Originally Posted By: paul

I cant find ANY of the numbers your using on the link you provided above.


You didn't look very hard try your own link that started this
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthhowmuch.html

Quote:

The volume of the largest sphere, representing all water on, in, and above the Earth, would be about 332,500,000 cubic miles (mi3) (1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers (km3)), and be about 860 miles (about 1,385 kilometers) in diameter.


332,500,000 cubic miles (mi3) = 332.5 MILLION cubic miles a fraction smaller than NASA's number of 344 MILLION


NEXT FOR YOUR ERROR IN LOGIC IN YOUR CALCULATION

Quote:

315 million cubic miles is seawater
9 million cubic miles is groundwater
7 million cubic miles is frozen in polar ice caps


Note: 315+9+7 = 331 Million cubic miles which is almost the same as USGS's.

315 million cubic miles of that number is ALREADY IN THE CURRENT SEA LEVEL you cant add it in on top.

If you keep it in like you have then you need to put the reference height in from the bottom of the current sea bed NOT FROM CURRENT SEA LEVEL.

At the moment you have stacked all the ocean water ontop of all the ocean water and why you are getting ridiculously high numbers.

So the easiest way to recalc the sea level because the sea bed is up and down is to simply remove the ocean water out and add all other sources of water in which is what NASA does :-)

Last edited by Orac; 06/07/12 05:03 AM.
I believe in "Evil, Bad, Ungodly fantasy science and maths", so I am undoubtedly wrong to you.