Sabbath 26/5/29/120
Dear Friends,
Update to Global Warming and Bible Prophecy (No. 218)
We might now reflect on the facts and fiction of Global Warming. To put the
aspect of Global Warming into perspective it is important to take into consideration
two climatic fluctuations called the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the Little
Ice Age (LIA). The period called the Little Ice Age was in general one degree
colder in mean sea temperatures than they are at present, and the Medieval Warm
Period was one degree warmer than they are at present but we are fast approaching
that situation. Thus it can be argued that we are in the process of a gradual
increase in temperatures within what are normal climatic fluctuations observed
over the last two millennia.
The Medieval Warm Period partially coincides in time with the peak in solar activity named the Medieval Maximum (1100-1250 CE). Thus we might assume that an increase in solar activity will increase temperatures. We are experiencing such increases at present, and we might deduce from that activity what levels we might expect to experience notwithstanding human activity which is argued to exacerbate the temperature rises. The backward sunspot reversing the magnetic direction of the poles has just been sighted on the Sun and that indicates the next cycle has started. Scientists say it will be the most intense in over 50 years.
The Little Ice Age occurred 1400-1850 CE and the Medieval Warm Period was from 800-1300 CE. Thus the period between 1300 to 1400 saw a decrease in world temperatures associated with the thermal water circulations in the Atlantic. This was also associated with the El Nino and La Niña situations emanating from South America into the Pacific.
The results were that during the MWP in North America a relatively dry situation prevailed with droughts in the Central USA. Also East Africa had a dry period over this time. Europe was warmer and grapes and other warm climate vegetation were grown in Southern Britain. Such activities were also undertaken in Roman times in Britain.
There were distinctly cold periods about 1000-1100 CE in Antarctica, thus illustrating
the fact that "MWP" is a moveable term. Wikipedia points out that
during the "warm" period there were periods of both warmth and cold
regionally.
During the MWP, prolonged droughts affected many parts of the western US and
especially eastern California and the western Great Basin. Alaska experienced
three time intervals of comparable warmth. These periods were 1-300 CE, 850-1200
and post 1800.
This would seem to accord with the fact of the port activities in the Mediterranean at the time of Christ, and subsequently when the port of Ephesus was a significant sea port. Subsequently, it became a dryland city and was abandoned as the population moved some seven miles south to the new coast at what is now Kusadasi in modern Turkey. The sea level drop was approximately seven feet. Such a drop was also evidenced on the Australian Coast.
Corals in the tropical Pacific Ocean indicate that relatively cool, dry conditions may have persisted early in the millennium. These conditions are consistent with La Niña patterns. There is a scarcity of data for Australia for both MWP and LIA conditions. Wikipedia states that evidence from wave built shingle terraces argues for a permanently full Lake Eyre during the Ninth and Tenth centuries, consistent with this La Niña-like configuration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period
The evidence of itself is inadequate to show how lake levels varied from year to year, or what climatic conditions elsewhere in Australia were like. However, observations over the last 200 years indicate that when Lake Eyre is full the conditions to the east of it are consistently wetter that normal. Rain forests have existed in the plains.
Adhikari and Kumon (2001) have verified there, the existence of both the MWP and the LIA from sediments in Lake Nakatsuna in central Japan (ibid).
From the time frames and the core samples of the Saragossa Sea (see Wikipedia op. cit.) we see the two-degree fluctuations (one degree above and below our present level) and we might thus deduce that the noted variations have resulted in the seven feet, or just over two metre rises in mean sea levels.
From recent reports concerning the Greenland Cap we are now faced with a degree of melt that is some three times faster than initially measured from 1997 to 2003. The readers will be aware that the paper Global Warming and Bible Prophecy (No. 218) was issued in 1997 before any of this was really evident, and the conventional wisdom of the time showed a much longer time frame for any activity to become obvious. The fact is that the one foot, or 30 cm rise took three and a half years to effect and not the expected millennia.
It is quite clear that the two degree rise is not only a normal fluctuation experienced twice before in two thousand years, but that it also consistently occurs at the end and beginning of each millennium, and lasts for between three hundred and four hundred and fifty years. The result is that sea levels rise by at least seven feet each time.
There are approximately 28,500,000 cubic kilometres of ice on the world’s caps and glaciers. At present, based on observations of the Greenland cap, which has 10% of the ice, and is melting at the rate of some 240 cubic kilometres a year (three times faster than observed in the period 1997-2003), the annual loss might be 2400 cubic kilometres a year. For the seven feet loss we will need to increase another one-degree mean sea temperature.
In the colonisation of Greenland ca 982-996 CE under Eric the Red, it was noted that Greenland was in fact two islands in summer. It was uninhabited when the Danes arrived from Iceland in 982 and they lived there for some 450 years. Eric had to flee with his family and relatives and thralls from Iceland (called Thule) as he killed a man there. The last Paleo-Eskimo culture, the Early Dorset, disappeared in Greenland ca 200 CE, which was towards the end of the Roman Warm Period.
The colonists were thought to have been killed by the Eskimos (Inuit) when the temperatures dropped and their lifestyles became untenable. However, recent evidence shows that there is a European admixture to the Greenland Eskimos coming from the Celts, and there is also an Eskimo YDNA haplogroup Q line in an area of Norway from Eskimos introduced by the Vikings from Greenland.
The Dorset culture (named after Cape Dorset where they were found) were taller
people but less aggressive. They had spread to, or from North America and the
last settlement was found in Hudson Bay. They were found in 1824 on the visit
of HMS Griper, which anchored off Cape Pembroke on Coats Island in Hudson Bay.
