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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Bringing up the Great Lakes is the interesting part because the post-glacial rebound is not even in the Great Lakes.
Generally, the north side of the Lakes is rising faster than the southern sides which has left a few bays high and dry on the northern sides for example. It has also flooded some parts (mainly in Lake Huron) which were dry land not too long ago. Now this is not always the case so it is not a hard-and-fast rule.
Here is a chart of the most accurate post-glacial rebound estimates from around the world provided by GPS receivers. Rebound is as high as half an inch per year in the highest glacial load points (if the glaciers are gone today) while some areas (mainly deltas) are sinking by half an inch per year.
http://www.sonel.org/IMG/png/ulr5_vvf-2.png
It is now crucial to use these estimates when looking at individual tide gauges and it is crucial to the Grace gravity satellite and the sea level satellites as well. The earlier models were just quite accurate enough compared to the new GPS-provided data.
dbstealey says:
August 31, 2013 at 4:21 pm
One thing I’ve heard is that Mars’ weak gravity and lack of a magnetic field allows the solar wind to scour away the atmosphere, especially lighter molecules like water. Venus also doesn’t have an intrinisic magnetic field, though it does have a weak induced field. Venus may have lost water but is keeping heavier molecules.
http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/4683/a-magnetic-surprise-from-venus
http://www-spc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/papers/venus_mag/ says
Speed. Anthony changed things around “for the reading challenged”, thus, not for me. I don’t feel insulted. Amused, maybe, but not insulted. I’m well aware that some people don’t read thoroughly, and am often amused by someone lashing out at Anthony for an article clearly written by someone else.
If all we did was read affirming articles we’d be no different than the climate change crowd. Sometimes stuff like this is interesting and makes you think. Already this thread is a highly informative resource about isostatic rebound, glaciers, the Great Lakes, and continental drift. How is that bad?
After all, if you stop learning you’re dead. And it IS interesting to read oddball or non-mainstream ideas, even if they’re easy to shoot holes into. I’m still fascinated by the abiogenic theory of petroleum, and some other interesting things that sometimes appear on WUWT.
From the Guy post:
[+emphasis]
Seems to me that, not only is this guy Guy bonkers, but he wants to “outlaw” anyone who thinks differently. Smacks of the same sentiments expressed by the CAGW crowd about non-believers in the Holy CO2 sacrament.
The record low level for Lake Superior was recorded in 1926. The level fluctuates now because of rain fall patterns and more importantly the out flow from the lake through the DREDGED channel at Ste St Marie. Despite that we have yet to see a lower level than 1926 – got close to it but haven’t broken it.
So if this place is all about the inclusion of all views regardless of merit, does that mean the sky dragons are coming back?
Perhaps Mr Guy would care to address the numerous recent marine fossils found throughout the Eastern St Lawrence drainage basin at localities in Vermont, New York, Quebec, and Ontario. Common modern marine fish have been found in concretions at Green Creek near Ottawa, invertebrate shells on Mt Royal at Montreal, the skeleton of a beluga whale in a railroad cut near Charlotte, VT. There is even a widespread somewhat notorious geologic formation known as the Leda Clay — a glacial clay containing shells of the bivalve Leda. Notorious, because the stuff has the unfortunate property of creeping out from under structures built on it which has resulted in bridges collapsing as well as buildings and even townsites being engulfed.
Conventional wisdom says that the continental glacier depressed these areas, the Atlantic flooded them when the glaciers melted, and the Atlantic was pushed back to its current configuration when the land rebounded. Fits the observations well including progressively reduced maximum levels for the “Champlain Sea” deposits in more Southerly areas where the glaciers presumably melted first allowing some rebound before the marine flooding.
What’s the alternative explanation?
Thirty years ago I was involved in a multi-million dollar state program in Michigan to handle the problems of high water levels of the Great Lakes. They are down now but in a few years they will start to come back and we may be facing shoreline problems from high water levels again. A fellow who worked on Great Lakes issues for 40 years said this movement was simply cyclical. But isnt it all.
Perhaps the writer is a creationist. If you believed that the world was created 7000 years ago, you wouldn’t believe in ice ages, isostatic rebound, etc. You would have to come up with some alternative explanation for the evidence before you.
