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As warnings about the threat of rapid sea level-rise become increasingly urgent, one far-seeing, if dissenting, scientist has suggested it is likely the Biblical great flood did happen.
“I don’t think the biblical deluge is just a fairy tale,” Terence J Hughes, a retired University of Maine glaciologist living in South Dakota, told the New York Times.
“I think some kind of major flood happened all over the world, and it left an indelible imprint on the collective memory of mankind that got preserved in these stories.”
n some ways, Hughes is a surprising figure to be quoted by the NYT.
A Newsweek article on him three years ago, credited Hughes with predicting the likely collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet as early as 1973.
But he is a contrarian, who doesn’t consider climate change to be a great concern.
In fact, according to Newsweek he sees upsides including that carbon dioxide is good for plants, thawed permafrost could be farmed, and rebuilding coastal cities would create jobs.
The New York Times’ interest in Hughes was as part of a series produced by a team visiting Antarctica.
His quote came in an article about the risks of ice sheets melting and coastal cities being inundated by rising seas.
According to the article the great flood of the Bible – and of other early literature – happened at the end of the last ice age.
Beginning 25,000 years ago ice sheets began to melt and the sea level started rising. Over thousands of years, coastlines receded by as much as 160km.
If the sea level rise from melting ice sheets under way now turned out to be as fast as the worst-case projections, “it could lead to a catastrophe without parallel in the history of civilisation,” the Times said.
The impact of climate change on Antarctica is a key interest of New Zealand scientists, with the latest research to be presented at the New Zealand Antarctic Science Conference in Dunedin in late June. Continue reading
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- Article by Michael Daly in Stuff
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