Don't they think this might just be the natural progression of things.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories…..009/04/29/…in4978510.shtml

(AP) Massive ice chunks are crumbling away from a shelf in the western Antarctic Peninsula, researchers said Wednesday, warning that 1,300 square miles of ice – an area larger than Rhode Island – was in danger of breaking off in coming weeks.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the last century, but began retreating in the 1990s. Researchers believe it was held in place by an ice bridge linking Charcot Island to the Antarctic mainland.

But the 127-square-mile bridge lost two large chunks last year and then shattered completely on April 5.

"As a consequence of the collapse, the rifts, which had already featured along the northern ice front, widened and new cracks formed as the ice adjusted," the European Space Agency said in a statement Wednesday on its Web site, citing new satellite images.

The first icebergs broke away on Friday, and since then some 270 square miles of ice have dropped into the sea, according to the satellite data.

"There is little doubt that these changes are the result of atmospheric warming," said David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey.

The falling away of Antarctic ice shelves does not, in itself, raise sea levels, since the ice was already floating in the sea. But such coastal tables of ice usually hold back glaciers, and when they disintegrate that land ice will often flow more quickly into the sea, contributing to sea-level rise.

Researchers said the quality and frequency of the ESA satellite images have allowed them to analyze the Wilkins shelf breakup far more effectively than any previous event.

"For the first time, I think, we can really begin to see the processes that have brought about the demise of the ice shelf," Vaughan said.

He said eight ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula have shown signs of retreat over the last few decades.

"The retreat of Wilkins Ice Shelf is the latest and the largest of its kind," he said.

The Wilkins shelf, which is the size of Jamaica, lost 14 percent of its mass last year, according to scientists who are looking at whether global warming is the cause of its breakup.

Average temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula have risen by 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 50 years – higher than the average global rise, according to studies.

Over the next several weeks, scientists estimate the Wilkins shelf will lose some 1,300 square miles – a piece larger than the state of Rhode Island, or two-thirds the size of Luxembourg.

One researcher said, however, that it was unclear how the situation would evolve.

"We are not sure if a new stable ice front will now form between Latady Island, Petrie Ice Rises and Dorsey Island," said Angelika Humbert of Germany's Muenster University Institute of Geophysics.

But even more ice could break off "if the connection to Latady Island is lost," she said, "though we have no indication that this will happen in the near future."

Man comes along and develops to a point technologically where he is affecting the Earth's environment through the, so called, Green House affect. This in turn melts the ice caps which flood us pesky humans out, leaving only a few, and the process starts all over again. Maybe the flood myth is not just one flood, but many throughout the ages.

I do believe the Earth goes through phases, and that any affect we might have is minimal at best.

Here's something of interest I found on Wikipedia. I had read of this before in another book on the subject.

I think the name of the book was "Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization" by Graham Hancock.

The lower Tigris-Euphrates Valley, reflooding the Persian Gulf (12,000 years ago)

Another type 1 theory. When sea levels were low, the combined Tigris-Euphrates river flowed through a wide flat marshy landscape. The Persian Gulf today has an average depth of only 35 m. During the most recent glaciation, which ended 12,000 years ago, worldwide sea levels dropped 120 to 130 m, leaving the bed of the Persian Gulf well above sea level during the glacial maximum. It had to have been a swampy freshwater floodplain, where water was retained in all the hollows. High in the Taurus Mountains glaciation would have been extensive.

The drainage of the combined glacial era Tigris-Euphrates made its way down the marshes of this proto-Shatt-al-Arab to the Strait of Hormuz into the Arabian Sea. Reports of the exploration ship "Meteor" have confirmed that the Persian Gulf was an entirely dry basin about 15,000 BC. Close to the steeper Iranian side a deep channel apparently marks the course of the ancient extended Shatt al-Arab, being called the "Ur-Schatt". A continuous shallow shelf across the top (north) of the Persian Gulf and down the west side (at 20 m) suggests that this section was the last to be inundated. At the Straits of Hormuz the bathymetric profile indicates a division into two main channels which continue across the Bieban Shelf before dropping to a depth of c 400 m in the Gulf of Oman; the deeper parts of these channels may be due to delta deposits at the edge of the deep ocean collapsing in a succession of big underwater landslides, causing underwater erosion by the resulting turbidity currents.

There is a theory that there was also a Black-Sea-type sill collapse at the Strait of Hormuz at the outlet of the Persian Gulf, so converting this case into type 3.

In a 1981 Journal of Cuneiform Studies article, "The Tangible Evidence for the Earliest Dilmun", Theresa Howard-Carter espoused her theory identifying Dilmun with Qurna, an island at the Strait of Hormuz. Her scenario put the original mouths of the Tigris-Euphrates rivers, which she thought should be the site of the primeval Dilmun, at or even beyond the Straits of Hormuz. Mainstream archaeologists have avoided mentioning her article for fear of its apparent catastrophism, an awkward subject in geology. Theresa Howard-Carter also wrote: "It is more likely that the original Persian Gulf inhabitants lived along the banks of the lower or extended Shatt al-Arab, ranging some 800 km across the dry Persian Gulf bed. We can thus postulate that the pre-Sumerian cultures had more than ample time to be born and flourish in a riverine setting, encouraged by the agricultural potential and the blessings of a temperate climate. The fact that the body of proof for the existence of these societies must now lie at the bottom of the Persian Gulf furnishes at least a temporary excuse for the archaeologist's failure to produce evidence for their material culture."

In our time, mangrove edge habitat and coral reefs encrustation of fossil dunes characterize the Persian Gulf. Mangroves recolonize easily from established mangrove fringe colonies elsewhere in the Arabian Sea. Artificial reefs are being established today along the coast of Iran. The present-day natural reef developments in the Persian Gulf, corals grow on hardground substrates but have not yet formed the massive calcium carbonate structures familiar from, say, Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

The article Dive conditions described by Eric Bjornstrom found in 1999 in Dubai coral-encrusted sand barrier islands situated 32 km off the coast of the Saudi city of Jubail. There lies a chain of five coral cays, barely above the tide. They appear to be formations called diapirs in which a mobile core containing minerals of low density such as salt, deforms under pressure. The core pushes upwards, deforming overlying rock to form a dome. An ancient diapir at Enorama formed an island in shallow seas, buoyed up by salt. There are similar examples today in the Persian Gulf.

In addition to this large scale flooding of the Persian Gulf there is confirmed evidence of relatively recent extended local flooding in this part of the world. Excavations in Iraq, for example, have shown evidence of a flood at Shuruppak around 2900-2750 BCE which extended nearly as far as the city of Kish (whose king, Etana, supposedly founded the first Sumerian dynasty after the Deluge). Sir C. Leonard Woolley’s excavations at Ur south of Uruk in the 1920s found a more than 2.5 m thick homogeneous silty loam stratum that was void of artifacts, which Woolley in 1931 ascribed to Noah’s Flood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D…..ehistoric)