“Any body of arbitrary shape which is immersed, partly or fully, in a fluid will experience the action of a net force in the opposite direction of the local pressure gradient. If this pressure gradient arises from gravity, the net force is in the vertical direction opposite that of the gravitational force. This vertical force is termed buoyancy or buoyant force and is equal in magnitude, but opposite in direction, to the weight of the displaced fluid.

“In the case of a ship, for instance, its weight is balanced by a buoyant force from the displaced water, allowing it to float. If more cargo is loaded onto the ship, it would sink more into the water – displacing more water and thus receive a higher buoyant force to balance the increased weight.

“Discovery of the principle of buoyancy is attributed to Archimedes.”

Consider this, grasshopper, in the context of the “melting Arctic ice caps” advertised by global warming alarmists from which the water to engender rising sea levels is purported to come.

Melting sea ice should, by Archimedes’ principle, have no effect on sea levels. Melting glaciers and land-based ice might have such an effect – but ice over Antarctica is expanding, not melting, at present.

Since Archimedes is a dead white European, perhaps his buoyancy principle no longer applies. In the age of Obama, certainly it is worth asking if such basic, ancient principles of natural science are obsolete the way the laws of economics no longer apparently apply.