The Gravity of Sea Level Change - 3

Fig. 1 Vast amounts of water held by ice sheet gravity

In this post I want to talk about a new source of sea level change (SLC) that takes place without any additional ice sheet melt.

I want to write about the SLC which takes place as gravity-held water along the coasts of ice sheet covered land masses is released as the ice sheet's force of gravity decreases.

I am talking about the amount of sea water that is already there in the sea when the ice sheet melts or calves.

Fig. 2 Calculating the volume of water in the wedge

I am talking about sea water that is not the same as the water contained in the ice sheet, which will melt later to become additional sea water.

Notice the difference as shown on the right side of Fig. 1, where the ice sheet is the white mass on top of the dark grey land mass, and where the sea water held by gravity is a blue wedge shape touching the dark grey coastline of the dark grey land mass.

In the search for a reason that SLC software underestimates observed values, I want to attempt to calculate the amount of sea level fall (SLF) of water (deep blue color hugging the coast of Antarctica in Fig. 1) which, during SLC, is relocated to a sea level rise (SLR) area of the oceans (shown as the cyan, orange, and red colors in Fig. 1; Greenland SLF / SLC is shown in Fig. 3).

In other words, when water drops in one place, it rises in another place because the volume of sea water is not changed in this scenario, it is just rearranged.

Fig. 3

We can use the formula for the volume of a prism shape, then divide by 2 (halve it) to derive the volume of a wedge-shaped triangle, which is mathematically equal to the volume of water in the wedge.

On the right side of Fig. 2 are some of the actual dimensions: 1) 20 meters as the height of the water (marked "h₁" on Fig. 1 and Fig. 2); 2) next, marked as "h₂" is the length of the prism (the length of the coastline the gravity-held water is pulled up against), and 3) the base marked as "b" is the full length of the prism base, (in today's application it is 2,000 km, which we eventially divide by 2; it is the distance from h₁ to the "hinge line" which is h₂).

The prism volume formula works like this:

V = (1/2 (b h₁)) h₂
where:

b = 4,000 km (4,000,000 m)
h₁ = 20 m (Mitrovica suggest figure in video below)
h₂ = length of relevant coastline

thus:

V = (1/2 (4,000,000 m * 20 m)) h₂
V = (1/2 (80,000,000 m)) h₂
V = (80,000,000 m / 2) h₂
V = 40,000,000 m * h₂
V = 40,000 km * h₂

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to apply the calculation to Greenland:
Greenland coastline (h₂) = 44,087 km
(link to source of coastline length)

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thus:
V = 40,000 km * 44,087 km
V = 1,763,480,000 km³

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to adapt it to the water wedge,
divide by 2 (wedge is 1/2 of prism)

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thus:
V = 1,763,480,000 km³ / 2
V = 881,740,000 km³ of sea water relocated from Greenland

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to apply the calculation to Antarctica:
Antarctica coastline (h2) = 17,968 km
V = 40,000 km * 17,968 km
V = 718,720,000 km³ / 2
V = 359,360,000 km³ of sea water relocated from Antarctica

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to sum both of them:
V = 881,740,000 km³ + 359,360,000 km³
V = 1,241,100,000 km³ total sea water relocated from both

That is the cubic volume of water that will be released and relocated as a result of loss of ice sheet gravity due to ice melt sufficient to cause 1m of global average SLR by each location.

Which is calculated to cause 20 meters of SLF around Greenland and/or Antarctica, then, when relocated will cause 1 meter of SLR globally for each of them, 2m total (The Gravity of Sea Level Change, 2).

I have been wondering if the SLC projection models take this into consideration, seeing as how they have consistently underestimated SLR:

"Why doesn't it add up?

Together, thermal expansion and melting snow and ice contributed 2.8 ± 0.7 mm per year to sea level rise between 1993 and 2003 (Bindoff et al., 2007). However, that total was lower than the actual observed global mean sea level rise for period by about 10%. What is causing the rest of sea level rise? This discrepancy is often referred to as the sea level enigma, and scientists have offered a number of possible explanations." - Weather Underground

"Expect more water to lap at your shores. That’s the take-home message from two studies out this week that look at the latest data on sea level rise due to climate change.