They were called Sadlermiut. They lived on and around Southampton Island. Their
contact with westerners was to be their undoing and by 1896 there were only
70 left. In 1902 on a visit to the whaling vessel Active they contracted a disease
(probably Typhus) and the community was wiped out in weeks. Their DNA is not
known as yet.
(cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorset_%28culture%29)
Thus we can see that the fluctuation in mean sea levels at seven feet occurred twice in rising and twice in falling over the last two thousand years. The fluctuations in the earlier periods may have been greater. We have evidence from the Piri Reis map, which was compiled in 1513 by the Turkish navy from far older maps obtained from the library at Alexandria before it was burned, that shows the coast of Antarctica properly mapped and the American and African coasts shown in the correct longitudinal and latitudinal relationships. We could only determine both these relationships from the 1700s as the skill had been lost and was not understood when the map was compiled. The map indicates significant water level fluctuations and significant temperature rise and melt in Antarctica over the earlier “Warm Periods” probably the Roman Warm Period. It also indicated West Africa was significantly wetter as its river systems and lakes are mapped even in the Sahara where none now exists and there were very large lakes in Central and NE Spain. NW France seems to be underwater NE of Brest (see Cyrus Gordon, Before Columbus, Turnstone Press, 1972, pp, 71-73)
We can thus also conclude that a two-degree rise in mean sea temperature will result in a seven-foot rise in water levels over the period throughout the world. The last degree of the rise will cause exponential increase in water level rise. For each degree over that rise we can expect a consequent exponential rise in water levels. Temperatures have been increasing since 1850 and we are now over one degree warmer and increasing rapidly and the solar activity is also increasing. A predicted three to five degree rise will see further exponential increases. The Greenland melt has trebled since 2003 and will at least treble again this decade.
The end of the LIA in 1850 did not see a rapid temperature rise but rather it became exponential as we approached the middle of the Second century after the end of the cool period. In the 1700s the Thames froze over and the people held markets on it in cold snaps in winter.
In Roman times, which was during the previous Warm Period ca 1-300 we saw the Thames described as a wide estuary much wider and more navigable than it is today. So also the rivers in England in the MWP are depicted in tapestries and paintings as being much wider and more navigable than today, giving historians the misconception that the depictions were more imaginative. Much is incorrectly blamed on siltation.
Roman ruins in Britain had tiled marble floors and there is later evidence of braziers being placed on them and marking the floors. All indications are consistent with the drop in temperature from ca 300 onwards to 800 CE. The Roman buildings were abandoned for unknown reasons. It was probably for the previous LIA between 300 and 800 CE.
The warm periods that commenced with the end of one millennium and went for between 300 to 450 years into the next coincided with some natural activities. One period coincided with the Bible flood, and the Bible references to the springs of the deep might also be understood to include the caps that were melted and formed the continuous rain. We have God’s assurance He will not destroy the earth like this again but the potential for a lesser impact should not be discounted as these caps fluctuate. The next period would probably have been at the fall of Troy and the rise of Israel under Saul and David and went down to the fall of Israel to the Assyrians in 722 BCE.
We know for certain that the sea levels were much lower than they are at present and that those levels rose and covered larger areas of coastal peoples. We do not have the exact locations of their civilisations to excavate. These large-scale rises are indicative of the loss of polar caps that were in fact both on the earth’s landmasses. The North Pole appears to have been at one stage over Scandinavia and into Northern Europe. It headed towards Canada and now is heading back to Siberia. The Warm Period that emerged ca 2200 BCE saw a rise in sea levels that covered the earth’s then coastal civilisations. God may simply have caused a movement in the earth’s axis and a rise in mean sea temperatures that caused massive rainfall and permanent removal of the major northern polar cap. In that way He achieved the global flood of the Bible and major sea level rises. If the North Pole was over a landmass and had similar ice density to Antarctica then we are looking at a potential sea level rise of over 400 feet assuming the larger ice age caps and glaciers and the stabilisation of Antarctica in the East Basin. If the earth’s landmass was flatter as we understand it was then the flood would have been universal. It would also have created the Mediterranean Sea, as we know it. This event is placed over 10,000 years ago instead of 4,200 years ago. Much of that age is now underwater.
It follows to reason that as we have increased more than one degree from the end of the previous LIA that the next degree rise will see the exponential lift in sea levels to the seven feet level. This will place the coasts back at Ephesus and inundate the Thames estuary. All coastal areas will be affected. This should occur, based on past models, over the next ten to thirty years. By 2015 a rise of at least two feet could be evident. The faster the rise in temperature and the further it goes beyond another one degree will see further exponential increases.
There will be massive refugee problems as these rises occur. We will also see a number of Bible prophecies occur as a result, regarding some cities being placed under the waves.
As we move towards the fulfilment of prophecy we might mention another step in that direction. It has been decided to dam the Tigris. Coupled with the draining of the swamps around the Euphrates we will see the prophecy that men will walk over dry-shod. The Euphrates will be split into seven channels. God will also destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea or gulf with the force of His breath or Spirit (Ruach) (cf. Isa. 11:15).
Many cities we know now will be unworkable and cease to exist. Much of these activities will add to the problems we face in planning and development, and the system we now know will cease to exist. We need to plan in accordance with what we know will be the most probable eventuality.
Pray that God inspires our leaders and gives them eyes to see and ears to hear and the will to act in the interests of the people and not themselves.
Wade Cox
Coordinator General
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