geoid

Fair. 'sucking' does work to describe the unloading. I guess the idea that the _speed_ of the erosion creates suction, is what bothered me.

Maps are here:

https://topex.ucsd.edu/grav_outreach/

Yes, water does follow the gravity. I'm not a climate person, and it's a complicated system, but as I understand it, new melt would be distributed evenly by mass around the globe, which means a larger volume of water at the equator due to higher temperatures there. My hunch in that changes in wind patterns and currents will be the more important effect though.

Thanks. There's another meaning of geoid, which is the shape of mean sea level of the globe. The height of sea level varies according to the local strength of gravity. When they first put up satellites that could accurately map sea level, it gave us the amazing maps of the sea floor. Basically, the sea surface subtly mimics the features of the sea floor.

This is correct. The earth is ductile at long time periods, and mountains maintain isostatic equilibrium as the tops are eroded away. The article quote is absurd. Source: my earth science PhD.

You could make use the pattern stem automatic variable in lines five and six to replace

    $(patsubst %.stdout,%.stderr,$@)

with

    $*.stderr

Maybe because our whole way of life and industrial food production is adapted to the current conditions?

> I couldn't believe we were equidistant on either end of the 0 datum

Longitude only affects the time of day, and thus daily temperature variations. Latitude is much more important, and determines climate and seasons. You are at vastly different latitude than Alaska.

Agree. Both parties should be able to see the other typing, or neither should. I feel deceived and foolish that I never knew about this. It's creepy like a one-way mirror.