OT The answer to rising sea levels???

[harry]

[Chris Hogg]

So Ireland and the west coast of the UK and France get flooded, but 'inner Europe' will be OK? Cheaper and simpler just to evacuate Holland, and in particular close the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, and eliminate at least one source of daft ideas! I expect he'll be damming the Straits of Gibraltar next (as if it hasn't been suggested before!).

[whisky-dave]

Doesn't seem a very good or practical idea to me, what about shipping routes.

But at least I can post a map of possible sea level rise, which I found interesting.

[Roger Hayter]

Big canal round the side of the dam with locks.

[Broadback]

On a par with the bridge betwixt Scotland and Ireland

[newshound]

IIRC 7 metres is the estimate for the melting of the entire Greenland ice sheet and way beyond the most extreme "scientific" suggestions. Mind you not as bad as a BBC programme a few years ago which showed flooding above the pavement at Oxford Circus tube station. Google Earth tells me this is 120 metres above sea level.

[Chris Hogg]

^^^^^^ Feet?

[RJH]

Indeed - and much of east London is at best a couple of metres above sea level. Precarious even now . . .

Cheers, Rob

[Tim+]

27 metres according to OS map data.

Tim

[The Natural Philosopher]

Inded. The latent heat in the greenland ice sheet would take millennia to melt at the sorts of energy imbalances even themost apocalyptic climate scientists dares predict.

The BBC has never been very good with facts or science.

IIRC 120 meter was the rise at the end of the last ice ace 'plus ou moins'.

It took 20,000 years to melt all that ice...

[whisky-dave]

What do yuo think caused the flooding that killed all those mamonths in doggerland what we now call the north sea.

Most religions have records of a flood but as yet we don;t know the cause, but we know it only lasted a couple of weeks rather than a slow rise of water over a few hundred years.

[Chris Hogg]

Do we? Evidence where?

Supposedly the explanation for Noah's flood - 7,000 years ago the Med broke through into the Black Sea through the Bosphorus, causing water levels to rise rapidly, taking about a year.

7,000 years ago is recent enough to be retained in oral history and tradition and incorporated into most religious accounts, as you say, whereas for example the flooding of the Med itself through the straits of Gibraltar at 5.3MY ago is too far back.

[polygonum_on_google]

One (possible) source for a flood story is the Bosphorus. Apparently the breakthrough from the Black Sea was relatively recent (within human existence). Seems that there are also strange currents in the water which indicate, umm, something or other stretching right back to the original breakthrough and waterfall.

[harry]

[harry]

This seems to work very well.

[jon lopgel]

But doesn't explain how it ended up in chinese mythology too.

[Chris Hogg]

Different time, different flood. It's stretching credibility beyond breaking point to assume that all the floods of mythology happened at the same time due to the same cause.

[Max Demian]

Yeah and people have found a rock formation in the Near East that they swear is Noah's Ark.

I think that finding historical explanations for myths really unconvincing, like saying that Atlantis was Santorini in the Med.

[Chris Hogg]

Quite. Sometimes there's geological evidence for a flood, but linking it in time with an undated and undateable myth is beyond credible.

Many of the floods in the past were probably related to the onset of the end of the last ice age (that we're still in, technically), when sea levels rose at a rapid rate (they're still rising now, but much slower), land bridges were overwhelmed, such as the dam across the Dover straits flooding what is now the English channel (plenty of sea-floor scouring still detectable), as well as the Bosphorus - Black Sea flood, and ice dams broke such as the Lake Agassiz floods in North America. Only those of the Holocene (say the last 10,000 years), have any chance of being recorded in human mythology.

[The Natural Philosopher]

There has to be a reason WHY myths are there.

Men on horseback = centaurs. Volcanos + fossil dinosaurs = dragons the biblical floood apperas elsewhere IIRC in other cultures mythology

Im more inclimned top believce santoroni= Atlantis than modern climate change exists and is caused by CO2.