Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
3
Ocean Forms
Isn't it lucky that we've got just enough water. Not too much and not
too little. How much, though, might be too much?
Let us imagine a proper water world—one where even the tips of
the highest mountains are covered. Hollywood, of course, has got
here first. In that breathless cinematic epic Wa t e r wo r l d , Kevin Costner
sailed the high and endless seas of a future submerged Earth, global
warming having done its stuff. He did battle with the most villainous
and eyeball-rolling of pirates, while protecting the young heroine
who just happened to have, tattooed on her back, a map of the world
showing the whereabouts of the very last island.
Amid such improbable plot devices, and leaving aside the awkward
fact that even melting all the world's ice would leave quite a lot of
landmasses standing high and dry, Wa t e r wo r l d does give occasional
pause for thought. For instance, on a real water world weather pat-
terns would be substantially different. In the film, the whole action
happens in bright sunshine under a cloudless blue sky. This framed
the derring-do nicely, but in reality would be highly unlikely—all the
energy from that evaporating water vapour has to go somewhere . Fur-
ther, without a landscape to chemically weather it would be more
difficult to control carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, rendering
that perfect weather yet more unlikely.
 
 
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