[madison]

OK, I just got done watching "The Day After Tomorrow" - is any of that plausible? I know nothing much about global warming, ocean currents etc.

Any ideas?????

As if I wasn't worried enough already, lol.....

[Wildwell]

In short – no.

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/rapid.htm

The quickest change would be a decade, but even then in nothing like such an extreme way.

Fo a good skinny on climate change see

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/ear ... ate-change

TDAT is just another Hollywood film. I don't think it did the 'climate change' camp much good because it's deliberately exaggerated just for filmic effect.

Even Peak oil wouldn't produce instant change on Planet earth, the only things that have the power to do so is: Super volcanoes, Asteroid strikes and nuclear war.

[frankthetank]

An ice age will happen again...When?...Well thats tough to figure, but climate change has been shown (through ice core samples) to change very rapidly (flip) from a warm period to an ice period. I wouldn't worry about it too much, it'll probably be awhile

I recommend this book:

[katkinkate]

The superfreeze storm idea was based on conclusions from a study of a discovery in Siberia of frozen mammoths with half chewed flowers in their mouths. The flowers were identified as a species that grows in warmer climes much further south than where the mammoths were found.

Basically the story goes, about 10 000 years ago that area was much warmer at the time and this herd of mammoths were peacefully grazing on the flowery springtime meadow, when they suddenly froze. Considering the size of the beasts, it would have to be a very cold cold snap to freeze them solid and it never warmed up enough for them to thaw out since. So, the sudden superstorm caused by changes in ocean currents was one possibility put forward to attempt to explain it the abrupt climate change in Siberia.

[Enquest]

As far as I know that is the only explanetion they can come up. That some supper blizart hit those beast. How else could they get frozen that fast with flowers and all...

[katkinkate]

Actually there was another explanation that I heard about, but am not sure how seriously it was considered.

Someone pointed out that 10 000 years ago the earth was just coming out of the last iceage and suggested that the thawing of the top layers of soil may have weakened the roof of chasms in the frozen soil below, the mammoths weight finished the job and they fell into a hole in the frozen ground and died trapped in frozen ground. The hole caved in and eventually erosion thinned the layers above them until they were close enough to the surface to be found last century.

Although the ground would have to have been very cold to snap-freezed a mammoth right to the core. I think I read there was no spoilage of the stomach contents either.

Personally, I think I prefer the climate change/superstorm idea myself.

[EnviroEngr]

Lifting a post I made to a different board May 27th last year:


I'm sure many have by now seen ads for the next thriller (scaremongerer) SciFi flick "The Day After Tomorrow"

To balance this fantasy with realism, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change put up some good information and a PDF report on their website that scientifically deconstructs, in summary format, the Climate assumptions frequently taken for granted in the public forum. {The lack of differential equations and calculus in general, sans log/log graphs makes this thing an easier read than some I've seen. The rigors are in the Reference section.}

In reference to the movie in particular, they have dedicated a page specifically to it.


Hope this helps....

[EnviroEngr]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('katkinkate', 'T')he superfreeze storm idea was based on conclusions from a study of a discovery in Siberia of frozen mammoths with half chewed flowers in their mouths. The flowers were identified as a species that grows in warmer climes much further south than where the mammoths were found.

Basically the story goes, about 10 000 years ago that area was much warmer at the time and this herd of mammoths were peacefully grazing on the flowery springtime meadow, when they suddenly froze. Considering the size of the beasts, it would have to be a very cold cold snap to freeze them solid and it never warmed up enough for them to thaw out since. So, the sudden superstorm caused by changes in ocean currents was one possibility put forward to attempt to explain it the abrupt climate change in Siberia.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('katkinkate', '
') thawing of the top layers of soil may have weakened the roof of chasms in the frozen soil below, the mammoths weight finished the job and they fell into a hole in the frozen ground and died trapped in frozen ground. The hole caved in and eventually erosion thinned the layers above them until they were close enough to the surface to be found last century.

Although the ground would have to have been very cold to snap-freezed a mammoth right to the core. I think I read there was no spoilage of the stomach contents either.

Personally, I think I prefer the climate change/superstorm idea myself.

[EnviroEngr]

OK.

