Extreme Temperatures
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Hot And Cold: Circulation Of Atmosphere Affected Mediterranean Climate During Last Ice Age


Science Daily
Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:43 UTC
A new study published in the scientific journal Science reveals the circulation of the atmosphere over the Mediterranean during the last ice age, 23,000 to 19,000 years ago, and how this affected the local climate.

ice age
©National Oceanography Centre, Southampton
Cold polar air often invaded the Mediterranean region during the last ice age, causing more rain and snow to fall on Mediterranean mountains.

This innovative study paves the way for future interdisciplinary efforts to understand and predict regional climate change, and is co-authored by Professor Eelco Rohling of the University of Southampton School of Ocean and Earth Science, based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified the Mediterranean as a "future climate hot spot" likely to suffer increasingly from severe droughts, heat waves and wildfires, due to global climate change. This is potentially bad news for the many people who now live in the region.

The new work gives important clues about regional rainfall patterns in the past. This will help scientists check computer simulations of the Mediterranean climate, which is essential for predicting and planning for future climate in the region.
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Snowman

60 - 80 year "little ice age" coming


Reuters
Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:38 UTC
An expert from the National Autonomous University of Mexico predicted that in about ten years the Earth will enter a "little ice age" which will last from 60 to 80 years and may be caused by the decrease in solar activity.

Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the UNAM, presented his argument during a conference that teaches at the Centre for Applied Sciences and Technological Development.
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Meteor

Ice Age Diamonds May have been Transported South by Comet


IDEX
Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:28 UTC
A recently conducted study on diamonds and precious metals found in the eastern U.S. proposes that the minerals might have been transported through the air by a 3-mile wide comet that hit Canada during the last Ice Age.

It is clear to the researchers that diamonds, silver and gold found in Ohio and Indiana were transported there from Canada about 12,900 years ago, according to Live Science, but the question is how.
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Snowman

Ice Ages in Detail


Open Mind
Sat, 10 Feb 2007 04:09 UTC
In a previous post, I discussed the textbook theory of the causes of glacial advance and retreat for the last few million years. I'd like to take a close look at one of the best available records of past climate, the "LR04 stack."

Comment: For additional analysis on shorter period cycles of the last 100,000 years and their causes see The Younger Dryas Impact Event and the Cycles of Cosmic Catastrophes - Climate Scientists Awakening.

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Bug

Lyme Disease Bacterium Came From Europe Before Ice Age


Science Daily
Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:13 UTC
Researchers at the University of Bath have discovered that a bacterium that causes Lyme disease originated in Europe, rather than in North America as previously thought.

blacklegged tick
©CDC/ James Gathany; William Nicholson
The blacklegged tick Ixodes pacificus, a known vector for Borrelia burgdorferi, the pathogen responsible for Lyme disease.

The bacterium responsible for Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi, originated in America, or so researchers thought. Now, however, a team from the University of Bath has shown that this bug in fact came from Europe, originating from before the Ice Age.

By understanding the origins of the bacterium and how it has evolved so far researchers hope to be able to predict how it will continue to develop, and so find ways to prevent its spread.
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Cloud Lightning

New Ice Age: Interviewing Geologist Jack Sauers

Elijah C. Boyd
The New Federalist newspaper
Mon, 26 Jan 1998 07:56 UTC
What edible grains will cold weather support?

How do you ensure the survival of cattle on the range, amidst deep snow drifts? If these problems are not met, how many people, will starve to death as the climate becomes colder?

These common sense questions are not usually taken up in the discussions of alleged global warming-climate change, by the little guru-groupies who are presented to the public as "Knowledgeable Climate Experts," but Washington State geologist Jack Sauers has not only investigated these questions, he is actively working with grain researchers and government officials to supply new, cold-resistant rye grain, as one means to help produce food as the world moves into a new ice age.

The beauty of Sauers's approach revolves around looking for the why of observed physical phenomena, thus allowing him to unify in the mind, the increase in ice mass of glaciers at both poles, the southward descent of boreal vegetation and animals, and the apparently unconnected phenomena of increased volcanic eruptions and El Nino events, as parts of a single astronomical-geologic process.
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Info

Greenland ice core analysis shows drastic climate change near end of last ice age


physorg.com
Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:42 UTC
Information gleaned from a Greenland ice core by an international science team shows that two huge Northern Hemisphere temperature spikes prior to the close of the last ice age some 11,500 years ago were tied to fundamental shifts in atmospheric circulation.

