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| Moonrise over a glacier. |
A few months ago a member of the SOTT Forum posted a link to the following article about investigations into climate change. I wasn't too sure what the contradictory term "Tropical Ice Cores" meant, but the article seemed to explain all that:
Tropical Ice Cores Shows Two Abrupt Global Climate Shifts
For the first time, glaciologists have combined and compared sets of ancient climate records trapped in ice cores from the South American Andes and the Asian Himalayas to paint a picture of how climate has changed - and is still changing - in the tropics.
Their conclusions mark a massive climate shift to a cooler regime that occurred just over 5,000 years ago, and a more recent reversal to a much warmer world within the last 50 years.
The evidence also suggests that most of the high-altitude glaciers in the planet's tropical regions will disappear in the near future. The paper is included in the current issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
Lastly, the research shows that in most of the world, glaciers and ice caps are rapidly retreating, even in areas where precipitation increases are documented. This implicates increasing temperatures and not decreasing precipitation as the most likely culprit. [...]
"Approximately 70 percent of the world's population now lives in the tropics so when climate changes there, the impacts are likely to be enormous," explains Lonnie Thompson, professor of geological sciences at Ohio State. [...]
"We have a record going back 2,000 years and when you plot it out, you can see the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA)," Thompson said. During the MWP, 700 to 1000 years ago, the climate warmed in some parts of the world. The MWP was followed by the LIA, a sudden onset of colder temperatures marked by advancing glaciers in Europe and North America.
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| Glaciers are the most destructive and powerful things on Earth. |
"And in that same record, you can clearly see the 20th Century and the thing that stands out - whether you look at individual cores or the composite of all seven - is how unusually warm the last 50 years have been.
"There hasn't been anything in the record like it - not even the MWP," Thompson said.
"The fact that the isotope values in the last 50 years have been so unusual means that things are dramatically changing. That's the real story here." [...]
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| ©NASA |
| The colossal iceberg, 120 kilometres long, appears to have run aground just 4 kilometres from the giant ice tongue into which it was set to collide |
"The take-home message is that global climate can change abruptly, and with 6.5 billion people inhabiting the planet, that's serious."
Warning: I'm going to talk about "channeled material" here, so if you don't like it or think it is whacky, you can stop reading now and not be contaminated by such far-out, fringe nonsense..
Everybody settled down now? Good. To continue. The forum member, "Appollynon", added some comments as follows:
The thing that really gets my attention here, is how this article is very, very close to the sort of information the C's [Cassiopaean Experiment] transcripts were talking about in terms of abrupt Global Climate change occurring in our near future. ...
For me the only details really missing from this article are that our Big Blue Marble isn't the only planet in the solar system to be affected by global warming. Which makes me wonder "How could us pesky li'l humans be doing all this"? I don't think we can, and I'm leaning more and more to believing through study and observation the information presented by Laura in The Wave series and her articles on site that hint at all of this warming activity as a precursor to the coming Wave...
My current thinking is that there seems to be a flood of new energy entering our planet which is affecting both the global climate, and tectonic movemements (meaning earthquake activity as well as volcanic and magmatic activity). The only explanation for this new energy entering our solar system would be one of four possibilities as far as my research seems to suggest.
1- A large influx in potential energy coming from the swarming of comets in ... our Solar system and imparting massive amounts of energy (though this would have to be a huge number of comets as I don't believe they can account for the sheer amounts of new energy bombarding our planet system if unless their numbers are scarily high).
2- A massive upsurge in activity from the Sun (although as I'm aware we are now in somewhat of a solar minimum according to the experts I've been reading up on).
3- A previously unknown or undeclared sister star to our own sun bringing a whole gamut of of gravitational wave anomalies and energies (which I don't think we have experienced for a very long time in this area of the cosmos).
4- The Wave phenomenon that is talked about in the Wave series of books on site and maybe being affected by "the ripples in the pond" so to speak. [...]
