Sea Level Rose 400 Feet After Last Ice Age

Big things are coming on July 12th. Kosmogonia Launch Event. Click the link to sign up!

He asks listeners to imagine standing on a beach and watching sea level drop 400 feet, the exact amount it rose after the last ice age. The point is simple: you would not still be on the beach. You would be standing miles inland from a coastline that had moved dramatically outward. This is the scale of change that occurred roughly 12,000 years ago, a rise of over 400 feet as the ice sheets melted. The modern conversation about a foot of rise in the next century exists in a completely different context when placed against that backdrop. The geological record shows that sea level has moved violently and repeatedly throughout the Holocene, reshaping coastlines, flooding river valleys, and altering the distribution of human populations. Understanding that history does not diminish concern for current changes, but it does demand perspective. The question he poses is not rhetorical. It is designed to make the listener visualize the true magnitude of what the planet has already experienced.