Heads in the sand

Quote:

On 2007-02-21 05:41:44 -1000, Peeta <PedroGonzales88@AOL.com> said:

I find it interesting when birds other than the ostrich stick their
collective heads in the sand. Can you naysayers explain the writings
of aboriginal predecessors of images found on rocks and in caves that
depict a wave washing inland and sandy soil deposits on the Australian
Eastern coast up to 100 miles inland? They (The waves) came from
landslides off the Hawaiian islands. Landslides that were only 50-75%
the content of the "Hilina Slump". Go ahead and deny it. Deny the
facts, then go to rest and bury your head again.

The last great Hawaiian landslide (Alika-II) was 110,000 years ago. There
were no humans in Australia, or anywhere else, then.

While it has been argued that the Alika-II tsunami affected Australia, the
only evidence found that might be old enough---groves carved into the
rocks of Tura Point---do not withstand scrutiny. Those rocks are far less
resistant to erosion than had been assumed, as is evident from severe
weathering of doorsteps and window mantels made of rock quarried from Tura
Point and used by the first white settlers in building their houses. There
is no way the surface of Tura Point could preserve features over 10k years
old, let alone 100k.

As far as the rest of the Pacific is concerned, a landslide in the
Hawaiian Islands is pretty much a point source. Waves from a point source
decay much more rapidly with distance than from a line source (e.g., an
earthquake). The path from the North Pacific to Australia is also peppered
with islands and shallow banks, which scatter tsunami energy. Even if the
entire island of Hawaii collapsed (where could it go?), the resulting
tsunami would be too small to cause any damage in Australia. Before a
tsunami is invoked to explain a marine deposit on land, the more prosaic
explanations (storms, sea-level variation, hydroisostasy) must be
disproved.

The facts are this;
it is going to happen again, and most governments are going to try to
hide the facts from the public. That is why I use the NewsGroups to
state the "Facts" about the dangers facing humanity. This may save a
few lives by letting them know in advance the dangers that MAY face
them. A landslide in the North Atlantic 5,000 years ago or so created
a tsunami that hit Scotland and Wales and washed inland 3-5 miles. The
wave wasn't seismic in origin, and the latest mapping of the NA
finally located the landslide near Greenland.

Not Greenland but Norway. You are talking of the Storegga Slide, which
occurred about 7,000 years ago. The resulting tsunami hit Scotland, the
Shetlands, the Faeroes, and Iceland, but didn't touch Wales. Maximum runup
on the east coast of Scotland was 6 meters, and inundation (across a low
spit and up an estuary, was about one mile, not three). All of the
locations at which evidence of the tsunami have been found are in the near
field: within 1,000 kilometers of the landslide. These observations have
been widely publicized. Landslide-generated tsunamis are an acknowledged
local hazard along the coasts of Israel, Greece, southern France, Norway,
the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and Canada, and many other places. They
are no secret, and are included in the mix by emergency managers.

-Gerard
[personal views only]