Maybe some scientists can claim ignorance of the objective and easily seen facts as they are [subjected to] social programming or [are] pressured or coerced into looking in different areas for lack of funding in these distinct areas of research.
However I do believe that there is some level of knowledge about the effects of the coming Wave, comets and companion star in the scientific community, or at least those who are knowingly working for "The Man Behind the Curtain".
I say this due to the large number of bunkers and underground bases that have been found and talked about over the past few decades. If the powers that be were really in the dark, then why would they make such a concerted effort to hide the truth and to build these types of structures to hide out in when the sky comes crashing down around them. I think they have a good idea what this all means for us here on the Big Blue Marble, and that it may be part of a greater plan to programme the masses into thinking us humans are responsible for all of this. ...
That may sound to some like a very absurd thought I know, but it would explain all this programming vis-a-vis the MSM about how we are all at fault for not doing enough to save our planet. ...
Does anyone have any other theories on why there is so much of a hullabaloo being made about human induced global warming?
I responded to these comments as follows:
Well, let's face it, back before 911, we were just having a good time on Saturday nights drinking coffee and eating cookies and chatting with the C's about this stuff; it wasn't real, it was all just theoretical. Of course we were pretty sure that dark and ugly deeds were being done behind the scenes, there was enough evidence for it; but the scenario the C's presented - that things would be like they were in Nazi Germany, only globally, was just "out there."
I don't think anybody was able to really imagine how we would get from there... to here.
But we sure know NOW how they did it: 9/11. It was all over in a couple of hours, all the rest is just detail.
I think the rest of the stuff is going to be like that. One day it will all be theoretical and we will have no idea HOW it could possibly get from here to there, and then the next day, we will be THERE.
C's said "sudden glacial rebound..." Nobody seems to be thinking about that. They just talk about it getting hotter and hotter. Well, what if hotter just precedes suddenly colder? I think of the mammoth in Siberia that was found with undigested buttercups in its stomach. It was flash frozen almost instantly.
The thing is, the evidence that it has happened (and more than once) is available all around us not only in the geological and archaeological record, but also in myths and legends. But for most people, it is so easy to just brush all that off and interpret it bass-ackwards, and that's what they do. The problem is, I don't believe that the "experts" are that stupid.
Meanwhile, the C's tell us stuff - no hard dates because there are too many variables and the future IS open - and it happens just as they say, so we get the idea that the rest of it is probably gonna happen also, we just don't know when.
We live in probably the most interesting times of the past 6 thousand years.
After that, the thread went quiet for awhile until just the other day when another forum member, Lynne, posted a follow-up:
There is a man, named Robert Felix, a former architect, that has been researching the ice age cycle, full time, since 1991. He claims that an ice age could start at any time. He cites the fact that as the ice melts at the poles the fresh water mixes with the salt water of the oceans. This can stop the Gulf Stream from flowing as far north as it does now. If that happens, the temperate climate being experienced by the northern latitudes would be gone and an ice age would start. Of course, I am just remembering this from what I heard on a radio show. There is, naturally, a lot more to it than that.
He has a website here: http://iceagenow.com/
And he keeps repeating, "It's a cycle, it's a cycle, it's a cycle." So maybe he is on to the same thing that the C's were talking about?
So there is at least one [other] person going with this idea, and I think I have heard other comments here and there about it, too.
After reading the post, I decided to check the "iceagenow" link just to see what it was all about. I didn't know I was going to uncover an odd mystery. The first thing I found was the following:
By Joel Achenbach,
The Washington Post
June 05, 2006
WASHINGTON - It should be glorious to be Bill Gray, professor emeritus. He's the guy who predicts the number of hurricanes that will form during the coming tropical-storm season. He works in the atmospheric-science department of Colorado State University. He's mentored dozens of scientists.
But he's also outraged.
Much of his government funding has dried up. He has had to put his own money, more than $100,000, into keeping his research going. If none of his colleagues comes to his funeral, he says, that'll be evidence that he had the courage to say what they were afraid to admit.
