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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Edit: of exiting discoveries exciting
dbstealey says:
August 31, 2013 at 7:58 pm
…the mantle is far above the boiling point of water…
———————————
Depends on pressure doesn’t it, as Boyle showed in the 17th century?
There are oceans of water in the mantle.
http://www.livescience.com/1312-huge-ocean-discovered-earth.html
About the “Expanding Earth” theory. In a discussion on the history Plate Tectonics I found out that in the period of about 1956-1962 and Expanding Earth was a serious concept by some researchers, like Bruce Heezen (Columbia U.) Interpretations of continental paleomagnetic data and mid-ocean rifting had rejuvenated Wegners Continental Drift theory. It seemed clear that new ocean crust was being made in the rifts, so the earth had to expand to account for it.
Henry H. Hess (Princeton & Off of Naval Research) in 1959-1962 and Bob Dietz (Scripts) in 1961 put forward the mechanism of subduction, the destruction of crust, to obviate the need for an expanding earth. Hess in his 1960 and 1962 papers devoted a page to the expanding earth theory and the advantages of a theory of sea floor destruction in the “jaw crusher of the descending limb”.
Quite a crazy person writing about what he cannot understand.
But why on WUWT?
Makes the whole site much less credible.
-1000
“If the earth is expanding then soon there will be evidence.”
We’ve already got a You Tube. What more do you need?
Now let’s get back to the Timecube
http://www.timecube.com/
Alex (at 11PM), “writing about what he
candid not understand” — because he, to give him the benefit of the doubt, did not read what A-th-ny and others wrote in the comments on this thread. (ahem)Sorry for the rebuke, Alex, but after all the abuse A-th-y took above, I just could not keep silent.
Your first sentence, in context, is doubtlessly true. A guy who (above) claims that
,
is on a par with the Inventor of the Internet.
Ro, Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Thanks for sharing that (I only watched the first 45 seconds or so, too tired). TOO FUNNY.
The earth is even rotating backward (that’s how he could take us back in time!). LOL.
Are you sure this was not someone testing Poe’s Law
Janice Moore,
Thank you. I’m just having fun here, as you can see — but maybe others can’t.
======================
milodonharlani says:
“There are oceans of water in the mantle.”
Correctomundo, John. But still, water is liquid, and it will drain thru rock if there’s an opening. It will even drain through Formica, if there’s a hole.
======================
Ric Werme,
Thanks again. But if someone pulled the plug, the water would drain out, no? Anyway, something is holding the oceans up on the earth’s surface. Any suggestions as to what that could be? Anti-gravity?
I’m going with steam pressure. Heat rises, that’s good enough for me. And then there’s “carbon”! “Carbon” must be a problem somehow; that’s what the Consensus seems to think, and they’re never wrong…
6H2O + 6CO2 ———-> C6H12O6+ 6O2
Leaves solid material plus Oxygen and no water or CO2 just depends how much is converted back?
Pah.
Being wrong is fine.
But there’s no excuse for poor spelling.
This sort of guff would be better suited to Real Climate or Skeptical Science than WUWT.
To save Great Lakes:
1. Drain off water;
2. Line lakes with giant plastic sheets up to desired level;
3. Fill lakes again.
Works for garden ponds. 😉
OK, joke’s over! Whoever it was who pulled the plug can put it back in now.
Some one has noticed.
(/sarc)
A CL thesis, long on assertions and short (very) on evidence. If the Great Lakes
are losing depth, then silting is a pretty strong candidate. They are after all the
tail-end puddles of the last glaciation. Silting up is what lakes do. Get over it?
I’m afraid I have a knee-jerk reaction to attempts to ‘panic’ me into action such
as:
“There is no time to waste because our survival depends on this acceptance.”
Yeah, yeah. Slow down. Anthropogenic Global Warming is known to create
bigger brighter better hurricanes, tornados and even whiter snow storms too.
When the time spans mentioned in the … essay … show lack of instantaneous
effect, then there is no need to panic.
Silting and ‘Glacial Rebound’ both singly and in combination are plausible
contributors to any shallowing of the Great Lakes, as are outflows exceeding
inflows, where outflows include water extraction for irrigation.
However, let’s not put the cart before the horse. Are the GL’s losing volume (or
area and depth) at all?
Pointing at dunes (which are notoriously dynamic) and crying ‘See! See!’ is not
adequate evidence of anything except wind.
Another Chicken Little hypothesis. Needs more data and measurement. Grade; F (Fail).
Apart from the rest the history is rubbish as well, there was no Roman Emperor called Articus
In case this is not known, the summit of Mt Everest is a marine limestone with fossils. It was once, presumable below the sea. Some calculate that it lifted up at a rate of 10 mm per year.
Not saying this is isostasy, just that sedimentary rocks go a long way vertically.
The expanding earth hypothesis was a favourite of Prof S Warren Carey of University of Tasmania, one of the greats of plate tectonics. He lamented that accurate satellite measurements would not clarify the hypothesis until after his departure. Some satellite experts have written to me that there is no altimetry evidence for earth expansion. The hypothesis arose for several reasons, one being that fitting the continents back together by shape still left a rather large sea on a globe the size of today’s.
Richard.—- Isostatic adjustment can be measured. Empirical data.
Go back and rethink your theory please.
Glacial Isostatic Adjustment; three words that mean so much.
Geoff Sherrington-
Everest, part of the Himalaya Mountain chain, was thrust up when the Indian tectonic plate collided with the Asian plate. Marine sediments were caught up with this and some ended up on top of Everest. It is still building because the northward movement of India has yet to stop. Isostacy is occurring at the same time but the build is overcoming this at the moment since it is happening at a faster rate.
The Earth cannot expand but it has been estimated that continental crust is made magmatically at the rate of 1Km^3 per year. This is from subduction conversion of oceanic crust into continental crust by differental melting enrichment with silica.
Thought you might be interested.
I’m pretty sure that satellites can measure sea (and land) level to an accuracy of a few inches. It shouldn’t be hard to measure what is rising and what is falling.
@dbstealey. I’ll try and think out of the box. Sediments are water saturated but eventually become impermeable due to compaction at greater depth. I don’t think we need steam pressure to keep water in our lakes and oceans. As some have pointed out there is a lot of water in the mantle as well so things do leak (there are several pulled plugs).
Someone at Ohio State wants to measure the rate of isostatic rebound in Antarctica to better estimate ice loss. I can’t imagine a tougher place to conduct a multi-year project. Also, if we don’t know this information already I wonder how we can accurately estimate ice loss/gain.
http://www.geology.ohio-state.edu/TerryWilson/research_polenet.htm
Completely crackpot. No other word for it.
The hallmark of crackpots is that they preach. And boy, does this guy preach.
Another group using GPS to measure glacial rebound. They claim a repeatability of 1 mm and vertical movement up to 2 cm / yr.
http://www.dna.gov.ar/CIENCIA/SANTAR04/CD/PDF/103GH.PDF
Yet another GPS program to determine isostatic rebound, this time caused by climate change although the authors do state that more research is needed. Vertical movement of 2-7 mm / yr.
http://www.academia.edu/1597258/Is_Isostatic_Rebound_in_Slow_Spreading_Gakkel_Ridge_of_Arctic_Region_Due_to_the_Climate_Change_A_Case_Study
Not only is this posting absolute bollo, but the author cannot write either. Take a look at this sentence construction:
Quote:
This theory of Iostacy was based on an original error in deduction. The error in deduction was that the land rose from the sea.
Hmm, I think a billion monkeys typing at random could do better. In fact, this is probably how this entire compendium of bollo was devised………. 😉
.