this is not one of them
Satellites do not measure sea levels around coasts and it is not always realised consequently that because of the land movements some places are actually seeing sea level fall whilst in others the rise is Exaggerated.
I do not agree with this authors basic premise at all
Tonyb
Well, the expanding Earth “theory” seems to have a few actual believers, as shown at http://www.expanding-earth.org.
To quote: “The evidence is obvious, unmistakable and irrefutable!”
The site is worth visiting as a good example of bad ideas (and old-school web design)
This is a test isn’t it?
As an aside, besides earth losing water to outer space we are constantly bombarded by bits of crumbled comets, and that adds water every day. I’ll leave it up to younger fellows, with more time on their hands, to figure out if the planet is gaining or losing water. (While they are at it, maybe they can figure out where all the water on Mars went, and whether Jupiter grabbed it all, or whether Earth got any.) As for me, I have enough of a problem figuring out where my money goes, and likely shouldn’t concern myself unduly with sea levels.
there was an article recently about a Roman port discovered in England. it was 2 miles from the closest shore…
M Courtney says:
August 31, 2013 at 1:44 pm
This is the worst article I’ve read here since “CO2 will condense out of the atmosphere in the Polar Night”.
Antarctic!
I’ve been avoiding that episode for years. And you didn’t even help out! Grr. 🙂
Finally, here is a post that I wouldn’t mind seeing hijacked into a CO2 frost discussion. It’s actually worthwhile for people who weren’t here then to read some of the posts and commentary. You really don’t have to comment on it though!
The final post is http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/13/results-lab-experiment-regarding-co2-snow-in-antarctica-at-113%C2%B0f-80-5%C2%B0c-not-possible/ , it has links to earlier posts.
Aside from the spelling problem (it’s isostasy, not iostacy), there is a whole lot wrong with this story. For openers, the author needs to do some reading about the evidence for isostatic rebound which comes not just from the Great Lakes but from all over the world where large Pleistocene ice sheets developed. For example (one among many), in every area in the world where ice sheets thousands of feet of ice thick have occurred, we can observe post-ice sheet uplift which is directly proportional to the thickness of the ice. In Sweden, post-glacial shorelines rise northward and are still rising at a rate of about 1 meter per century. In Stockholm, a notch was chiseled in rock in 1704 with a historic document telling where sea level was relative to the notch. Now that notch is 300 years old and the Baltic is 3 meters lower there. The same kind of story is repeated again and again, always the same–old shorelines have not just risen, they have risen progressively higher as you go in the direction of thicker ice. The coincidence is well beyond random probability.
A lot of other evidence of isostatic rebound is also relevant and may be found in the published geologic literature. My suggestion would be read this evidence before postulating the tossing out of a well established process.
@richard Sharpe at 12:23 pm:
“The link seems broken”
ALL the Great Lakes GRERL NOAA links that show up on Google don’t work. Maybe the server is down.
…I am not sold on isostatic rebound still existing myself, so I began reading this with some interest as to what evidence might be in the post.
Unfortunately, this is sloppy thinking in the extreme. He misunderstands and conflates from the start. Assertions from start to finish, with nothing to back them up.
He doesn’t even seem to know that isostatic rebound and post-glacial rebound are one and the same thing.
It’s obvious. The seas are draining….off the edge of the earth.
The article is utter garbage. The evidence for glacial rebound in Fennoscandia is overwhelming. Without isostacy there would be no mountain ranges.
My pants are shrinking.
Thats it.
I think I’ll go with glacial rebound. If you dump trillions of tons of ice onto a landmass, that land mass will sink – on that scale, rock is an elastic solid, it compresses. When the ice is removed, it rebounds. There are ice age shorelines which are now hundreds of feet above the sea, because of glacial rebound.
The only argument with this concept could surely be about the rate of rebound, and whether it is still occurring, 10,000 years after the ice was removed.
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/ndgs/ndnotes/Rebound/Glacial%20Rebound.htm
Since the beginning of the holocene, rebound has totaled over 935 ft centred on Hudson’s Bay. It has slowed to about 4 feet a century in recent times. Moreover, rebound has been greater in some places than others resulting in warping of strand lines left by Lake Agassiz after its draining. Moreover, 18th Century Hudson’s Bay Company personnel engraved their names on shore out crops in harbours where they traded for furs. These bays no longer can accommodate ships of the same draft of those early shallow draft boats. Isostasy is alive and well.
