Subgenius, you miss the entire point of looking at the egg and the apple. It's not ridiculous to shrink the earth to the size of an egg when the question is: is the earth shaped like an egg? And if you did the math, you know that whether you shrink the earth to the size of an egg or grow the egg to the size of the earth, the earth looks nothing like the egg and is indistinguishable from a sphere to the naked eye. Every time you post a picture of an apple or an egg and compare it to the earth, you are being dishonest. Every time you post an animation of the geoid that exaggerates its effect by 7000 times and claim that the animation is what the earth actually looks like, you are being dishonest.
Now, back to your objection d'jour: the difference between the earth and a perfect sphere. Yes, the earth is an oblate spheroid -- .33% wider at the equator than it's diameter from pole to pole. The reason it is shaped that way is because it rotates -- centrifugal force at the equator is strongest, and weakens as one moves to the poles. This redistributes the water on the surface of the earth, as compared to a stationary sphere. In fact, if the earth were to slow down and stop rotating, we'd end up with two large seas, one at each pole, with a solid band of land separating them around the equator. (In case you're wondering, that wouldn't help Noah. The tallest mountain above sea level would be about 12K in height, as opposed to the current 8K.
So, what does this mean for our thought experiment? It means that, as we add water to the surface of the oceans, the water won't distribute evenly. If we add enough for an average increase in 1K, locations closer to the equator will experience sea level rise of more than 1K, while those closer to the poles than the equator will experience less. The departure from average will be greatest at the equator and the poles, while locations half way between will experience the average of 1K sea level rise.
The model I've been using does not account for that. So what do I do? Well, it is all math. There is an equation that would tell us what percentage the deviation would be at each latitude. I don't know what it is and my math skills are not sufficient to derive it. It would be a little complicated, because, as we add water, the earth's rotation would slow down and so the effect of the rotation would diminish. So, one approach I could take is to ask around to people who study the earth to help me derive the equation. And I would do that if I wanted to know the exact answer as to how much water I'd need to to cover the tallest peak.
But I don't really want to know that. All I want to know is: if all the water available on the earth, in the earth, or above the earth is enough to cover the entire earth. So, is there I way I can do that without the equation I don't have? Luckily, there is. I can't use any mountain that is closer to the equator than the poles, as I know the increase in sea level will be greater than average, but I don't know by how much. But, I can use mountains closer to the poles than the equator, because the sea level rise will be less than the average. Therefore, if I add the available additional water and it doesn't coverage a peak north of the 45th parallel in the N. Hemisphere, there isn't enough water. I'll pick a mountain much closer to the pole than the equator: Denali in Alaska.
Denali doesn't crack the top 100 peaks in altitude, but it's no slouch at 6196 meters. At 63 degrees north, it's much closer to the pole than to the equator. Again, what that means is, if I add enough water to raise the sea level by 1K on my non-spinning spherical model of the earth, the sea level at Denali will rise by less than 1K.
Now to the calculations. Note that, whenever I need to make an assumption in the calculation, I'm making one that is ridiculously weighted in Noah's favor. That way, if I add all the available water in the earth system to the oceans and I fail to cover Denali, I can say with complete confidence that Noah is out of luck.
Okay, in my last set of calculations, I derived the total water in and above the earth that is available to add to the oceans. I'm going to assume that I can add all this water to the oceans. This is a ridiculous assumption in Noah's favor -- it means that the entire atmosphere would have an absolute humidity of zero. It means that all the underground aquifers somehow manage to move from underground into the oceans. It assumes that every drop of rain that falls would end up in the ocean.
Total water in, on, or above the earth: 1,386,000,000 cu km
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthhowmuch.htmlTotal water, less ocean water: 48,510,000 cu km (because sea water is already reflected in current sea level)
Now, I'm going to take that water and add it to the surface of a perfect, non-rotating sphere with the radius of the earth to calculate how much it would increase the radius.
Average earth radius: 6371 km
Volume of earth: 1,083,206,916,846 cu km
Volume of earth plus volume of additional water available to raise sea level: 1083255426846
Radius of sphere with volume equal to earth plus additional water available: 6371.1 km.
Amount sea level would increase on a perfectly smooth, non-rotating sphereL 100 meters.
But, of course, the earth is not a perfectly smooth sphere. The actual sea level rise on a sphere with the topography of earth will be higher, because there is land that prevents the water from spreading out uniformly on the surface of the globe. How much higher? Well, the average height of land above sea level is about 850 meters. To be ridiculously fair to Noah, let's pretend that the 100 meters of sea level increase actually covers all the land there is above sea level Again, another ridiculous assumption in Noah's favor. That gets us to a total average increase of 950 meters. And again, to be utterly, ridiculously fair to Noah, let's round that up to 1km.
That's right, making every assumption in favor of Noah to the point of absurdity, the maximum possible increase in average sea level for a non-rotating earth would be 1 km.
But, the earth is rotating. That means sea level increase will be more than 1K south of the 45th parallel and less to the north. Now maybe it's possible, just possible, that a 1K increase in average sea level will translate into 8K of sea level rise at Mt. Everest. I can't disprove it with my meager math skills, so I'll let that one go.
But I have shown that the sea level rise at Denali cannot exceed 1K. And how high is Denali above sea level: 6K. Poor Noah is over 5 kilometers short.
But, hey, who really cares about some remote peak up in Alaska? Let's look at where I live in Washington. All of Washington state is above the 45th parallel (It's located just north of Salem, OR). Here's an elevation map of Washington.
http://www.netstate.com/states/geograph ... apscom.htm All the dark and light orange is higher than 1K above sea level. And that's just one state. In one country.
Absent magic, it simply is not possible for the earth to have been completely flooded at anytime within the last 6000 years. There is not enough water. Not by just a little. Not by just a lot. Noah is short by a massive amount of water.
There's a fair amount of math in this post, and it's entirely possible I've made an error. Please check my work and I'll be happy to make any corrections. And if the corrections change the conclusion, I'll be happy to modify that, too.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
