Sunday, April 15, 2007

LONG ISLAND WAS FORMED BY GLACIATION, AND THE RETREAT OF GLACIERS - TWICE, AND ALL BEFORE MAN-MADE CO2


I grew up on Long Island - a place CREATED by climate change, by global warming and global cooling - FACT:
The top layer of Long Island was made by large sheets of ice called a glaciers. These glaciers were formed when snow fell but it was too cold to melt, which created blocks of ice. The first glacier came 60,000 years ago and was followed by another glacier 21,000 years ago.

The first glacier, which occurred 60,000 years ago, was the Wisconsian Glacier. It moved south across Canada and Northern America. It sharpened peaks of mountains, carried boulders, rocks, gravel, and soil in a frozen wall of ice hundreds of feet high. Large amounts of debris were deposited in mounds of hills stretching from Brooklyn to Montauk. This area is known as the Ronkonkoma Terminal Moraine. This glacier also created great rivers, making vast flatlands from the moraine to the Atlantic Ocean. This was the Hempstead Outwash Plain.

Temperature affected the creation of Long Island greatly. In the Northern Hemisphere warm and cold temperature gaps lasted tens of thousands of years. After the first movement of the glacier, it melted back. The sea level rose, most likely separating Long Island from the mainland.

About 40,000 years later, the climate cooled again. The glacier advanced to almost the same position, staying along the North Shore. When it began to melt, another moraine was deposited. This ridge runs from Brooklyn Heights to Orient Point. Because of the reappearance of the glacier, Long Island is not completely hilly like the North Shore nor completely flat like Mid-Island area. Instead Long Island is a combination of both surfaces.

The Wisconsian Glacier created many different land forms. Geologists think that ice projecting out of the wall of a glacier carved the deep indents of the North Shore, such as Oyster Bay and Cold Spring Harbor. The debris from this area was deposited on the peninsulas such as Great Neck and Manhasset Neck. The glacier also created lakes, gullies, and added boulders to Long Island. Lakes and ponds were made by huge amounts of glacial ice that later melted.

The way in which Long Island was formed resulted in two different terrains. The North Shore contains many bays, harbors, especially in the western section (separated from one another by wooded peninsulas called "necks"). Small, irregular hills with swamps and ponds fill the areas in between. On the other hand, the South Shore was a flat outwash plain, which is now made of mainly sand and gravel and gradually slopes to the sea. From Rockaway to Montauk Point is seventy five miles of sandbars and beaches with several inlets. The difference in the island's geography was a result of only the North Shore being covered with ice.
FACT: CLIMATE CHANGE IS NATURAL. ALWAYS HAS BEEN.

PROBABLY, THE PLACE YOU GREW UP ALSO HAS AN ANTI-MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING GEOLOGICAL HISTORY. FIND A LINK AND LET US KNOW IN THE COMMENTS SECTION.

3 comments:

  1. I consider Ohio my "growing-up" place...

    Found these links(in order of how I liked them):

    http://www.ohiodnr.com/dnap/physiographic.htm

    http://www.geocities.com/ohiogeology/glacial.html

    http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1288

    http://www.coastalohio.com/natural.asp?id=6

    http://tvl1.geo.uc.edu/ice/projects/lab97/johnson/FINAL/IMAGES/PROJEC~1.HTM


    Now I live in California. Found these two - both mostly about Yosemite. First better than the second(unless you're really into geology):

    http://glaciers.pdx.edu/gdb/maps/all.php?page=CaliforniaGlaciers.html

    http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF16/1678.html

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  2. suek - thanks for the GREAT links!

    here's a quote from the first:

    "After nearly two million years, the last great Ice Age ended 10,000 years ago. Two-thirds of Ohio had been buried under glaciers, which scoured and shaped the landscape, then covered it with thick layers of glacial till, comprised of sands, gravel, and clay."

    GLACIERS. and they melted NATURALLY.

    maybe if al gore was around 10,000 years ago, then Ohio would still be under ice!

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  3. Denmark is a glacial moraine and it wouldn't exist today without previous cycles of global warming. And while the States have been "enjoying" cold weather we in Scandinavia have been enjoying a warm sunny springtime. So as far as I am concerned the longer global warming keeps the next Ice Age at bay, the better!

    ReplyDelete