Ice shelf collapse biggest for 10,000 years
By Steve Connor, New Zealand Herald, august 5, 2005
[www.nzherald.co.nz]
 
"The disintegration of the huge Larsen B ice shelf in
Antarctica was an unprecedented event in the past
10,000 years of geological history, a study has found."

Collapse of Antarctic ice shelf could have global effects
CBC News, Canada, Aug 3, 2005, [www.cbc.ca]

Collapse of Antarctic Ice Shelf Unprecedented: Eugene
Domack Publishes Research in Nature Hamilton College
News, Aug 3, 2005, [www.hamilton.edu]

An account of the expedition is given in "Antarctica 2005,
February 11 - March 11" [www.hamilton.edu]

The paper being discussed in the above newspaper
articles and press release is:

Domack, E., Duran, D., Leventer, A., Ishman, S., Doane, S.,
McCallum, S., Amblas, D., Ring, J., Gilbert, R., and 
Prentice, M., 2005, Stability of the Larsen B ice shelf on
the Antarctic Peninsula during the Holocene epoch. Nature.
vol.436, no.7051, pp. 681-688. [www.nature.com]

An interesting aspect of this paper, as it relates to this
newsgroup, is that the Larsen B Ice Shelf is part of the
Antarctic Peninsula. It is completely impossible for
Lesser Antarctica, of which the Antarctic Peninsula is
part, to have been warm enough for it have been ice free
and Larsen Ice Shelf to have existed for the last 10,600
years. In fact as shown by cores from the sediments of
the ocean bottom beneath the the Larsen B Ice Shelf, that
prior to 10,600 BP the edge of an ice sheet that covered
the Antarctic Peninsula covered all of the sea bottom in
the area once occupied by the Larsen B Ice Shelf. Again,
it is impossible that Lesser Antarctica was warm enough
to support an advanced civilization when the Antarctica
Peninsula, the northernmost part of Lesser Antarctica,
and, in fact all of Lesser Antarctica, was covered by
a thick ice sheet. This is demonstrated a by huge amount
of non-ice core evdience as summarized in:

Anderson, J. B., Shipp, S. S. Lowe, A. L., Wellner, J. S.
and Mosola, A. B., 2002, The Antarctic Ice Sheet during
the Last Glacial Maximum and its subsequent retreat
history: a review. Quaternary Science Reviews. vol. 21,
no. 1-3, pp. 49-70. [www.sciencedirect.com];

Denton, G. H., and Hughes, T.J., 2002 Reconstructing the
Antarctic Ice Sheet at the Last Glacial Maximum. Quaternary
Science Reviews. vol. 21, no. 1-3, pp. 193-202.
[www.sciencedirect.com];

and documented in many, many, other papers. There is
now, and has been for a long time, an overwhelming amount
of published and documented evidence that totally refutes
the possibility, as argued by Flem-Ath and other alternative
archaeologists, that there can be a lost civilization buried
in Antarctica. I would dearly love to know how Rand Flem-Ath
and his supporters explain how their claims can be reconciled
with the above papers.

Also, in the same issue of Quaternary Science Reviews with
the last two papers, there is a paper by Mikhail G. Grosswald
and Terence J. Hughes, which refutes Rand Flem-Ath's
interpretations of what the climate was like in Siberia during
the last glacial maximum. However, that is another post and
another day.

An article related to the Larsen B Ice Shelf paper is:

Antarctic Ecosystem Discovered New Species of
Marine Life May be Uncovered, by Vige Barrie,
Hamilton College News, July 18, 2005, [www.hamilton.edu]

In the same issue of Nature, another unrelated paper is:

Emanuel, K., 2005, Increasing destructiveness of tropical
cyclones over the past 30 years. Nature. vol.436, no.7051,
pp. 681-688. [www.nature.com]

Yours,

Paul H.
Baton Rouge, LA

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."
William Faulkner, Act 1, Scene III, Requiem for a Nun (1951)



Edited 16 time(s). Last edit at 08/05/2005 11:06AM by Paul H..