Chris Peterson wrote:You're making a bit of a fool of yourself here. A little knowledge (emphasis on little) is a dangerous thing. Read the previous posts explaining the error in what you're saying here. Or, do the experiment... it isn't hard. I do it every year for middle school students. Take a beaker and put some ice cubes in it, then fill to the brim with saltwater, 3.5% w/w. Let the ice melt. I guarantee, the beaker will overflow.
Again, bad physics, or bad data (or both). It's easy to estimate the effect of rising sea levels on the Earth's rotation rate. Since angular momentum is conserved, you can solve for the change in angular velocity as a function of the change in radius. Taking the observed increase in sea level since 1993 of 3.2 cm, you can calculate that the day has gotten shorter by about 600 microseconds (actually, a bit less, since the sea level rise isn't quite equivalent to the radius of the Earth increasing by that amount). And indeed, this is included in the model for delta-T, the rate variation in Earth's rotation. The effect of increasing sea level is offset by the continuing rebound of northern and southern land masses because of the loss of polar ice after the last period of glaciation. In short, your argument holds no water. (Nothing affects the Earth's rotation rate fast enough to show up in sunrise/sunset times- those calculations are not made to the necessary precision.)
Boy, a twofer of bad info and bad experiments on your part, Chris. The reason your ice experiment overflows is because you allow the ice to touch the bottom of the beaker and don't achieve full displacement because the ice is still making contact with the vessel. Hint: pour the water in first, and then add the ice for full displacement. Heck, even Mister Wizard performed this one correctly. Now I know why my middle schooler comes home confused. How can you screw-up an experiment that’s been performed correctly countless hundreds of thousands of times?
Ok, we've got the bad experiment out of the way - now let's work on your poor data.
Read my paragraph slowly and you'll see that warming requires that the earth rotate slower, not faster - as your paragraph states - in the presence of global warming. When seas rise, the mass is further from the axis, so the moment of inertia gets larger. You're simply supporting my theory of global cooling (less liquid water = smaller equator = faster rotation: apparently by 600MS).
Furthermore, as sea levels are averaged from a number of sources (none of which are capable of determining 3.2 CM averages with any accuracy whatsoever due to tides, waves, storms, etc - and some even conflicting,) I'm not sure where your data is coming from.
And lastly, I notice you didn’t even try to comment on right ascension and declination calculations. I think you already know, deep down that you might be able to confuse middle schoolers with this info, but I walk with Archimedes and Newton on this one.