Don't Know Much Geology

One of the lead Reuters items for the day was on the possibility of sea level rise due to global warming threatening island nations. I found the item reasonably balanced but I got a kick out of:

"Others say the world can adapt -- fossil seashells have been found high in the Himalayas and continents are almost always rising or falling. Still, many countries favor caution."

Well, it's true Mt. Everest is a crag of rotten limestone, the Everest Limestone, fossiliferous in places, and it's also true that we live in a relatively glacial period of Earth history, so relative sea level is rather low and the sea doesn't encroach as much on the continents as it usually does. But if you're going to be an "Environmental Correspondent", I hope you don't think and I hope you don't want anyone else to think that this lovely Carboniferous limestone was deposited 8000 m. above present sea level. It was likely deposited 100 m. above present sea level at most. Hasn't anyone ever heard of orogeny?

ESA(20050111.1)