What created all the mountainous geological formations, i e the Alps and Norwegian fjords?

Question

If it was ice, what happened to the ice? Did Al Gore's hot air melt it? maybe natural warming did.

Answer 1

Plate tectonics. Either that or glaciers from millions of years ago.

Answer 2

Mountain birth is the result of plate tectonics. Check the link below for a lengthy explanation of plate tectonics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tecto...

Answer 3

There used to be ice a mile high, right where I'm sitting now, then the caveman came along and created global warming. The seas rose and the glaciers melted, d**n cavemen.

Answer 4

As a geologist, I can tell you that plate tectonics was responsible for pushing up the mountains and mostly glaciers were responsible for forming the morphological features such as the valleys and fjords.  The Great Lakes were formed by miles thick ice sheets receding during the last period of glaciation.  Ice huggers should keep that in mind when they incessantly insist that warming is necessarily bad.

Answer 5

People underestimate the power of moving, mile thick ice.  The receding and melting of the last ice age created the fjords, I learned that in grade 3.  Everyone knows it's true.

Not sure about the mountains, but I know it was not global warming.

Answer 6

Obviously plate tectonics is responsible for creating some mountains, but if you want to talk climate, wasn't cooling also responsible for glacial valleys?  I thought the weight of new snow on the ice pack forced it to begin to move, carving out glacial valleys and so on.  I dunno, I'm not a geologist...neither am I a linguist, apparently, because the only thing I can really get out of your question is you are not an Al Gore fan and you seem to be trying to make a point about natural warming.  Myself, I haven't run across a single, solitary soul who disputes the concept of natural warming and cooling, so I guess I'm kind of at sea with your whole point.  Like an iceberg calving off a glacier, one might say.

EDIT: Thank you, and likewise I am starting to see where you are going with this.  Opens up interesting avenues of discussion.  I live in the northern tier of the U.S. and a few degrees of warming are beneficial to me personally, both in terms of comfort and income.  What concerns me is what will happen if the temperature scale is tipped and warming begins to occur rapidly, forcing large scale climactic shifts and events.  Of course, the media loves to speculate on such events, both in documentary and fictional form.  One program I saw said that a 9 degree increase in average ocean temperatures would release tons of frozen methane trapped beneath the sea floor and expontentially increase global temperatures; another place I read that melting is speeding up glacial flow as melt water 'greases' the land mass below the glaciers, and that if it goes too far, the glaciers will slide into the ocean very rapidly in large amounts, which will dramatically and quickly raise sea levels.

OK, that makes great TV and entertainment, but what is the statistical probability of something that dramatic happening?  I don't know, and I doubt the writers and producers of such programs have any idea at all either.  But I do think that we should be very aware of the progress of scientific research and cautious about mankind's activities rather than being overly influenced by the media and the political process.

Interesting topic to discuss-I know I am thinking very seriously about what kind of environmental footprint I leave myself, for all sorts of reasons, regardless of what has been proven as far as how much of an impact AGW may have on the future-or not.

Answer 7

Try the Earth Sciences and Geology section if you want a serious answer to this question!

The short answer is Plate Tectonics!

Glacial valleys were created by glaciers forming on high ground and moving to low ground.  That wouldn't happen unless there was high ground to start with!

Answer 8

No, it was not all ice.

I am not sure what created the Norwegian fjords off the top of my head, but the Alps are created by the African plate pushing into the European plate, similar to the creation of the Himalayas.