Posted on Wednesday 25th April 2007 Scientists at the University
of Birmingham have unearthed a stark warning from the bottom of
the sea on the speed of climate change and how we could suffer
the effects over the next century. Researchers have used new,
advanced technology to map and explore a lost prehistoric world
deep beneath the North Sea – the results of which could
fundamentally change our attitudes towards global warming. In
the largest survey of this kind ever, researchers have analysed
seismic data, originally collected for oil exploration to map a
23,000-km2 expanse under the North Sea. The stretch of water was
created between 18,000 and 7,000 BC, when the effects of global
warming induced sea levels to rise, swallowing the vast,
inhabited plain that had stretched to the Norwegian coast. It is
the scale and speed of the flooding that is most shocking,
particularly today with the stark threat of the impact of global
warming, because what happened to this immense expanse also
resulted in a real human