Here we have William R. Farrand's reply to proponents of the rapid-freeze theory, penned in August, 1962:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('William R. Farrand', 'L')ippman's letter is typical of several which I have received since the article on frozen mammoths appeared. All these letters indicate that the writers prefer to retain their former ideas about woolly mammoths in spite of abundant evidence to the contrary. I will not reiterate here all the arguments which I have previously presented, but I wish to emphasize certain conclusions once more.

It is surprising to read that "the frozen mammoths are not found in rivers or holes but are often found on the highest points of the tundra." Certainly the best-studied mammoths have come from river banks on the Berezovka, Mamontova, and Lena rivers. The Lena Delta discovery is the Adams mammoth, which Lippman himself cites.

The botanical evidence speaks for itself. Any treatise on plant ecology and distribution shows that these assemblages (Table 1 in my article) belong in the Tundra and high boreal zones of northern Siberia, Alaska, and northern Canada. There is absolutely no evidence of forests; all the tree species are dwarf and scrub forms. Only a slight shift, if any, in vegetation zones is indicated. People who have not been in high arctic areas appear to have little conception of the relatively luxuriant vegetation there grasses, flowers, shrubs, and dwarf trees. It is amazing what 24 hours of sunshine a day will do!

It is unfortunate that such critics seldom dig back into original references. If Lippman had read Tolmachoff's 1929 paper (written in English), instead of reading only Hapgood's interpretation of Tolmachoff's ideas, he would realize that Tolmachoff's ideas on death and preservation are nearly the same as mine.

I would like to say something about Lippman's concept of "gradualism," which he has apparently confused with uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism ("the present is a key to the past") is the geologist's concept that processes that acted only the earth in the past are the same processes that are operating today, on the same scale and at approximately the same rates. A catastrophe such as a river flood or a tidal wave could have happened in the past just as it does today. Also, the very slow downcutting of streams has always taken place, although the rates have been variable in time and space. It is not logically sound to postulate a major catastrophe on a scale far beyond anything we have experienced to explain geological phenomena which can be adequately explained by the everyday processes which we can observe around us.

Certainly the death (suffocation, in several cases) of the frozen mammoths was catastrophic, and they were frozen in a very short time, geologically speaking—probably in much less than 1 year. Decomposition of the mammoth carcasses was retarded by the cold climate and the very low bacteria count in the Arctic, and by burial of the beasts at the time they died. In at least some cases, decomposition of the flesh had begun before the carcass was completely frozen. Such catastrophes are in accord with the doctrine of uniformitarianism.

Finally, a word about volcanism as a cause of widespread glaciation. The volcanic theory fails on two main counts : it is both quantitatively and chronologically inadequate. The largest volcanic explosions we know for example, that of Krakatau in 1883 - had a very small and short-lived effect on world climate, whereas many decades and centuries of climatic cooling are required to build continental ice sheets.

In addition, the effects of volcanic dust are strongly restricted to areas close to volcanoes. There is little, if any, evidence of world-wide, or hemisphere-wide, volcanism, whereas glaciation was world-wide! Moreover, some periods of great volcanic activity, such as that which produced the tremendous lava fields of the Columbia River Plateau in Washington and Oregon in mid-Tertiary time, were not accompanied by glaciation. Many such examples could be cited. Furthermore, it is highly improbable that volcanic holocausts could account for the several fluctuations of the Pleistocene Ice Age: four major and numerous minor advances and retreats of continental ice sheets within the last 1 million years.


WILLIAM R. FARRAND
Department of Geology,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

[lotrfan55345]

Here is the good ole' WHOI's point on abrupt climate change.

http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/cur ... limate.htm

Not as severe as DAT (obviously) but still scarish.

[PenultimateManStanding]

EE, if the mammoths took a year to freeze, then to paraphrase Peter, Paul and Mary, "Why aren't all the flowers gone?"

[EnviroEngr]

Given the paucity of data and adequate theory to explain the anomalous phenomena, we may not ever know. There are several fields of science here that have to commingle for answers to come forth of sufficient quality for the rigors of the Truth Table tests to be satisfied.

I can continue to keep looking in the JSTOR archives to see if later studies were conducted that investigated the mechanisms responsible for this freeze-in-place event. There may be answers lurking in there if collaborations were ever undertaken to grapple with this mystery.

As Spock would say, "Fascinating."