(urth) The Cumaean

[António Pedro Marques]

Jerry Friedman wrote (09-05-2013 15:27):
>
>
>> From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at clueland.com>
>> On Wed, May 8, 2013 22:21, Jerry Friedman wrote:
>>> I thought the flood brought by the New Sun was caused by the melting of
>>> ice caps, which would make it permanent till the climate cooled again.  Am
>>> I remembering wrong?
>>
>> The passing of the white fountain causes unprecented tides, earthquakes,
>> and tsunamis, drowning Nessus and the House Absolute before the expanded
>> icecaps have time to melt back into the sea.
>>
>> The renewed Sun doubtless melts them, raising sea levels, but everything
>> near the coasts would already be wrecked and then some.
>
>
> Thanks, it's been a while.
>
> Not to throw cold water (sorry) on a promising speculation, but apparently
> in clear areas of the ocean, 90% of sunlight is absorbed in the first 33 m, whereas in biologically productive areas, that depth is in the
> single digits.
>
> http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=pride+ourselves+in%2Fpride+ourselves+on&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=18&smoothing=3&share=
>
> So even if the New Sun was ten times brighter than Old Sun (Leigh Brackett moment there), the sea monsters wouldn't have had to move much deeper.  Of course if they were caught by surprise, stunned by those tides and
> earthquakes, and the like...

Still, what happens in the upper levels influences what happens below. I'm 
not sure what Abaia lives on, but there would be consequences for the whole 
food chain, even if it meant just some adjustments, see the diagram at 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrient_cycle#Ecological_recycling.