Which is this: Global warming is a hoax.
Actually, that is not exactly what Bill Gray is saying. He is only saying that it is a hoax the way it is presented.
He has testified about this to the U.S. Senate. He has written magazine articles, given speeches, done everything he could to get the message out.
"I've been in meteorology over 50 years. I've worked damn hard, and I've been around. My feeling is some of us older guys who've been around have not been asked about this. It's sort of a baby-boomer, yuppie thing."
Gray believes in observations. Direct measurements. Numerical models can't be trusted. Equation pushers with fancy computers aren't the equals of scientists who fly into hurricanes.
"Few people know what I know. I've been in the tropics, I've flown in airplanes into storms. I've done studies of convection, cloud clusters and how the moist process works. I don't think anybody in the world understands how the atmosphere functions better than me."
In just three, five, maybe eight years, he says, the world will begin to cool again.
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| Ice everywhere in 3, 5 or 8 years, minimum? |
He is almost desperate to be heard. His time is short. He is 76 years old.
Now, notice that this Washington Times reporter writes so casually "the world will begin to cool again," as though he was talking about a fresh breeze that wafts gently over the sweat beaded forehead. If that is the case, if it is just a breeze, why is Bill Gray so desperate to be heard? Why has he spent 100 K of his own money on his research? Well, let's continue with the article:
The case for warming"
Human beings are pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, warming the planet in the process.
Since the dawn of the industrial era, atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen from about 280 to about 380 parts per million. In the past century, the average surface temperature of Earth has warmed about 1 degree Fahrenheit. Much of that warming has been in the past three decades.
Regional effects can be more dramatic: The Arctic is melting at an alarming rate. Arctic sea ice is 40 percent thinner than it was in the 1970s. Glaciers in Greenland are speeding up as they slide toward the sea. A recent report shows Antarctica losing as much as 36 cubic miles of ice a year.
The permafrost is melting across broad swaths of Alaska, Canada and Siberia. Tree-devouring beetles, common in the American Southwest, are suddenly ravaging the evergreens of British Columbia. Coral reefs are bleaching, scalded by overheated tropical waters. There appear to have been more strong hurricanes and cyclones in recent decades.
The 1990s were the warmest decade on record. The year 1998 set the all-time mark. This decade is on its way to setting a new standard. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a global effort involving hundreds of climate scientists, projected in 2001 that, depending on the rate of greenhouse-gas emissions and general climate sensitivities, the global average temperature would rise 2.5 to 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit between 1990 and 2100. Sea levels could rise just a few inches, or nearly three feet.
All of the above is part of the emerging, solidifying scientific consensus on global warming.
Now, notice that, in the above scenario, we have some definite problems laid out - but most of it will happen gradually, and we have about 90 years to see it all play out: until 2100. It's all rather "iffy," too, even if they are certain that things are going to warm up. Now the journalist goes on the attack:
The skeptics' view
When you step into the realm of the skeptics, you find yourself on a parallel Earth.
It is a planet where global warming isn't happening - or, if it is happening, isn't happening because of human beings. Or, if it is happening because of human beings, isn't going to be a big problem. And, even if it is a big problem, we can't realistically do anything about it other than adapt.
Only in the last sentence does this journalist come anywhere close to the truth. But notice how cleverly he has concealed the problem?
There is no consensus on global warming, they say. There is only abundant uncertainty. The IPCC process is a sham, a mechanism for turning vague scientific statements into headline-grabbing alarmism. Drastic actions such as mandated cuts in carbon emissions would be imprudent.
More twisting and distortion.
Alternative sources of energy are fine, they say, but let's not be naive. We are an energy-intensive civilization. To obtain the kind of energy we need, we must burn fossil fuels. We must emit carbon. That's the real world.
Well, in this sense, the journalist is repeating the view taken by the Bush Reich Science which has little or nothing at all to do with the
real science! Interesting how he mixes it all together.
