On Jun 20, 5:44 pm, James Annan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Tom Adams wrote:
> > On Jun 20, 9:43 am, William M Connolley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >> On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, Tom Adams wrote:
> >>> In a book about the prehistory of Scotland "Beyond Scotland" it
> >>> mentioned that the sea level rose a meter or so (or was it a foot?) in
> >>> a few days, causing a good bit of havoc for the humans living along
> >>> the coast of the land bridge between Scotland and Europe. Due to an
> >>> ice dam failing or a meteor impact hiting Canada's glacier or
> >>> something. If we have archeological data about impact of sea level
> >>> rise on humans, then, with all the other potential data, I'd think we
> >>> might be able to map it out in time pretty well.
> >> The meteor idea would suggest that palaeo analogues are even less useful!
>
> > I guess you are right that even if we could identify a rapid sea level
> > rise event in the paleo record we could no just assume it's due to
> > albedo flip.
>
> > But I was thinking that we might know more about the rate of the last
> > big thaw, the whole thaw, not just that one event that may have been
> > caused by a meteor or ice damn break.
>
> Don't forget that when you are looking at the paleo record (especially
> termination of the last ice age) you are talking about a time when there
> were large ice sheets at relatively modest latitudes, which can soak up
> a whole lot of rays. There simply isn't this ice to melt any more.
>
> I've spent some time looking at climate sensitivity and believe that I'm
> on solid ground there. I'm reluctant to wade in over Hansen and ice
> sheets because I know much less about them, but the argument seems to
> follow a similar meme: we "can't rule it out", so we should worry. I'm
> also a bit dubious about the language in any case: it's not as if people
> are going to be drowned in their beds.
Wrong!
One word: nawlins
People will drowned and the last part ain't slow.
I think those in the nursing homes did drown in their bed.
Where did most of the young ones drown? In their attics?
>
> The time I would look for analogues is the last interglacial, when it
> was significantly warmer than today. If there is any catastrophic
> nonlinearity, one might expect there to have been a rapid sea level
> rise
Seems like a good point.
> at that time. I'm dubious about this having happened, because if there
> was a rapid collapse on the 100 year time scale, one might reasonably
> also expect a larger long-term change than was seen in practice. But I
> don't know how good the data are.
It was about 125K years ago.
Look at this plot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#Glacials_and_interglacials
Looks like it take 10K years to thaw and 100K years to refreeze.
The last thaw looks steeper at the end than this one, but maybe
that is a artifact of comparing near term measurements with 125K years
ago. And, of course it tells you nothing about the finer grain rates.
>
> James- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
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