According to a recently released study, at the end of the last ice age, parts of an enormous ice sheet covering Eurasia retreated up to 2,000 feet per day.
That rate is the fastest measured to date, far exceeding what scientists previously believed to be the upper limits for ice sheet retreat. [emphasis, links added]
In the new study, lead author Christine Batchelor and her colleagues analyzed former beds of two major ice streams across the Norwegian continental ice shelf dating back 15,000 to 19,000 years ago.
Using ship-borne imagery, the team then calculated the rates of retreat by studying patterns of wavelike ridges along the seafloor.
They hypothesized that the “orderly” ridge patterns they observed may have been created as the front of the glacier bounced on the seafloor from daily tides.
Call me a skeptic, but this doesn’t sound to me like “settled science.”
Nonetheless, Batchelor and crew think the finding may shed light on how quickly ice in Greenland and Antarctica might melt — and raise global sea levels — in a warming world.
Batchelor stated: “If temperatures continue to rise, then we might have the ice being melted and thinned from above as well as from below, so that could kind of end up with a scenario that looks more similar to what we had [off] Norway after the last glaciation.”
According to a story in The Washington Post, Eric Rignot, a glaciologist who was not involved in the study, opined on it anyway, stating via email:
“This is not a model. This is real observation. And it is frankly scary. Even to me.” (Cue the voice of Elmer Fudd. “Yes, it is vewy, vewy, scawy, Rignot.” Not.
The only thing the study proves is that the Earth warmed quickly and dramatically eons ago— without any possible help from man.
Inconvenient truths: there were no factories, gas stoves, air conditioners, lawnmowers, automobiles, cattle ranches, or any other possible “man-caused” greenhouse gas generators 15,000 to 19,000 years ago.
Any other interpretation of this “study”—and its alleged “findings”—would constitute anti-science bias…and qualify as “fake news.”
Read more at American Thinker
I love stories like this.
The zelots will go to the end of the earth searching for ways to invent justifications for their idelogy. It’s a pity they don’t look outside where it hasn’t been warming since 1998.
And the idea that an ice sheet in Antarctica can melt quickly is true fantasy. Try over one thousand years for either of the big sheets to melt and that’s a big guess anyway.