Since the late 1980s, when oil, gas, coal, auto and chemical companies formed the Global Climate Coalition, industries have poured millions of dollars into a campaign to discredit the emerging global-warming consensus. The coalition disbanded a few years ago, but the skeptic community remains.
Many skeptics work in think tanks, such as the George C. Marshall Institute or the National Center for Policy Analysis. They have the ear of leaders in the White House and on Capitol Hill. The skeptics helped scuttle any possibility that the United States would ratify the Kyoto treaty that would have committed the nation to cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions. (Conservatives object to the treaty for, among other things, not requiring reductions by developing nations such as China and India.)
Notice how this journalist has lumped the scientists in with the political skeptics as though they were all saying the same thing. They are not, and that is what this is all about. There is a huge difference between saying that "Global Warming as it is being presented to the public is a hoax" and "there is no Global Warming. There definitely IS Global Warming and Bill Gray has never said that things weren't getting warmer.
The skeptics point to the global-temperature graph for the past century. Notice how, after rising steadily in the early 20th century, in 1940 the temperature suddenly levels off. No - it goes down! For the next 35 years! If the planet is getting steadily warmer because of Industrial Age greenhouse gases, why did it get cooler when industries began belching out carbon dioxide at full tilt at the start of World War II?
Now look at the ice in Antarctica: Getting thicker in places!
Sea-level rise? It's actually dropping around certain islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans.
There are all these ... anomalies. [...]
Did you catch those last remarks? The journalist is quoting - out of context, I should add - several results of scientific studies. But we are going to discover that these admissions he has made above - that the Antarctic Ice was getting THICKER and the sea-level is actually dropping - concern information that is going to get very tricky!
Notice also that this article, quite critical of the "no global warming" stance that has been taken by the Bush Administration, was published in the clearly Right-wing Washington Post, one of the most Administration sychophantic rags on the market! What is up with that?!
I also noticed that Robert Felix, the "iceagenow.com" guy, added a comment about this article accusing the Post writer of being a LEFTY!!!
Unfortunately - and despicably - this article, which supposedly reports the skeptics arguments, now veers off to the left, accusing Dr. Gray of being on the "fringe," and dismissing him and M.I.T. professor Richard Lindzen as being just simply part of the minority "Old Guard." The article conveniently ignores the fact that 60 international climate-change experts recently signed an open letter to Canada's Prime Minister disavowing the "fact" of global warming.
Sometimes I think we've really lost the idea of what the Right and the Left actually represent. Seems to me that the terms have been severely
ponerized and even have become "doublespeak."
Anyway, next there is this from the iceagenow site:
I first published this forecast by Dr. Landscheidt in 2003. However, with the recent reported cooling of the Atlantic Ocean, and with the first reversed sunspot of what may be the beginning of the next solar cycle, and with Russian scientists predicting a new Little Ice Age, I thought it would be an appropriate time to give more credit to Dr. Landscheidt. He had been predicting this scenario for years. Here's what Dr. Landscheidt had to say:
New Little Ice Age by 2030!
Analysis of the sun's activity in the last two millennia indicates that, contrary to the IPCC's speculation about man-made global warming, that we could be headed into a Maunder minimum type of climate (a Little Ice Age).
The probability is high that the minima around 2030 and 2201 will go along with periods of cold climate comparable to the nadir of the Little Ice Age, and La Ninas will be more frequent and stronger than El Ninos through 2018 (Landscheidt, 2000).
We need not wait until 2030 to see whether the forecast is correct, however. A declining trend in solar activity and global temperature should become manifest long before then. The current 11-year sunspot cycle 23 with its considerably weaker activity seems to be a first indication of the new trend, especially as it was predicted on the basis of solar motion cycles two decades ago. As to temperature, only El Nino periods should interrupt the downward trend, but even El Ninos should become less frequent and strong.
