re: #159 jaunte

I think that the various gravitational forces working on the water around the globe are different enough that the level can vary quite a bit, but I don’t know what the variance is (beyond high and low tide). That link earlier mentioned the gravitational attraction of the Antarctic ice sheets and the water, which would pile up more water near the ice sheets; when the ice sheets melted, the grav attraction would be gone, so the level at the poles would fall more than other places, which would rise further.
[Link: www.newscientist.com…]

I didn’t read the article, but my first response is the water and the ice sheets would have similar densities, and I would think the volume (and therefore the mass) of the ocean is much larger than the ice sheets, so why would there be any (at least significant) gravitational attraction between the water and the ice sheets? Maybe I need to read the article.