Thursday, September 22, 2016

Finding How Ocean Fossils Got to the Mountains in Antarctica

The quick read is this is everything anti-climatists hate since it goes into detail about the rate of change in polar ice and how it may go much faster at different times.  (Science Daily:  Antarctic mystery solved?)

For this research, scientists were going into the mountains in Antarctica to find miniscule fossilized diatoms which somehow got there from the ocean.  Tell me again about hating your job as my dream employment was never going outside in a storm at two hundred below zero to collect microscopic fossils in the snow.

There were two schools of antarctic diatom researchers (seriously) with one proposing the idea the diatoms were blown up to the mountains by the wind.  The other school was proposing the diatoms got there after retreat of the ice.  The windblown theory was shot by the research.

The revised thinking about the transport of these diatoms means the changes in ice and consequently sea levels can come much faster than projected.  Whereas generally the thinking is sea level rise is a gradual thing, this research gives a strong indication it's not regular at all.


It's hardly sci-fi when the situation is really one of logistics.  A whole lot of people will get their feet wet without some type of addressing of what comes.  The research shows they may get a whole lot wetter than anyone imagines so that brings a nice touch of the dramatic.  It doesn't have to be dramatic, tho, as it's only a Hollywood disaster epic if no-one (i.e. anti-climatists) will do anything to prepare for it.  Argue all you like but there seems little for it but to move inland and north.


The ultra-warped sci-fi is "Waterworld" but the coolest part in the movie was the boat.  There really wasn't that much sci-fi in the boat or the movie, tho.

-  The sea level rose.  Yahoo.  (Climate scientists aren't projecting a rise to that level)

-  There was some kind of steampunk mechanism for turning urine into potable water.

Apart from that, there really wasn't much else.  There was some bugaboo about mutants which seemed to have been caused by some long-forgotten nuke war which caused the sea level rise??  That made no sense whatsoever.  Jeanne Tripplehorn was exceptionally gorgeous as the barely-clothed partner to Kevin Costner so that made up for quite a bit.


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