Antarctic weather over 15,000 years.

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Clodhopper
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Antarctic weather over 15,000 years.

Post by Clodhopper »

The British Antarctic Survey has been doing useful work:

BBC News - Antarctica warmth 'unusual, but not unique'

In a nutshell:

By analysing the levels of deuterium in an ice core sample they've been able to track climate change over the last 15,000 years and found that only once was it warmer, about 12,000 years ago. It's been colder for the last 9.500 years until the current increase began slowly about 600 years ago then accelerated in the 1920s. The study matches works the US are doing on the other side of the continent and the scientist who published the data thinks human activity is the cause of the increase in the rate of warming since 1920.

Scary stuff.
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Post by gmc »

Clodhopper;1401858 wrote: The British Antarctic Survey has been doing useful work:

BBC News - Antarctica warmth 'unusual, but not unique'

In a nutshell:

By analysing the levels of deuterium in an ice core sample they've been able to track climate change over the last 15,000 years and found that only once was it warmer, about 12,000 years ago. It's been colder for the last 9.500 years until the current increase began slowly about 600 years ago then accelerated in the 1920s. The study matches works the US are doing on the other side of the continent and the scientist who published the data thinks human activity is the cause of the increase in the rate of warming since 1920.

Scary stuff.


Which perhaps ties in with all the tales of massive floods to be found in the legends of people all around the world and when the atlantic flooded over to create the Mediterranean. The godly would have us believe there is nothing to worry about as god would never allow us to destroy the world and it's all a ploy by pagans that worship mother nature.
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Oscar Namechange
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Antarctic weather over 15,000 years.

Post by Oscar Namechange »

Talking of cores.... I watched a doc last night on Sky about the plates under Cascadia. From cores, scientists have found that In the past 10,000 years, there have been 19 mega quakes that also caused mega tsunami's In Japan. Yet residents happily go about their lives convinced number 20 will never happen In their lifetime.
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Post by Clodhopper »

Which perhaps ties in with all the tales of massive floods to be found in the legends of people all around the world and when the atlantic flooded over to create the Mediterranean. The godly would have us believe there is nothing to worry about as god would never allow us to destroy the world and it's all a ploy by pagans that worship mother nature.


It's not just the crazy godly who are the problem on this issue. An awful lot of people flatly refuse to believe it. At least in part for the reason oscar refers to - we in general are appalling calculators of risk and deep down firmly believe it won't happen to us.

For me, the sheer amount of unusual weather being reported from around the globe, the record years coming so thick and fast a year that isn't some sort of record is now unusual - it's looking as though this year is going to be a record for the smallest amount of summer ice left in the Arctic at the end of the melting period, btw - as well as the vast bulk of the relevant scientists saying it's happening are pretty conclusive.

Saw something saying Shanghai was the major world city most at risk of serious damage from flooding the other day. Apprently part of the reason that got them rated above say, Dhaka was that the authorities in Shanghai believe there is no risk. Communist Party Doctrine may be powerful magic, but I don't think even that will have much success where Canute (God's Holy Anointed) didn't.
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Post by Clodhopper »

I should add that the times don't tie in for the creation of the Mediterranean - that was about 5 million years ago.

Might tie in with the flooding of the Black Sea and Noah????
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Bryn Mawr
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Post by Bryn Mawr »

oscar;1401893 wrote: Talking of cores.... I watched a doc last night on Sky about the plates under Cascadia. From cores, scientists have found that In the past 10,000 years, there have been 19 mega quakes that also caused mega tsunami's In Japan. Yet residents happily go about their lives convinced number 20 will never happen In their lifetime.


Fairly good odds - I make it about 83% chance of their being correct.
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Post by Oscar Namechange »

Bryn Mawr;1401959 wrote: Fairly good odds - I make it about 83% chance of their being correct.


The last one was dated to mid 17 hundreds... the next Is due.
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Post by Snowfire »

oscar;1401963 wrote: The last one was dated to mid 17 hundreds... the next Is due.


The last one in Japan was last year wasnt it ?
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Post by Oscar Namechange »

Snowfire;1401966 wrote: The last one in Japan was last year wasnt it ? But It wasn't from a mega quake from Cascadia.



The Republic of Cascadia stretches from 42� to 60� north latitude. Its western border consists of the Pacific coast and a portion of the American state of Alaska. On the east, It borders the American states of Idaho and Montana and the Canadian province of Alberta. Cascadia Is divided into three prefectures: British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington.

[moderator note]plagiarised from http://zapatopi.net/cascadia/ [/moderator note]
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Post by Clodhopper »

A 17% chance of disaster from one issue seems quite high to me....How does it compare with the chances of being involved in a serious traffic accident in London over the same time period?

Thinking about it, Naples is not a good place to spend much time either. The city has grown to such a size it seems they couldn't evacuate on the existing infrastructure if Vesuvius did decide to let rip a la Pompeii.