I quite like St Augustine’s explanation for fixing the date of creation at 7000 years ago. Even in his day, the rate of material progress of mankind was such that logically mankind could only be a few thousand years old. Of course he had no concept of biological evolution.
I Like This.
An open discussion of a very interesting phenomenon and the difficulties of measuring the phenomenon and then the difficulties of how the phenomenon impact now or will impact future activities of societies.
In regard of measurement, one must first establish a reference frame that does not change in space and time, i.e. stable. With such a reference frame we then make our measurements, what ever they are, relative to the reference frame and from those we have The Measures, the numbers we are hunting, and their anomalies irrespective of psychological ruminations of a “Climatological Period” which does not exist, nor does the psychological manifestation of “Climate” exist. “Climate”, “Climate Change”, Global Warming” and “Global Cooling” are examples of Phantasms within a realm of Phantasmagoria that exist only within the Human psyche and no where else.
george e. smith says:
“…..NZ Willy says: ‘The defining feature of rock is that it’s uncompressible.’ ….. Careful there Willie, nothing; not even diamond, is incompressible, or uncompressible, (etc)”
…within delta, as is true for all things, and in this case delta is microscopically small even at macroscopically large pressures. This is well within the conventional meaning of “incompressible” — or “uncompressible”, as Humpty & others may say.
Looks like History channel pee peed in the CAGW cheerios bowl by running the documentary How The Earth Was Made. They actually attribute the falling water level in the Great Lakes to post glacial contentinental rebound and not to AGW. I’m sure someone at the History channel lost their job over that blunder.
One does not need to go even back to the 1800’s to see an example: A power plant in Spain was being expanded: After many millions of tons of rock were excavated from several dozen acres of hillside to create a “flat foundation” at the same elevation as the first power station, construction began on the main turbine building, control building, and electrical transformer yard.
As they finished construction only a few years later, the “level” plumb lines, and building frames, and concrete floors and pipes and crane supports for the new buildings were found to be “significantly” off-plumb. The rock under the carefully laid and perfectly “flat” building foundation, now relieved of the tons of previous topsoil and rock, were moving up, and the new buildings were being thrown off level as a whole mass.
I’m not sure you could use GPS to monitor isostatic rebound or glacial rebound. In order to get accurate measurements (e.g. mm) you need accurately measured ground stations. So if these are moving in some unknown way….
Ric Werme,
Thanks, Ric. I’m not an astronomer or geologist, so I was just having fun speculating.
===================================
Steve from Rockwood says:
“Your thesis is just as crazy.”
I’ll be the first to admit it, Steve.
But you’re assuming that every possible location in the planet is completely impermeable. Do you really think that’s likely? What if there’s a plug under the ocean, and someone pulls the the chain? What then, eh?
I think steam pressure makes sense. Also, it’s not my thesis. I read it here a while back, it wasn’t my original idea. But it sounded good. What do you think keeps all that water at the surface, anyway? A layer of Formica?
There are very deep earthquakes too, which would tend to crack the bedrock. And the mantle is far above the boiling point of water. And of course, the continents never move, we all know that for a fact, right?
Something is keeping all that water on the surface, no? Why not steam pressure?
Remember Steve Jobs? Think outside the box! ☺
Did I ever mention that I have discovered the reason as to why it rains? No? Well, here it is – it rains because people use umbrellas. Rain is anthropogenic by nature. If we stopped using umbrellas, it would never rain ever again on the earth. Have you never noticed that when it is raining, people have their umbrellas up? That is absolute proof that my theory is correct. So keep raising those brellas, eh? Otherwise, everything on the earth will die, because we need the rain.
(I have been looking for the right article under which the above comment should be made… think I found it, eh?)
Thank you Victor Venema for inviting me to be ridiculed by the commentators. This is a wonderful opportunity to get the message about the insanity of Post Glacial Rebound removed from Geology and the Earth Expansion Theory accepted. Thanks for allowing me to post my views because as you can see my facts are all researched and documented they cannot be refuted. So if I am allowed this forum among others to platform my campaign. You will be aiding the advancement of science by doing away with Post Glacial Rebound and the Ice Age Myth. Thanks
Richard Guy
@ur momisugly D. B. Stealey — I think your idea is highly plausible. It is certainly not “crazy.” It doesn’t take a very big crack in a bucket for all the water to drain out. Thanks for sharing. That you had the strength of character to open yourself up to the ridicule you knew would inevitably come (and that you took it with such class), shows you are one cool dude.