The first shows that current projections for the end of the century may seriously underestimate the rise in global sea levels. The other, on the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, looks at just how much of the water stored up there has been moving into the oceans." Projections of sea level rise are vast underestimates

Gravity is an import factor that should be included in models so as to add some useful and essential figures.

Watch the video below, if you haven't already, to acquire some additional SLC prowess.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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A discussion of, among other things, SLC as impacted by ice sheet mass and gravity:

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On The Evolution of Sea Level Change

Fig. 1 From old sea level change records

It is generally thought that "thermal expansion was the main driver of global sea level rise for 75 - 100 years after the start of the Industrial Revolution" (Causes of Sea Level Rise: What the Science Tells Us).

A post at Dredd Blog recently took a trip back to that era via a software model that has a "wayback machine" module in it.

Stumbling over and then analyzing some ancient records may have led to a discovery that may also lead to some modification of the concepts of the evolution of Industrial Revolution caused sea level change (SLC), whether in the form of sea level rise (SLR) or sea level fall (SLF)  (The Evolution of Models - 18).

That Dredd Blog post points out that the year 1750 is associated with the beginning of "The Industrial Revolution."

The year 1750 + "75 - 100 years" is 1825 - 1850.

Contrary to current SLC science, the graph at Fig. 2 of the Dredd Blog post (Fig. 1 above in this post), indicates that sea level change was taking place circa 1774 at the ancient "tide gauge station" in Sweden.

The scientist Martin Ekman wrote about that tide gauge station in 1988 (The World's Longest Sea Level Record).

The year 1774 is only 24 years after the date that the Industrial Revolution is generally said to have begun.

That graph at Fig. 1 above may be a fingerprint telling us that the Greenland ice sheet was melting by circa 1774, because thermal expansion by definition does not cause SLF, it causes only SLR.

Surprisingly, what causes SLF where that tide gauge station was located in 1774, and what still causes SLF today, is gravity (The Gravity of Sea Level Change; cf Proof of Concept - 5 and Proof of Concept - 3).

The remaining scientific issue then, is: "what percentage of SLC did each dynamic (ice sheet melt and thermal expansion) play?"

Stay tuned.

A Timeline of Endangered Sea Ports

We must see port dangers.

We live in a modern, international, global civilization.

It exists by way of sea trade conducted through organs that we call sea ports (Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 44).

The lifeblood of this civilization is fossil fuels (Petroleum Civilization: The Final Chapter (Confusing Life with Death), 2, 3, 4).

That lifeblood is the current source of energy used by the entities conducting sea trade between and among nations, in the form of import and export of all manner of things.

How This Happened (The Repeating Cycle)

1) An improvident decision is made, to make or keep fossil fuels as the lifeblood of civilization (The Peak of Sanity - 3).

2) Causing increased amounts of fossil fuel use within civilization.

3) Thus, increasing the dumping of green house gases (GHG) into the atmosphere.

4) So, global air, land, and sea temperatures increase.

5) As land glaciers & polar ice sheets decrease at increasing rates.

6) In the form of more water & ice bergs entering the sea (a.k.a the mass of ice sheets).

7) Increasing amounts of the sea is relocated:

a) by Earth & ice sheet gravitational forces;

b) by Earth's axial repositioning;

c) and by Earth's rotational forces.

(see The Gravity of Sea Level Change)

8) Regional sea level rise (SLR) or sea level fall (SLF) increases:

a) gravitational hinge points around Greenland & Antarctica are moved outward;

b) regional SLF takes place (decreases mean sea level by -0% to -100%) depending on distance outward;

c) regional SLR takes place (increases mean sea level by 0% to 100%) depending on  on distance outward.

