Monday's factlet

This factlet being taken from an email from the New Scientist which appeared in my in-box this morning. I think it is quite old news, but it passed me by first time around.

The news being that the China and the US disagree about the best way to measure the height of mountains. China goes for measuring height above the sea level off Taiwan, which means that Mount Everest, in its sphere of influence, is highest at around 9,000 metres. While the US goes in for measuring heights above the rather more stable & sensible centre of gravity of the earth as a whole, which means that Mount Chimborazo, in its sphere of influence, is highest, despite only being around 6,000 metres above the average sea level at high tide at Dublin docks, when the moon is full and the wind is from the west, this last being the sort of sea level favoured by us Anglo-Saxons. Why we went for Dublin rather than the what one might have thought of as the much more suitable Greenwich I have no idea.

But at least this is a more or less friendly dispute. Not something serious like man-made islands being turned into fortresses.

And following my mention of google at reference 1, I can report that their image search facility was able to confirm that the picture above, supplied by the email from New Scientist, was indeed Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador, in no time at all.

PS: it may be that this will be the final straw, in the sense that it pushes the new US administration from being climate change deniers to being true believers. Climate change means rising sea levels, which makes measuring important heights above sea level a very dodgy business indeed. A clinching point in the dispute recorded here.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/clever-old-google.html.