North Greenland Ice Core Project camp
©NGRIP
The North Greenland Ice Core Project camp.

The ice core showed the Northern Hemisphere briefly emerged from the last ice age some 14,700 years ago with a 22-degree-Fahrenheit spike in just 50 years, then plunged back into icy conditions before abruptly warming again about 11,700 years ago. Startlingly, the Greenland ice core evidence showed that a massive "reorganization" of atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere coincided with each temperature spurt, with each reorganization taking just one or two years, said the study authors.

The new findings are expected to help scientists improve existing computer models for predicting future climate change as increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere drive up Earth's temperatures globally.

The team used changes in dust levels and stable water isotopes in the annual ice layers of the two-mile-long Greenland ice core, which was hauled from the massive ice sheet between 1998 to 2004, to chart past temperature and precipitation swings. Their paper was published in the June 19 issue of Science Express, the online version of Science.

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Star

Where did all the sunspots go - an ice age cometh?

Lawrence Solomon
Financial Post
Sat, 31 May 2008 15:22 UTC


Image
©Solarcycle24.com
The spotless Sun, as it appeared yesterday at 12:48 p.m. The Sun's spotlessness is giving rise to speculation of another Little Ice Age.

With the debate focused on a warming Earth, the icy consequences of a cooler future have not been considered

You probably haven't heard much of Solar Cycle 24, the current cycle that our sun has entered, and I hope you don't. If Solar Cycle 24 becomes a household term, your lifestyle could be taking a dramatic turn for the worse. That of your children and their children could fare worse still, say some scientists, because Solar Cycle 24 could mark a time of profound long-term change in the climate. As put by geophysicist Philip Chapman, a former NASA astronaut-scientist and former president of the National Space Society, "It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age."

Comment: What has SoTT been saying for ages?

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Target

SOTT Focus: Majesterium and the Tipping Point

RH
Sott.net
Thu, 08 May 2008 14:53 UTC
"Time passes, but they're always five to seven years from the bomb." -- Shlomo Brom, Israel's deputy national security adviser under former Prime Minister Ehud Barak


Angel by William Blake


As Israeli politicians continue to beat the war-drums over what they (now alone) claim to be an imminent threat from a nuclear-capable Iran, very similar hysterical rhetoric is being used in the attempt to convince us of a very different if equally catastrophic threat to life on earth - "climate change". The doomsayers tell us we have ten years, at most, to reverse the inevitable destruction or face the dire consequences of cities under water, earthquakes, tsunamis and the dreaded, if not racist, tropical diseases moving north. While researching this article I came across a blog that made a very salient point:
Quite apart from the science, one thing I find suspicious about climate catastrophism is how there's supposed to be this massive and terribly deleterious change ahead of us, and yet (by what strikes me as an amazing coincidence) we are always said to still be capable of stopping it but only -- and here the speaker invariably assumes the urgent air of an infomercial voice-over -- if we act right this very minute. This is strange, given that we're dealing with what (on the catastrophist account) seems to be a slippery-slope doomsday scenario that has been building up since the Industrial Revolution. Given the long time-frame and massive uncertainties involved, you'd think that predictions of the exact timing of the "point of no return" must involve a fairly significant margin of error. In light of that, it's odd that there doesn't seem to be even one climate-change affirmer out there who's saying "Rats! I hate to tell you this guys, but it's one or two (or ten or fifty) years too late and there's basically nothing we can do now." Perhaps adding: "So we might as well just go out in style -- let's everyone head out to the SUV dealership!" Or "Let's get 10,000 of our best friends together and jet over to Bali for a big wingding!"

On the other hand, there are thousands of them who seem to think we're just a few years away from this point of no return...
And that's it: We're always a few years away from the point of no return, whether it's Iran, climate, or some other "catastrophic" event we must act now before it is too late. What if Iran already has the bomb? What if we're already past the point of no return? What will you do, what will They do then?
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Snowman

'Forget global warming, prepare for Ice Age'

Brendan O'Keefe
news.com.au
Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:26 UTC
Sunspot activity has not resumed up after hitting an 11-year low in March last year, raising fears that - far from warming - the globe is about to return to an Ice Age.

ice age
©Reuters
Chop and change ... scientists says we should be less concerned by global warming and more worried about a new Ice Age
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