*****************************
Peter G, I believe God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days about 7,000 years ago. I also think the above article is JUNK SCIENCE.
William Abbott says:
August 31, 2013 at 4:05 pm
Water.
Thank you Anthony for posting this article. This article is very funny if it is in jest and is very sad if it serious. I had a good laugh either way.
Isostatic sinking and rebound can be measured in real time at the base of dams. A Lacoste-Romberg model G gravimeter placed in a stable vault at the base of a dam is able to measure the viscoelasic sinking and rebound as the dam fills and empties, It is also able to measure the solid Earth tides, as the Sun and Moon pass overhead. It was hypothesized that the 1984 Oroville California earthquake of 1984 was produced by the rapid emptying of the Oroville dam causing a local fault to be re-activated.
As a contributor of ideas to WUWT, I confess some ideas which I thought were brilliant turned out to be less than brilliant. The readers of WUWT soon set me straight. Most were quite polite as they did so, but even those who perhaps might have been more polite did a good deed, for they were ending my ignorance.
I am still not entirely sure Richard Guy didn’t have his tongue planted firmly in his cheek as he submitted the above “brilliant idea,” but if he was sincere and meant well and simply wanted to share, I thank him. He made people think twice and double-check, and that is always a good thing to do. Otherwise we dwell in a landscape of assumptions which are incompletely verified.
There are times a ten-year-old child will go over something I wrote thirty years ago which I have read and reread and re-reread, and which many others have read, and the child will spot an error in spelling no other person ever saw. Once the child points the error out, it seems obvious and glaring, and it amazes me it was never seen before. Person after person scanned over the same document, yet somehow assumed something that allowed them to blindly miss the mistake.
(Another time someone gave me an interesting test which consisted of reading a document aloud where every word was incorrectly spelled, (and in some cases the spelling was bizarre,) and I found I was able to read the document despite all the errors, due to some capacity our minds possess to overlook errors in a search for underlying truth.)
In any case, we all make mistakes. It is for the betterment of all concerned to have errors pointed out. There is no need to be snide or get nasty about it, especially because Richard Guy hasn’t made an appearance. If he made an appearance, and informed us the science was settled, and that he was going to raise our taxes, then we might have a reason to be snide or get nasty. However, as it is, all he has done is share an idea.
Winston Churchill had an amazing brain which produced countless ideas, and one fellow who had to listen to a lot of the great statesman’s ideas stated something along the lines of, “Winston has a hundred ideas a day. Three are good ones.”
Without good friends to point out our mistakes we are lost.
Janice Moore says:
August 31, 2013 at 9:04 pm
I believe God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days about 7,000 years ago. I also think the above article is JUNK SCIENCE.
————————————
Your belief is beyond junk science. It is junk religion.
“it rains because people use umbrellas” (Jim S at 8:16pm) YES!
Here is proof! … 😉
It wasn’t raining before he put up that umbrella.
Umbrella-induced rain (delayed by a quarter cycle)
(timing is everything)
(that’s why Gene Kelly keeps re-opening the umbrella every so often and why that man in the final scene immediately opens it — needs the rain for his excuse for why he drove the family sedan into the ditch (hope he remembers he needs some mighty strong breath mints, too))
dbstealey says:
August 31, 2013 at 7:58 pm
> Something is keeping all that water on the surface, no? Why not steam pressure?
How about stratification? Rocks have a density about 5 g/ml, iron more, water 1. The minimum energy state would be an iron core, rocky crust, and water on the surface.
Throw in some plate tectonics and you might lift some of those rocks above the water.
RE: F. Ross says:
August 31, 2013 at 5:36 pm
Hmm. You point out Richard Guy wrote, “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.”
I agree that was a mistake on Richard’s part.
It is odd how humans, who want acceptance so badly, want to “outlaw” input when it takes the form of a correction. They want acceptance yet can’t accept.
If you ask a person, “Will you accept a million dollars?” they will answer “Yes! Yes!”
If you ask the same person, “Will you accept a correction that will save you a million dollars worth of being mistaken?” they will frown, if not shout “No! No!”
(Of course I myself am a saint, and am never guilty of behaving in such a manner.)