Bruce Becker [N9VID]

I was watching the travel channel this week. It was a special about the Grand Canyon.

A scientist was lowering himself over the edge and down the side of the canyon walls. He stopped and explained how the walls of the canyon were a great timeable. From the top to the bottom you could see from just a few thousand years to over a billion years back into the earth’s history. The place he stopped was called the “Red Rock.” He explained this part of the rock face represented about 250 million years ago. The thickness of the sediment area told him how most of North America was covered in water during this warming period.

Wait a minute, did he say, this warming period? Do you mean this has happened before?

Researchers from New Zealand examined the east Antarctic ice sheet. They concluded this sheet is the last ice to respond to the effects of global warming and shows no sign of any increased sea levels because of it. They found that sometime between 7,000 and 13,000 years ago, this sheet melted from 1910 feet to 1,150 feet and rose sea levels as much as 330 feet.  

Do you mean the ice in Antarctic has melted before and then re-froze?     Reference - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070627/ap_on_sc/antarctica_ice_sheet

Researchers led by Kenneth L. Smith Jr., of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research, said Icebergs that break off Antarctica and drift away turn out to be hotspots of life.  The melting ice also dumps particles scraped off Antarctica into the ocean, providing a pool of nutrients that feed plankton. The abundance extended nearly 2 1/2 miles away from the drifting ice. By promoting life surrounding them, the icebergs also may have an impact on reducing the excess carbon in the atmosphere — at least somewhat countering the greenhouse warming that helped make them break free in the first place. “One important consequence of the increased biological productivity is that free-floating icebergs can serve as a route for carbon dioxide drawdown and sequestration of particulate carbon as it sinks into the deep sea,” Smith said. This additional role of removing carbon from the atmosphere may have implications for global climate models that need to be further studied.

Do you mean nature has a way to conteract the things it doesn’t like?  Reference - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070621/ap_on_sc/iceberg_hotspots

Who would have thought, and I didn’t even have to make it up.