(see The Gravity of Sea Level Change)

9) Sea ports around the globe, are impacted regionally, by the 0% to 100% SLR or the -0% to -100% SLF (Why Sea Level Rise May Be The Greatest Threat To Civilization, 2, 3, 4, 5).

To continue this cycle, go back to number one.

How This Ends

10) Petroleum Civilization eventually collapses (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

11) A different civilization is the result.

12) if that resulting civilization does not conform, by passing The Test, then extinction of the larger species will continue until all of them become extinct.

The Gravity of Sea Level Change

Fig. 1 Three Phases: Ice Sheet Melt & Impact

I. Background

Sea level change (SLC) is the preferred description of what takes place when ice sheets melt.

Sea level rise does not completely nor sufficiently describe the process.

Several posts have pointed this out (Peak Sea Level - 2, Why Sea Level Rise May Be The Greatest Threat To Civilization - 5, Sea Level Fall: The Forgotten Aspect of Sea Level Rise?).

II. The Process

The graphic, Fig. 1, depicts three generalized phases of ice sheet melt, as well as the resulting impact which the meltwater, or ice bergs flowing into the sea, have on sea level.

Fig. 2 Newton's Law of Gravity

The color cyan represents the ice sheet mass, the color brown represents the land mass above and below sea level, and the color blue represents the ocean.

Fig. 2 depicts gravitational force which the ice mass, m₁, exerts on the sea water, m₂, around it.

The distance, d, between the centers of those two masses stays the same for the purpose of this process, but in general the greater the distance between the two masses, the weaker the force of gravity is.

As the ice melts or calves into the sea, m₁ (ice mass) decreases, so the gravitational force exerted on the sea water, m₂, weakens to the degree that the ice sheet's mass effectively disappears into the sea.

The sea level near the continent, therefore, falls to the degree that the ice sheet melts or calves into the sea, thereby causing m₁ to decrease.

A. Phase I

In Phase 1, area "C" represents the Peak Sea Level near the continent upon which the ice sheet rests (e.g. Greenland or Antarctica).

The higher sea level near the continent is caused by the gravity associated with the ice sheet's mass, which exerts a force, a pull if you will, on the ocean water.

Area "B" is at the maximum distance, d, upon which the ice mass, m₁, can exert gravitational influence on the sea water.

Area "A" is: the sea level that is unaffected by the gravitational pull of the ice sheet, but nevertheless is impacted by the increased quantity of water that has ended up in the sea as the ice sheet melts or calves off the continent.

B. Phase 2

In Phase 2, area "C" represents the Lowered Sea Level near the continent upon which the ice sheet rests (Greenland or Antarctica).

The lower sea level near the continent is caused by the decreased gravity associated with the ice sheet mass, which eventually exerts no more force or pull on the ocean.

In this phase the continent is still deformed from the past ice sheet's weight that had deformed the land before the ice sheet melted (a small amount of ice and/or meltwater is still in the deformed area because it can't slide up hill over the edge). 

Area "B" is the at the maximum distance, d, upon which the ice mass, m₁, once exerted gravitational influence on the sea water, m₂.

Area "A" is: a) where the sea water ends up after being released from the gravitational pull of the ice sheet, as the ice sheet melts and its gravity therefore weakens; and b) where axial relocation and rotational forces of the Earth finally focus the sea level rise.

C. Phase 3

In Phase 3, area "C" represents the Lowest Sea Level near the continent upon which the ice sheet once rested (Greenland or Antarctica).

The lowest sea level near the continent is caused by the additional apparent sea level fall, now due primarily to the uplifting of the continent where the deformity had been.

Any ice or meltwater residue, which remained in the deformity, has now also been emptied into the sea.

Area "B" is where the lowered sea level now ends, and where the sea level begins to incrementally rise, because the melted ice sheet is now sea water.

Area "A" is: a) where the sea level rise ends up, after it has been released from the gravitational pull of the ice sheet;  and b) where axial relocation and rotational forces of the Earth focus the sea level rise incrementally, until it reaches its maximum level.

