We've all heard the familiar global warming hysteria. As the earth's temperature increases, glaciers will melt thereby causing the world's seas to rise. Some global warming alarmists have gone so far as to describe how Florida, Manhattan, and England (among other places) will all eventually be under water. Under these scenarios, the cause of global warming is consistently attributed to man's use of fossil fuels.

But what would happen if we had evidence of glaciers melting and massive flooding that occurred 10,000 years ago - long before man burned fossil fuels to any significant degree ? Such evidence would certainly be considered evidence that global warming is a natural phenomenon - as opposed to man-made.

Well - this evidence actually exists and was reported in a Yahoo News article (via LiveScience.com) titled "Stone Age Settlement Found Under English Channel." And how did the article handle the obvious global warming implications ? The answer is that the global warming angle was ignored altogether (see also Lynn Davidson's prior post).

The article itself is very interesting in that it details how archaeologists have found an estimated 8,000 year old human settlement under the English Channel.

Erosion on the floor of the English Channel is revealing the remains of a busy Stone Age settlement, from a time when Europe and Britain were still linked by land, a team of archaeologists says ... 

Lobsters mucking around the seabed at the site about 10 years ago revealed a cache of Mesolithic flints, prompting further excavations that uncovered two hearths (ancient ovens) dangling precariously from the edge of an underwater cliff.

Burnt wood fragments gouged with cut marks and a layer of wood chippings were found lying under 35 feet of water during the latest dig. Divers brought the material to the surface still embedded in slabs of the sea floor that were carried up in specially-designed boxes, which were then pieced back together and examined and dated in the lab.

"We now have unequivocal evidence of human activity at the site," [archaeologist Garry] Momber told LiveScience. "There were people here actively making stuff and being quite industrious."

So how exactly did this ancient civilization end up being 35 feet under water ? Here's the explanation:

As the climate began to warm up near the end of the Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, people were moving into Northern Europe and settling down in the many river valleys left behind by melting glaciers, Momber explained. Many of the valleys, such as the ones now beneath the English Channel, were eventually inundated completely when temperatures returned to normal.

Elsewhere the article summarily declares that the: "End of [the] Ice Age caused channel flood." The article conspicuously does not use the term "global warming," nor does not mention the current global warming debate, but it does (as noted above) declare that the temperatures at the end of the Ice Age had "returned to normal."

And how significant is it exactly that this settlement was found 35 feet under water ? A prior Yahoo News article - again via LiveScience.com - cited an IPCC (Integovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report estimating that "the sea level rise (due to ice melt and the thermal expansion of ocean water) could be 7 to 23 inches by the end of the century."

So man-made global warming might - at most - cause seas to rise 23 inches this century. But 10,000 years ago, a natural (not man-made) warming occurred so significant that a former village is now buried under 35 feet of water in the English Channel. The ancient warming actually formed the English Channel, according to the article. 

If history shows that purely natural forces can cause a sea rise of at least 35 feet, then how can the media be so certain that current climate changes are man-made ? They accomplish their certainty by ignoring evidence that doesn't fit the template, which is exactly what occurred in the Yahoo article.

—Jason Aslinger is a private practice attorney in Greenville, Ohio.