Comment on If a planet was completely covered in water, wouldn't it all be freshwater?
PunnyName@lemmy.world 2 days agoContinents and the surface are just areas of the planet that don’t have water covering them up.
If Earth’s oceans rose only a few miles up, it would be a water planet, but these things would still exist. Including plate tectonics and the circulation of magma / molten core.
Water circulates due to pressure, temperature, and impurities, each having their own positive feedback loop into the system before it finds a balance.
HotDayBreeze@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Sure but once a continental plate is flooded, isn’t it by definition an oceanic plate at that point? A continent only exists if it isn’t flooded.
PunnyName@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I mean, it’s basically arguing semantics, which was my point. Temperature, sediment, etc. transfer will still occur, and erosion will happen. It would just happen at different time scales.