D. Lunar Gravity Induced SLC

Even though the gravitational power of the Moon is far greater than the gravitational power

Fig. 3 Lunar SLC

of an ice sheet, the impact on sea level is still a normal, everyday event along sea shores.

The graphic, Fig. 3, from Wikipedia, shows how the moon's gravity constantly causes mobile SLC on the oceans of the Earth.

Ice sheet gravity is the same force described by the same law of gravity (Fig. 2), but with weaker force.

The Moon causes high tide, however, the magnitude of that high tide, the high tide mark put on the beach, is altered by ice sheet gravity near the continent, and also altered away from the continent (area "A") by ice sheet melt-water that increases the water volume and level of the sea.

You might consider that several disciplines are involved, when comprehending both lunar and global warming induced SLC dynamics.

I am in reference to disciplines such as astronomy, astrophysics, oceanography, and climatology.

Climate scientists, oceanographers, and others, can benefit from interdisciplinary conferences, and the like, which can involve relevant scientific material that they might not otherwise consider (Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 47).

III. How SLC Looks on a Map of The Earth

The video at the bottom of this post features Professor Jerry Mitrovica, Harvard University, talking about interdisciplinary perspectives, or the lack thereof, as a source of improper factor exclusion.

Fig. 4 SLC @ Greenland

For example, astronomers ordinarily consider the effect of gravity on SLC, but climate scientists ordinarily consider melting ice sheets as the cause of SLC.

When the two disciplines merge in a global warming induced climate change scenario, each discipline benefits by comparing notes on the interdisciplinary issues.

The graphic Fig. 4 was presented in one such interdisciplinary conference where the video at the bottom of this post was made.

Fig. 5 SLC @ Antarctica (see video)

The same is true for Fig. 5. 

They both show ice sheet gravity induced SLC.

Neither case is caused by the Moon's gravity.

Ice sheet gravity is every bit as critical to understanding global warming induced SLC, as lunar gravity is to understanding tidal SLC.

Both instances of the power of gravity are important to consider, because civilization cannot prepare for SLC without considering both sea level fall and sea level rise.

IV. Conclusion

Since international intercourse, in the form of sea based export and import trade and commerce, in all manner of goods, is a fundamental infrastructure of current civilization, we must consider the gravity of SLC on sea ports.

The links furnished in Section I of this post are good places to begin to comprehend the unexpected magnitude of the subject of endangered sea ports.

There are severe implications associated with facing the gravity of SLC.

The next post in this series is here.

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Professor Jerry Mitrovica, Harvard University:

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The Rebel Orbits of the Rebel Planets

When are the stars and planets going to conform to the law passed by human governments?

Or conform to the doctrine of human science?

Funny questions, but governments seem to think that their laws are more important than the actual laws of the cosmos it sometimes seems.

The universe does not change when we pass environmental laws or when we make doctrinal declarations about this or that cosmic reality.

That applies to our sense of cosmology, our hypothetical sense of the cosmos, and our theoretical sense of the cosmos, taught in the state universities.

Yes, the state has an approved dogma for you and I to learn, which they call "education", but some scholars have a different name for it:

And, of course, there are power systems in place to facilitate this. Throughout history it's been mostly the property holders or the educated classes who've tended to support power systems. And that's a large part of what I think education is — it's a form of indoctrination. You have to reconstruct a picture of the world in order to be conducive to the interests and concerns of the educated classes, and this involves a lot of self-deceit.

(Noam Chomsky, emphasis added). Another scholar, a noted physicist, uses similar language to point out his belief that much of "advanced" scientific theory is nothing more than fantasy:

Quantum mechanics is an incredible theory that explains all sorts of things that couldn’t be explained before, starting with the stability of atoms. But when you accept the weirdness of quantum mechanics [in the macro world], you have to give up the idea of space-time as we know it from Einstein. The greatest weirdness here is that it [quantum mechanics] doesn’t make sense. If you follow the rules, you come up with something that just isn’t right.