The total magnetic flux leaving the Sun has risen by a factor of 2.3 since 1901 while global temperature on earth increased by about 0.6°C. Energetic flares increased the Sun's ultraviolet radiation by at least 16 percent. There is a clear connection between solar eruptions and a strong rise in temperature.
Lake bottom cores from the Yukatan Peninsula covering more than 2,000 years show a similar correlation between recurrent droughts and the Sun's eruptional activity. These results and many earlier ones (Landscheidt, 1981-2001) document the importance of the Sun's eruptional activity on climate.
Energetic solar eruptions do not accumulate around the sunspot maximum. In most cycles they shun the maximum phase and can even occur close to a sunspot minimum.
I (Landscheidt) have shown for decades that the sun's varying activity is linked to cycles in its irregular oscillation about the centre of mass of the solar system (the solar retrograde cycle). As these cycles are connected with climate phenomena and can be computed for centuries, they offer a means to forecast phases of cool and warm climate.
Researchers need to take the sun seriously as a factor in climate change, including warming, droughts, and cold snaps.
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| How the Ice Age will affect North America |
The C's, of course, say the same things: that it is the Sun - and it's companion - that are mostly responsible for Climate Change. To continue, Robert Felix writes:
I'm sorry to report that Dr. Theodor Landscheidt passed away on May 20, 2004. Founder of the Schroeter Institute for Research in Cycles of Solar Activity in Waldmuenchen, Germany, Dr. Landscheidt was a giant in the field of climatology. Here's what I published in 2003
Dr. Landscheidt, author of "Sun - Earth - Man: A Mesh of Cosmic Oscillations", and "Cosmic Cybernetics: The Foundations of a Modern Astrology," based his forecast on the Gleissberg cycle of solar activity.
"Contrary to the IPCC's speculation about man-made global warming as high as 5.8° C within the next hundred years," said Landscheidt, "a long period of cool climate with its coldest phase around 2030 is to be expected."
It can be seen," added Landscheidt, "that the Gleissberg minimum around 2030 and another one around 2200 will be of the Maunder minimum type accompanied by severe cooling on Earth." (Posted 19 Sep 2003)
This confirms what I've been saying all along; that our climate is controlled by magnetic activity on the sun.
It also makes my assertion that "we'll be admitting that we're headed into an ice age by the year 2012" seem a lot more plausible.
Landscheidt's forecasts include the end of the great Sahelian drought; the last five extremes in global temperature anomalies; the last three El Ninos; and the course of the last La Nina. He predicted extreme River Po discharges beginning in October 2000, some seven months before they began.
This forecast skill, says Landscheidt, solely based on solar cycles, is irreconcilable with the IPCC's allegation that it is unlikely that natural forcing can explain the warming in the latter half of the 20th century.
The current 11-year sunspot cycle 23 with its considerably weaker activity seems to be a first indication of the new trend, especially as it was predicted on the basis of solar motion cycles two decades ago.
This last surprised me. I was under the impression that the last sunspot cycle was considerably stronger and more active than predicted. Again, a forum member dug up some data. You can read it
HERE.
Anyway, let me continue. The main thing that grabbed my attention in all of the above was the claim that the ice sheet on Antarctica was actually growing since all we have heard via the media is "melting, melting, melting". Along with this was the surprising claim that the sea levels were falling instead of rising as was predicted by the Global Warming Scenario. Where did these things come from? Sez who?
I went digging.
One of the first things I found was the following:
Antarctic Ice Sheet Mass Balance
Reference
Wingham, D.J., Shepherd, A., Muir, A. and Marshall, G.J. 2006. Mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 364: 1627-1635.
What was done
The authors "analyzed 1.2 x 108 European remote sensing satellite altimeter echoes to determine the changes in volume of the Antarctic ice sheet from 1992 to 2003." This survey, in their words, "covers 85% of the East Antarctic ice sheet and 51% of the West Antarctic ice sheet," which together comprise "72% of the grounded ice sheet.""
