Template:ACIDcur/article -- Is it just me, or does the term 'deranged' for the drainage system in Canada seem a little unscientific and confusing? This should be changed to the proper term for whatever the author of that part is referring to. "Unusual" would be a much better term.

Pizza Puzzle asks me (in his edit summary) to cite a source for there being a size requirement for a lake to be considered a sea. Fine. I happily do so. My copy of Chambers Dictionary includes under sea, "great (esp. salt) lake." Note the word great. Small lakes are never called seas.

Precisely where the cut-off point is irrelevant - my only edit has been to say that the lake must be "of sufficient size" if it's to be called a sea. I have not stated what that size is. That's open for interpretation. Evercat 19:41 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

You are wrong and so is your dictionary. A lake can be a sea. The sufficient size is simply that it must be of, at least, lake size. Pizza Puzzle

PP, you asked for a source, and you got one. It is not logical to simply say "your source is wrong"; the burden of proof in this argument has been switched back to you. Produce a contrary source that trumps the dictionary, if you like (or can); meantime please refrain from blanket reverts without supporting evidence. - Hephaestos 20:06 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Ive stated one. sea is very clear. Pizza Puzzle

My copy of Wetzel's Limnology characterizes the Caspian Sea as a lake, but is a little ambivalent about the Black Sea. The handful of lakes with "Sea" in the name are basically grandfathered in, with perhaps the lone exception of Salton Sea - "Dead Lake" would be a very confusing change! If you flooded the entire state of Nevada today, it's highly unlikely the Board on Geographical Names would be willing to call it a "sea" and not a "lake". Stan 20:53 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The criteria for being a sea have little to do with size. The first question is, "Does its surface lie at the general sea level or below?" Thus The Great Lakes and the Great Salt Lake of North America are lakes. The Dead Sea is a sea.

There is however, inconsistency in naming seas. The question of an outflow other than evaporation is relevant, as in the case of the Aral Sea but the Great Salt Lake and (I think) Lake Balkhash have no exit flow on the surface.

As far as the Black Sea goes, it is no different from the Sea of Japan or the Baltic Sea. It is at sea level and connected to the generality of the seas of the world. It does have one characteristic of an ocean, in that it lies between two geological continental plates. But so does the Sea of Japan. Such very small "oceans" can not have been recognised as such until the concept of plate tectonics was recognised. By that time they had come to be called seas and there is little point in trying to change that. So here size is relevant. RJP 09:21, 17 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I put the periglacial lake up with the definition because 'lake' is here defined in terms of water surrounded by land and a periglacial lake, while still being a lake, is not surrounded by land. Therefore, without accounting for the periglacial lake's exceptional nature, we have not defined 'lake'. The asphalt Trinidal Lake is a similar problem since it is not made of water but if we want to be thorough, it should be accounted for - perhaps by discounting it.

By the way, 'deranged' seems to me a much better word than 'unusual' in the case of the drainage of the Canadian Shield. It says exactly the appropriate thing. The region's exposure to the ice sheet has disturbed or destroyed the arrangement of its drainage. See Oxford English Dictionary. (RJP 19:06, 23 May 2005 (UTC))[reply]