THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

NEW ORLEANS AND THE BLACK SEA | 2005-10-05

Twelve thousand years ago, give or take a klick, there was a huge land which was below sea level.

It was very warm and very fertile. It was protected from the sea by a solid block of land many miles across.

But over the years that land block became smaller and smaller. Today, we would blame global warming and people driving SUVs. But there weren't many SUVs back then.

Finally the land block collapsed and a wave came larger than any seen since came in all at once. It was unimaginably large. Within months thousands, yes I said thousands, of square miles were inundated. We do no know how much of it was coverd in a matter of days by the first titanic wave.

Today that once-fertile valley, easily large enough to put a sizable country in, is called the Black Sea. The Black Sea has several hundred feet of river water on top, but the rest of the way down it is still the heavier sea water, the salt water that came across in the first giant wave.

And a Kyoto Treaty would not have stopped it.

COMMENTS (6)

#1 joe rorke | 2005-10-05 16:52

To put it mildly, Bob, that is a fascinating piece of information. Fascinating, I say. The Bible says ,"the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." It says it in there somewhere, I think. "Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth." It says that too. Somewhere in there. "With God all things are possible." Whoops! That leaves room for a whole lot of things. Stuff happens. That much we know.

Sincerely,

joe rorke

#2 Improbulus Maximus | 2005-10-06 01:00

Are you certain the Black Sea can't be blamed on Bush? There is oil in the area, right? Well then, it has to be a Zionist/necocon/Halliburton plot. Somehow.

#3 Bob | 2005-10-07 16:45

Improbulus, you are being ridiculous.

George W. wasn't even around when the Black Sea area went under.

Neither was George Bush Senior.

The whole thing was obviously the fault of Prescott Bush, George Bush

Senior's father.

It hurts me deeply when Blog commenters can't get their history straight.

#4 Mark | 2005-10-07 17:21

"It hurts me deeply when Blog commenters can't get their history straight."

Bob should know -- he was probably around when the Black Sea was in it's infancy.

#5 Bob | 2005-10-07 17:33

Mark, you smartass, you're WRONG!

I was a thousand miles away when it happened.

#6 Elizabeth | 2005-10-13 12:22

Two reasons the climate seems to be warming are (1) temperatures used to be recorded

downtown and (2)"normal" on daily temperature is the average of the last 30 years.

Most towns here in the U.S. were built on ridges (high places). Back when the local

weather was done from instruments near the local radio station, the local radio

station was in the central business district ("downtown") which was always in or

near the original site of the town. Over the decades, the local weather station

moved to the local airport: a town's first airport might have been built on flat

high ground, but it was close to downtown. The new airport was built further out,

often on low flat ground near a body of water -- and temperatures on low flat ground

near a body of water are almost always warmer than they are on a high place, such as the

ridge that Main Street was centered on. (There are exceptions: Washington, DC, for

example, was intentionally built in a swamp.)

In the last 30 years, we've had some remarkably cold winters, mostly during the

late '70s and early '80s, at and near the record solar (spot) maximum that occurred

in 1978. Earlier, between 1930 and 1960, we experienced what has been called

"The Little Climatic Optimum," which was a period of generally remarkably

mild weather. That was closed out by the record solar maximum that occurred in

the winter of 1957-1958.