...

The [new Penrose] book is called Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe. Each of those words stands for a major theoretical physics idea. The fashion is string theory; the fantasy has to do with various cosmological schemes, mainly inflationary cosmology [which suggests that the universe inflated exponentially within a small fraction of a second after the Big Bang]. Big fish, those things are. It’s almost sacrilegious to attack them. And the other one, even more sacrilegious, is quantum mechanics at all levels—so that’s the faith. People somehow got the view that you really can’t question it.

(The Memes of Penrose, see Discover). In general these scholars point out that you are judged by how well you learn their scientific dogma, not on how well you learn how to think or apply rigorous scientific processes.

Thus, after all your hard work to memorize doctrine and dogma, every once in awhile you get blind sided with some new information, new data, or new experimental results that give you reason to throw out the window some of the textbooks you memorized from:

Planets are thought to form in the disc of gas and dust encircling a young star. This proto-planetary disc rotates in the same direction as the star itself, and up to now it was expected that planets that form from the disc would all orbit in more or less the same plane, and that they would move along their orbits in the same direction as the star's rotation.

...

They even found that six exoplanets in this extended study (of which two are new discoveries) have retrograde motion: they orbit their star in the "wrong" direction.

"The new results really challenge the conventional wisdom that planets should always orbit in the same direction as their stars spin," says Andrew Cameron of the University of St Andrews, who presented the new results at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting (NAM2010) in Glasgow this week.

(Turning Planetary Theory Upside Down). That is the way it has been for decade upon decade, however, that is not what scientists tend to feel, because they actually have made a faith out of portions of what they call science.

Rebel Science: Gravitating Conflicts

When papers are published in journals of science or law the "well behaved" tend to bow down and accept the assertions and enlightenment in that paper.

But there are rebels among us who just will not accept things as they should, but instead like to rock the boat to make us a bit nervous.

When the robe-wearing scientist publishes a decree, unlike those proclaimed by the robe wearing judges, there is no system of appeal.

Even though some church systems have appellate systems, science tends not to.

So, some miffed scientist will hoist up the pirate flag and fire off a few rounds into the grotto so as to tell those who published the papers what for. We recently pointed out one such altercation over "dark matter" here and here.

Another case in point is the attempt to measure "the speed of gravity" or the "speed at which it propagates". Note that the two may not be the same according to some scientists.

Anyway, after an experiment was done the results were declared to the American Astronomical Society. That article generated a rebuttal paper that was published a few months afterwards.

The rebuttal paper pointed out or argued that the experiment hadn't proved or disproved anything concerning the speed of gravity.

That controversy is still ongoing with points and counterpoints going to and fro at the speed of paper, as the fate of humanity awaits the outcome of the controversy to some degree.

Mystery of Special Relativity Narrowed

Some of the theories of quantum gravity have been discredited.

But not all of them have been, so the study goes on.

Scientists came up with a notion to look at photons that were about 7 billion years old, having left a galaxy that many years ago at about the same time.

They wanted to see if they travelled at the same speed:

This strategy led Guiriec and his collaborators to examine photons generated by a gamma-ray burst that erupted in a galaxy 7.3 billion light-years from Earth. Recorded by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope on May 10, 2009, the burst produced an assortment of gamma-ray photons, including one with an energy of 31 billion electron-volts — about 13 billion times the energy of visible light — and another photon about one-tenth as energetic.

Although the two photons had significantly different energies and journeyed for more than 7 billion light-years, they arrived at the Fermi telescope less than nine-tenths of a second apart. That tiny time difference means that these photons traveled at almost exactly the same speed, just one part in 100 million billion apart, notes study coauthor Peter Michelson of Stanford University. That difference is small enough to suggest that the speed of light is constant regardless of the energy of the photon. The finding therefore rules out any theory of quantum gravity that predicts a large energy-dependent change in velocity, he adds.