If I saw the same documentary as oscar, the C17th Japanese tsunami referred to was caused by the Cascadia fault rupturing and Japanese records refer to it as being unusual because there was no associated earthquake: The tsunami arrived the next day, having crossed the Pacific and the Japanese were too far away to feel the quake. Gives an idea of the sheer scale of the event.

The other scare story I've heard about the Cascadia fault - and I really don't know whether it has any geological validity or not - is that the Ring of Fire has twitched seriously in the NW, the SW and the SE in the the last decade. But not in the NE, which is the Cascadia section. The implication is that Cascadia is even more likely to let go. But I have no idea if fault systems necessarily work like that, and the Ring of Fire is a very, very complex fault system or collection of systems.
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Post by Oscar Namechange »

Clodhopper;1401979 wrote: A 17% chance of disaster from one issue seems quite high to me....How does it compare with the chances of being involved in a serious traffic accident in London over the same time period?

Thinking about it, Naples is not a good place to spend much time either. The city has grown to such a size it seems they couldn't evacuate on the existing infrastructure if Vesuvius did decide to let rip a la Pompeii.

If I saw the same documentary as oscar, the C17th Japanese tsunami referred to was caused by the Cascadia fault rupturing and Japanese records refer to it as being unusual because there was no associated earthquake: The tsunami arrived the next day, having crossed the Pacific and the Japanese were too far away to feel the quake. Gives an idea of the sheer scale of the event.

The other scare story I've heard about the Cascadia fault - and I really don't know whether it has any geological validity or not - is that the Ring of Fire has twitched seriously in the NW, the SW and the SE in the the last decade. But not in the NE, which is the Cascadia section. The implication is that Cascadia is even more likely to let go. But I have no idea if fault systems necessarily work like that, and the Ring of Fire is a very, very complex fault system or collection of systems.


This Is worth a good read... both pages.

The Giant, Underestimated Earthquake Threat to North America | Natural Disasters | DISCOVER Magazine

The evidence amassed since then suggests that in fact, Cascadia has generated powerful earthquakes not just once or twice, but over and over again throughout geologic time. A research team led by Chris Goldfinger at Oregon State University (OSU) used core samples from the ocean floor along the fault to establish that there have been at least 41 Cascadia events in the last ten thousand years. Nineteen of those events ripped the fault from end to end, a “full margin rupture.”

The 19 mega events are mega quakes... far more destructive than an earthquake.
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Post by Clodhopper »

Yep. Saw a documentary that the article describes - Atwater, Yamaguchi and all. The core samples taking it that far back is new to me though. It's not clear from the article whether the 1960's 9.2 Richter scale quake was Cascadia or not - if it was, then that should have reduced the chance of a serious rupture now, I would have thought.

chuckle. The North West US seems a pretty chancy place in geological terms: Yellowstone goes off bang about every 600,000 years and last went about - yes, you guessed it - 600,000 year ago. Fortunately the margin for error is about 200,000 years (or something) so it's not worth losing sleep over.
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Post by Oscar Namechange »

Clodhopper;1401992 wrote: Yep. Saw a documentary that the article describes - Atwater, Yamaguchi and all. The core samples taking it that far back is new to me though. It's not clear from the article whether the 1960's 9.2 Richter scale quake was Cascadia or not - if it was, then that should have reduced the chance of a serious rupture now, I would have thought.

chuckle. The North West US seems a pretty chancy place in geological terms: Yellowstone goes off bang about every 600,000 years and last went about - yes, you guessed it - 600,000 year ago. Fortunately the margin for error is about 200,000 years (or something) so it's not worth losing sleep over.


Isn't It on another fault line?

Cascadia Is due to colliding plates under Cascadia.

In that doc, what stood out to me was when they went to that dead forest about 4 miles In land. The tree's died due to sea water... that's how much the sea bed rose last time when one plate pushed the other upwards from underneath. That's what's happening now... The over-riding plate could break under the strain and ping back any day now.
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Post by Clodhopper »

I'm not sure what you mean by Cascadia being a place (you referred to it as a Republic and I'm sure there is no such State. At least, not nowadays).

My current understanding is that Cascadia is now the name of the fault and nothing else. The 9.2 may or my not have happened on the Cascadia fault but understanding of faults and how they are connected is far from complete. However, scientists studying faults in Asia Minor may have mapped the way stress transfers from one to another in that (I think) they predicted a quake in Turkey when it was felt to be impossible to know.

Might have been as coincidental as a religious nutter's prediction.
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Post by Bryn Mawr »

oscar;1401963 wrote: The last one was dated to mid 17 hundreds... the next Is due.


So is the next magnetic reversal and the next asteroid hit and the next megamovement of the San Andreas fault and ...
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Post by Clodhopper »

So is the next magnetic reversal and the next asteroid hit and the next megamovement of the San Andreas fault and ...


And thank the lord for standard deviation. (have I remembered my stats well enough? (unlikely) I mean the bits that give you margins for error.)
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