What was learned
Wingham et al. report that "overall, the data, corrected for isostatic rebound, show the ice sheet growing at 5 ± 1 mm year-1." To calculate the ice sheet's change in mass, however, "requires knowledge of the density at which the volume changes have occurred," and when the researchers' best estimates of regional differences in this parameter are used, they find that "72% of the Antarctic ice sheet is gaining 27 ± 29 Gt year-1, a sink of ocean mass sufficient to lower global sea levels by 0.08 mm year-1." This net extraction of water from the global ocean, according to Wingham et al., occurs because "mass gains from accumulating snow, particularly on the Antarctic Peninsula and within East Antarctica, exceed the ice dynamic mass loss from West Antarctica."
What it means
Contrary to all the horror stories one hears about global warming-induced mass wastage of the Antarctic ice sheet leading to rising sea levels that gobble up coastal lowlands worldwide, the most recent decade of pertinent real-world data suggest that forces leading to just the opposite effect are apparently prevailing, even in the face of what climate alarmists typically describe as the greatest warming of the world in the past two millennia or more.
Reviewed 8 November 2006
Notice the date: last November. Notice what it says:
the Antarctic Ice Sheet is actually growing!!! What's more, it is doing this at the expense of the global sea level! Aside from the fact that all we are hearing is "melting ice! melting ice!", how can the ice sheet be growing if it is getting hotter? And we ALL KNOW IT IS! So, how can this be?
Well, there's an answer:
Global warming boost to glaciers
Global warming could be causing some glaciers to grow, a new study claims.
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| Glacier |
Researchers at Newcastle University looked at temperature trends in the western Himalaya over the past century. They found warmer winters and cooler summers, combined with more snow and rainfall, could be causing some mountain glaciers to increase in size. [...]
On the NASA website, I discovered that the scientists there have been mapping this for some time now. The data is published, it's just not promoted actively. And, in many cases, it is phrased so that the important factors are minimized, if not actually buried..
Antarctic Temperature Trend 1982-2004
Cold, snowy, and stuck at the "bottom of the Earth, Antarctica might seem like a dull place. But this big continent can produce a surprisingly dynamic range of conditions. One example of this range is temperature trends. Although Antarctica warmed around the perimeter from 1982 to 2004, where huge icebergs calved and some ice shelves disintegrated, it cooled closer to the pole.
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| See how much of Antarctica is colder and how little is actually warming. |
This image shows trends in skin temperatures-temperatures from roughly the top millimeter of the land or sea surface-not air temperatures. The data were collected by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sensors that were flown on several National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites. The data come from the AVHRR's thermal infrared channel-a portion of the light spectrum we can sense as heat but that human eyes cannot see. This image shows temperature trends for the icy continent from 1982 to 2004. Red indicates areas where temperatures generally increased during that period, and blue shows where temperatures predominantly decreased.
The area of strongest cooling appears at the South Pole, and the region of strongest warming lies along the Antarctic Peninsula. In some instances, bright red spots or streaks along the edge of the continent show where icebergs calved or ice shelves disintegrated, meaning the satellite began seeing warmer ocean water where there had previously been ice. One example of this is the bright red line along the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf.
Why is Antarctica getting colder in the middle when it's warming up around the edge?
One possible explanation is that the warmer temperatures in the surrounding ocean have produced more precipitation in the continent's interior, and this increased snowfall has cooled the high-altitude region around the pole. Another possible explanation involves ozone. Ozone in the Earth's stratosphere absorbs ultraviolet radiation, and absorbing this energy warms the stratosphere. Loss of UV-absorbing ozone may have cooled the stratosphere and strengthened the polar vortex, a pattern of spinning winds around the South Pole. The vortex acts like an atmospheric barrier, preventing warmer, coastal air from moving in to the continent's interior. A stronger polar vortex might explain the cooling trend in the interior of Antarctica.
Then, from Nature.com comes a piece that gives an excellent example of talking out of both sides of the mouth at once:
Increased snowfall could slow sea-level rise
Mark Peplow
19 May 2005
Increased snowfall over a large area of Antarctica is thickening the ice sheet and slowing the rise in sea level caused by melting ice.
