Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumGQP State Legislature Candidate Has The Solution To Sea Level Rise - Remove All Boats From The Ocean
A Republican state legislative candidate in Virginia posed an interesting question on Twitter recently. "I'm curious, Do you think the sea level would lower, if we just took all the boats out of the water? Just a thought, not a statement," wrote Scott Pio, who is challenging Democratic Del. David Reid in Loudoun County's District 32. Pio subsequently deleted his tweet, but not before it was picked up by the Democratic group Blue Virginia.
Pio later wrote in response to Blue Virginia's post, "When you take things out of bath water, the bath water decreases, does it not? Got a lot of hate from your group for asking a question about taking things out of the water. Curious when you stopped believing in pure physics? I guess you don't believe in science experiments?"
EDIT
Randall Munroe, an engineer who authors the award-winning webcomic XKCD, recently calculated an estimated answer to Pio's question about the impact of removing all boats from the water. Munroe concluded that the impact on sea levels would be "about six micronsslightly more than the diameter of a strand of spider silk."
"But you don't have to worry about that six-micron sea level drop," Munroe wrote. "The oceans are currently rising at about 3.3 millimeters per year due to global warming (through both glacial melting and thermal expansion of seawater). At that rate (normalized for seasonal variation and short-term fluctations), if you removed every ship from the ocean, the water would be back up to its original average level in 16 hours."
EDIT
https://www.rawstory.com/scott-pio-sea-level/
SWBTATTReg
(21,859 posts)these lines, and before we know it, they'll pass some legislation in the Congress (or try to), to demand that boats be removed from the waters of the Oceans. Actually a sad thought and kind of pathetic that we have people thinking along these lines.
jimfields33
(15,471 posts)This guy must have been homeschooled. Lol. Even a teacher might have made an exception if this question was asked.
70sEraVet
(3,430 posts)70sEraVet
(3,430 posts)You'd have to put them on the land. But that would make the land heavier, and if the land sunk more, it would raise the sea level back up!
Gee, this is fun!
kiri
(786 posts)He is technically correct--the sea level would drop about 6 millionths of a meter. What he lacks is a sense of scale, of proportion. He has no grasp of the size of things. This is critical. When teaching physics I always emphasized this. If you "solve" a homework problem and the answer is a baseball goes 8,349.768 kph, a little buzzer should go off in your head. Is that reasonable? Something must be wrong! (Aside from reporting too many digits.)
smb
(3,453 posts)A student calculating a result that should be "something that fits in a beaker" got an answer that was the mass of ten Milky Ways "and I don't mean the candy bar".
skypilot
(8,848 posts)...if he's including cargo ships in his thinking, because if we take all of those out of the water how will we get all our stuff.
world wide wally
(21,719 posts)keithbvadu2
(36,369 posts)Do his 'boats' include ships?
There is a difference although he does not seem bright enough to know that.
packman
(16,296 posts)RVN VET71
(2,686 posts)Curious, when you stopped believing in pure physics? he asks.
The sad thing is, there are probably enough Virginian voters who like this guys insightful way of "thinking" to vote for him.
OldBaldy1701E
(4,968 posts)But, I am sure it would be more about 'owning the libs', which has become an acceptable excuse to destroy the world for some reason...