Besides it didn’t come be a theory because people thought land just rose out of the sea. I was discovered by surveyors (Pratt and Airy) who when they were surveying in India couldn’t close a long survey loop within acceptable error. This and follow-up gave rise to the theory that there was a deficit in mass beneath the Himalayas that caused the plumb bob to swing slightly away from the mountain range. This indicated that the the high mountains had a deep root like a glacier sticking out the water – the lighter continental rocks “floating” in the heavier ferromagnesian rocks beneath causing a deficit of mass enough to deflect the plumb bob weight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isostasy
“In the simplest example, isostasy is the principle of buoyancy where an object immersed in a liquid is buoyed with a force equal to the weight of the displaced liquid. On a geological scale, isostasy can be observed where the Earth’s strong lithosphere exerts stress on the weaker asthenosphere which, over geological time flows laterally such that the load of the lithosphere is accommodated by height adjustments.”
Interesting stories but here is an explanation for some of the observations in Jamaica Bay;
http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/jamaicabay/highlights/11326
While some other notions are noted here;
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hartig_01
New Jersey has a riparian rights law and mapping. In many areas, the landowners(RR’s), filled in the old embayments along the Hudson River as an example and paid for the right to do so. It was originally called the School House Act.(1870’s?) Much of Manhattan like other areas near navigable water was made land. As far as the C.of E. rock project in the Kill van Kull, two problems exist the first is channel bottom depth and the second, the Bayonne Bridge clearance at low tide. The first is a short term job. The bridge, well that might be a few years away.
So, the globe is expanding and draining all the land-water into the oceans. The AGW crowd has Al Gore and we get Richard. Every family inherits the occasional “crazy uncle”. What can I say? Genetics is a crap-shoot.
It is conceivable, in a billion or more years, that the earth’s core will have cooled enough to reduce the flow which cause the earth’s tectonic plates to separate or collide. This will reduce the mountain building forces which operate, mainly, near continental margins. The topography worldwide will gradually flatten and apparent sea level will rise as lithic material eroded from the continents will be deposited on ever expanding continental shelves.
“geology theology” … whew. I guess geology is soooo dogmatic, they let a crazy arsed idea that put everyone on their heels in the 1960’s (Plate Tectonics), but they are otherwise a theology. How could you have this on a blog supposedly noted for its “good” science???
REPLY: How could you miss the caveat at the bottom? I moved it up top for the reading challenged – Anthony
RiHo08 says:
August 31, 2013 at 1:52 pm
Firstly, the Great Lakes are not “seas”. as big as they are, they miniscule compared to the oceans of the world. The history of the formation and evolution of the Great Lakes since the last ice age is complex and would not be a good choice in trying to defend Guy’s hypothesis.
Secondly, using the historical Mediterranean, other than the fact that it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through a narrow channel, is also dubious due to its active tectonic nature.
Guy poorly presents his hypothesis with weak arguments and little in the way of scientific citations. I think I will stick with isostatic rebound and slowly rising seas since the last ice age for the present.
That’s my thought too.
@sunshinehours1
“””””……Rain that falls in the outback of the largest island – also the smallest continent –…….””””””
How can that possibly be true ??
Australia either is, or it is not, larger than Antarctica; but it cannot be both.
Well maybe this author is Australian; that would explain everything !!
Post glacial rebound is not a myth. I recall reading a couple of years ago (and searching in vain for the reference now) that the Norwegian coast is still rising, rebounding from the Scandinavian ice sheet. The evidence I read about was that a camp of hunters, dated to about 6,000 years ago, had been found about 70 feet above sea level. Evidence also showed that the camp, when occupied back in the day, was on the sea coast (sand and shells? don’t remember the specifics any more).
Don’t forget that in the 6,000 years, sea levels have risen, albeit slowly, but the Norwegian coast has been rising more quickly.
Wow….I haven’t been a regular reader of WUWT for more than 6-8 months, but this guest essay is positively embarrassing, especially because it is written by someone who should know a thing or two about (visco)-elasticity. Of course, glacial rebound is a separate, though related, field compared to isostasy (which the author consistently misspells, at least in its American variant)., but glacial rebound is one of the better-supported theories in the past 50-80 years. It’s hard to believe that some idiot would deny such.
Mr. Watt, if WUWT is to remain a reliable source of scientific information, wackos should not be permitted to espouse their (literally crazy) ideas.
REPLY: Why is it that nobody seems to be able to read the caveat I placed with the article? Just like some of the most ridiculous ideas from climate science this one deserves ridicule too. – Anthony
Earth should start to lose water in a big way in around 1.1 billion years, when the sun is about 10% more luminous than now, leading to a moist greenhouse atmosphere. We’re a slow-motion Mars, thanks to our moon, greater mass & magnetosphere.
But before that, maybe some 600 million years hence, increased solar radiation will cause drastically lowered CO2 levels, leading to loss of C3 photosynthesis, which means no trees & many other plants. C4 & CAM carbon fixation can occur at concentrations as low as ten ppm.
And of course, after that, ~7.5 billion years from now, the sun will go red giant, probably engulfing earth, even if then in a more distant orbit due to lowered solar mass. Mars will be spared that fate.