(Science News). We had posted an article discussing one of the quantum gravity hypotheses which talked about the Lorentz invariance which allows that gravity can exceed the speed of light:

Although faster-than-light force propagation speeds do violate Einstein special relativity (SR), they are in accord with Lorentzian relativity, which has never been experimentally distinguished from SR — at least, not in favor of SR. Indeed, far from upsetting much of current physics, the main changes induced by this new perspective are beneficial to areas where physics has been struggling, such as explaining experimental evidence for non-locality in quantum physics, the dark matter issue in cosmology, and the possible unification of forces.

(Gravitate Towards Light Speed). While the gamma ray photon experiment mentioned in the Science News article, linked to above, does clearly support the notion of photons travelling at the uniform speed of light, it still does not answer the question of whether or not the speed of gravity can exceed the speed of light.

Gravitate Towards Light Speed?

A well known scientist, known for, among other things, his willingness to question the status quo, said before his death this January:

Such a change of perspective requires no change in the assumed character of gravitational radiation or its lightspeed propagation. Although faster-than-light force propagation speeds do violate Einstein special relativity (SR), they are in accord with Lorentzian relativity, which has never been experimentally distinguished from SR — at least, not in favor of SR. Indeed, far from upsetting much of current physics, the main changes induced by this new perspective are beneficial to areas where physics has been struggling, such as explaining experimental evidence for non-locality in quantum physics, the dark matter issue in cosmology, and the possible unification of forces. Recognition of a faster-than-lightspeed propagation of gravity, as indicated by all existing experimental evidence, may be the key to taking conventional physics to the next plateau.

(Tom Van Flandern, Meta Research). Yes, taking physics to the next plateau is a noble purpose indeed, and it must be done if humanity is to exist long term in this cosmos.

One of the tenets of Ecocosmology is that species like ourselves who live on planets near central stars must develop physics, technology, and spacecraft that can attain light speed or near it, or morph into species which do not need to live on habitable planets near central stars.

And like Van Flandern pointed out, it has been pointed out on this blog that our current physics must reach another plateau, free from some of its current impairments, if we are to move to a new habitable planet near a central star.

Perhaps the breakthrough will come during the study of gravity which we really still know little about, compared to what we need to know.

Fuse Tautologies & Algebra For Gödel

It may be possible to salvage the flaws in Algebraic equations alleged by Gödel, Turing, and Penrose.

I am thinking of trying it by way of fusing equations to the logical tautologies (of symbolic logic) any time such binding would be required to avoid a contradiction, or to certify an argument (after all, even Isabelle is a step in that direction).

What "flaws" one might ask? Those pointed out by Gödel in his two theorems, and proven in 1931:

First: "Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory."

Second: "For any formal effectively generated theory T including basic arithmetical truths and also certain truths about formal provability, T includes a statement of its own consistency if and only if T is inconsistent."

(Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems). This whole issue is brought up in the context of Tenet 3(b), which indicates that in order to survive in this cosmos, species who live on habitable planets near central stars must develop spacecraft that can travel at or near the speed of light.

Currently we cannot travel at the speed of light, or even anywhere near that speed, even though it will be required for our species to survive in this cosmos according to Tenet 3(b). Maybe understanding the nature of gravity will be a solution.

Light travels at about 670,618,800 miles an hour (186,283 miles per second x 60 x 60), but our spacecraft at optimum speed (helped by gravity, not simply pushed by their own engines) get about 30,000 or so miles per hour.

Thus light travels about 22,354 times faster than our spacecraft do. For each light-year a distant habitable planet is from us, it will take us about 22,354 years, at our current "speed", to get there.

A planet at 50 light years distance from us would take us about a million years of travel to reach.

Kepler is looking for habitable orbs "up to 500 light-years away from the Sun".

Do you get my drift? If not, you will not need to worry about it.

Thus, "a new physics" (better understanding and better technology) will be required for our species to survive the cosmos we live in.

That new physics must be better than our current physics, which is based upon flawed formal equations, and that new physics must be safe at any speed.

Ladies and gentlemen, create then start your engines.