The Altithermal, sea levels and Hansen 1988

One of the unsolved mysteries of any theory of climate change has always been how the glacier building phase of an ice age starts, when the proxy records show it was very warm, and then after it gets really cold, where does all the snow come from?
This is discussed in the original papers, but never resolved. Climate models are made to predict warming, with a drastic decrease in snow, so they don't answer it.

Antarctica is still in the current ice age "glacier building period". So is Greenland. The very real fear of the alarmists is that this will soon change, and these two massive sources of water locked up as ice, will start melting. This was the fear and the prediction of Hansen in 1988, when he quite rightly predicted a 10 foot rise in sea level before now (2022)

"Rightly" meaning if his calculations were correct. Why would Hansen think this? Because he knew, (and knows) that during the Altithermal (that's the term he used in his paper) when the planet was much warmer than now, sea level was 10 feet above present levels.

There are many different names for it, but for some reason most present day alarmists don't even know this warm period happened. I'm not kidding.

Altithermal, Climatic Optimum, Holocene Megathermal, Holocene Optimum, Holocene Thermal Maximum, Hypsithermal, and Mid-Holocene Warm Period, Holocene Climate Optimum (HCO)

This was a very warm period that occurred in the interval roughly 9,000 to 5,000 years ago BP, with a thermal maximum around 8000 years BP.

During this time Greenland was not building glaciers, it was melting, and so were all the other high altitude glaciers (except Antarctica). The global see level was around 10 feet higher, and entire ice caps (that now exist) were not in existence.

Hansen was freaked out because he was sure CO2 was the driver, and we were turning the planet back into that kind of world, warm, wet and high sea levels. The Sahara was lush at that time, and Lake Chad was MegaChad, the largest body of fresh water that ever existed on the planet.

Trees grew on the shore of the Arctic Ocean, trees grew all the way up far past the current snow lines in mountains, warm water sea life existed in the North Atlantic Ocean, it was a different world. Rivers had tremendous floods, tropical life forms existed much further north and south, and frost and freezes were rare except in high altitudes and near the poles.


10-26-22, 12:25 PM