Mini ice age took hold of Europe in months

New Scientist ^ | Nov 11, 2009 | Kate Ravilious

[decimon]

JUST months - that's how long it took for Europe to be engulfed by an ice age. The scenario, which comes straight out of Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, was revealed by the most precise record of the climate from palaeohistory ever generated.

Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by the Younger Dryas mini ice age, or "Big Freeze". It was triggered by the slowdown of the Gulf Stream, led to the decline of the Clovis culture in North America, and lasted around 1300 years.

Until now, it was thought that the mini ice age took a decade or so to take hold, on the evidence provided by Greenland ice cores. Not so, say William Patterson of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and his colleagues.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

I wonder what made the old shorelines so straight and right-angled?

I think those are modern roads, build on the design for surveying land included in the Northwest Ordinance. The old lake shores are the fainter ripple like lines.

[Sherman Logan]

Joke.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Good one, but it is possible that some city folk might have been confused (maybe).

[dangus]

What a crock.

Shut down the Gulf Stream flow, and Europe cools of four degrees.

The article makes direct reference to “the Day After Tomorrow,” hoping people will fear this as an effect of global warming. The effect of warming Europe four degrees from global warming will be that a gulf stream which warms Europe four degrees shuts down. Hmmm...

[SunkenCiv]

In "Earth In Upheaval" Velikovsky discusses that, along with Russian Arctic islands nearly built out of millions of bones, various other paleontological evidence. More recently, Emilio Spedicato wrote, "We discuss the hypothesis that the last glaciation was started by a collision over a continent and was terminated by a collision over an ocean." My view differs from Spedicato.

[SunkenCiv]

As long as they aren’t contaminating their tiny little samples with material from their own tools, I’ll look forward to their making good on that boast. :’)

[SunkenCiv]

Oh, but don’t forget, these things happened *gradually*. [guffaw]

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Fred Nerks. From the hard drive, and ultimately from Science v 295, 11 Jan 2002,p 256-258:

"Kirchner was startled when the nuclide concentrations in the sediments he drew out of streams in 37 different catchments in Idaho's mountains revealed erosion rates over the past 5000 to 2700 years that averaged a whopping 17 times higher than modern-day rates, a finding he reported in the July 2002 Geology. After ruling out climate change and other factors, Kirchner concluded that the huge discrepancy must be due to catastrophic erosion events so rare that decades of regular observations are unlikely to spot them... One lesson to be drawn from this study, Kirchner suggests, is that in young, dynamic mountain ranges, engineers may be greatly overestimating the time it will take reservoirs to fill with debris should one of these catastrophic events occur in the reservoirs' lifetime." -- "Subtleties of Sand Reveal How Mountains Crumble" [related to cosmogenic nuclide dating]

(I was actually browsing for files on the Channeled Scablands flood event, but this one caught my eye)

[SunkenCiv]

[singing] Susannah don't you cry.

[SunkenCiv]

There have been lots of glaciation events, all of them, literally, unexplained — apart from the usual resort to unworkable gradualist schemes by true believers. So it’s safe to say that there have been far more than three. :’)

[null and void]

I wonder what made the old shorelines so straight and right-angled?

Atlantians. DUH!

[null and void]

Has much been done to quantify these distinctions?

How tall is a mountain? Serious question...

[Interesting Times]

Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by the Younger Dryas mini ice age, or "Big Freeze". It was triggered by the slowdown of the Gulf Stream, led to the decline of the Clovis culture in North America, and lasted around 1300 years.

The sort of timeframe for which they now have evidence is much more consistent with an impact event than with "the slowdown of the Gulf Stream."

[bigheadfred]

I’m all for the big catastrophe event. But not necessarily a collision event. Maybe a glancing blow event. I was watching something (last night?) about whether or not a glancing blow from a cannonball could/would kill you. Do the same for the Earth. Fly a good sized object by the Earth, but not Venus, close enough to rock your world, cause some tilt and/or magnetic displacement, big, big water displacement, quakes. Basically the “works”. It would cause all kinds of hard to figure readings in different fields of study. But no big crater.

And Decimon, one small addition. The claim is made that frozen animals were feeding on “fresh” green plants in their mouths, stomach contents. I don’t find that so hard to swallow. I think it happened to me just yesterday.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

So it’s safe to say that there have been far more than three. :’)

I was referring to three types of ice ages, not to three ice ages.

[BIGLOOK]

What's the average life span of modern day Cassandras and Jeremiahs?

Is there any chance we'll out live them?

[Fred Nerks]

The Channeled Scablands

Some researchers have theorized that hundreds of megafloods in a cycle ranging over thousands of years formed the scars in Washington State. Electricity could have carved the region in minutes.

On September 20, 2005, National Public Broadcasting sponsored a NOVA television documentary, “Mystery of the Megaflood.” The program elucidated a theory for how Eastern Washington State was scoured down to the bedrock, leaving formations that geologists find difficult to explain from a uniformitarian perspective. Rather than relying on traditional models of slow, progressive erosion, a catastrophic hypothesis was proposed.

As the theory suggests, during the end of the last ice age, approximately 12,000 years ago, a flood of water taller than mountains swept down through valleys and drainage channels, moving at 120 kilometers per hour. The force of the water was so great that it washed away the forests, the topsoil and any signs of civilization that might have existed in its path. Nothing remained except humps of basalt lava, dry canyons, waterfalls that today have no water and deep chasms that mark where the colossal flow etched into the rocks...

SOURCE

[Miss Marple]

Fred, when I took my geology degree back in the 70's, the catastrophic explanation for the Washington Scablands was well-known, and was discussed quite extensively in my glacial geology class.

Melting glacial waters backed up behind a natural dam, and when the lake got too large for the natural dam to hold, it broke loose and headed downhill in a massive and devastating flood. We even studied aerial photos of the very large ripple marks seen in the flat lands west of the scoured area.

I am mystified about this article which acts like this is a new idea. Apparently at some point in the last 30 years the incremental theory has come to be the accepted explanation, and now the catastrophic people are re-surfacing.

I was also taught about rapid onset of ice ages, because back in the 70's the consnsus of the climatologists was that we were heading into another ice age.

[SunkenCiv]

Sure, just put ricin in the pot supply.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks!