Fundamentally, what is more important is the volume of ocean basins, and the volume of terrestrial land (and its density). If the land is worn down to a peneplane, then the volume of high-standing mountains is absent, and former mountains have been turned into sandstones and shales, which end up in the oceans. Shortly after orogenies, the volume of mountains is large; similarly, after extended eruptions of Large Igneous Provinces, the volume of basaltic terrestrial rocks will be much larger than several ten’s of millions of years later. It is all in flux, and we lack detail on the location, altitude, shape, and even area of all the terrestrial rocks because they are continuously eroded, worn away, and recycled as igneous intrusions and metamorphosed roof pendants. The eroded sediments largely end up in the oceans, displacing water, and reducing the effective volume of the ocean basins.

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Also, what is an unstated assumption is that the volume of sea water, including liquid and frozen phases, has been essentially constant for the last 540 million years, and hasn’t been bound up chemically, isolated in lakes, retained in aquifers, diverted to the atmosphere, or temporarily removed from the oceans by subduction of plates. What do the phenomenally thick salt beds throughout the world tell us about evaporation of water and its temporary residency as the salt piles get thicker and thicker? The Clausius-Clapeyron relationship tells us that we can expect that during the Hothouse climates, much more of the water was to be found as vapor in the atmosphere and as droplets in clouds, and therefore, not residing in the oceans.

"So, right now the ocean levels are at their lowest point in all of the last 540 million years. Hmmmm….. So, it wouldn’t take mush in the way of green house gasses to make that sea level rise a lot. Thus amplifying the effect of global warming caused my the burring of fossil fuels."

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