A satellite survey shows that between 1992 and 2003, the East Antarctic ice sheet gained about 45 billion tonnes of ice - enough to reduce the oceans' rise by 0.12 millimetres per year. The ice sheets that cover Antarctica's bedrock are several kilometres thick in places, and contain about 90% of the world's ice. But scientists fear that if they melt in substantial quantities, this will swell the oceans and cause devastation on islands and coastal lands.
Notice how they give with one hand and take with the other: "scientists FEAR..." Never mind that they have just said that the East Antarctic ice sheet gained 45 billion tons of ice.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has reported that sea level is currently rising at about 1.8 millimetres per year, largely through melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets as a result of global warming. But the panel also expected that climate change would trigger an increase in snowfall over the Antarctic continent, as increased evaporation from the oceans puts more moisture into the air.
"This is a phenomenal piece of research, but it is what we expected, " comments David Vaughan, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK. "These effects have been predicted for a long time, it's just that no one has measured them before."
Although the results of the satellite survey are in line with the predictions of global-warming models, the thickening of the ice sheet could still be explained by natural weather variability, warns Curt Davis of the University of Missouri, Columbia, a member of the research team. He and his colleagues present their results in the online edition of Science.
Remote view
The team used data from the European Space Agency's radar satellites ERS-1 and ERS-2, which measured changes in altitude over about 70% of Antarctica's interior - more than 8.5 million square kilometres, roughly the same size as the United States.
East Antarctica thickened at an average rate of about 1.8 centimetres per year over the time period studied, the researchers discovered. The region comprises about 75% of Antarctica's total land area - but as its ice is thicker, it carries about 85% of the total ice volume. "It is the only large terrestrial ice body that is gaining mass rather than losing it," says Davis.
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| On top of an iceberg. |
In contrast, smaller West Antarctica showed an overall thinning of 0.9 centimetres per year. "It's amazing that they can measure such small changes," says Vaughan.
Yeah, it sure is amazing. And notice how, just above, the "small changes" are supposed to be responsible for the reported rise of the sea levels by
1.8 millimetres per year. I think we just caught them in a lie. But we'll come to that.
Thick skin
The thickening of the eastern ice sheet should not be seen as a long-term protection against a rise in sea level, warns Vaughan. Glaciers in West Antarctica are accelerating, releasing more and more icebergs into the sea. And the Antarctic Peninsula, which stretches towards South America, now regularly hits temperatures above 0 °C in the summer, leading to direct melting of the ice there.
The reader should already understand how totally absurd the above remarks are. If you don't, you soon will.
What's more, snowfall over East Antarctica will not continue to increase indefinitely in a warming world, Vaughan adds. Conversely, every extra degree of temperature rise will continue to accelerate glaciers and cause more melting on the western side of Antarctica, swelling the world's oceans further.
Notice above that, even though they say that increased warming increases precipitation (snowfall), that somehow, there is a "cut-off point"??!! That it will not increase indefinitely? Where is the logic here?
Scientists have already estimated that Antarctic melting may be responsible for up to a third of the overall sea-level rise. But the instruments on ERS-1 and 2 only work over very flat areas, and tend to lose track of the radar echo over steeper areas around the continent's coast, so a vital piece of the puzzle is still missing, says Vaughan. And because Antarctica is so vast, it is also impossible to measure snowfall comprehensively on the ground, he adds.
However, the European Space Agency satellite CryoSat, due to be launched later this year, should be able to make very accurate altitude measurements around the coast, providing evidence of exactly how much ice is being lost there. Only when scientists put all these measurements together will the full truth about Antarctica's ice become clear, says Vaughan.
Notice how the above article is not just a "spin" on the situation, but seems to contain outright lies - direct contradictions of other facts already presented. Notice also the remark about the coming CryoSat. This did not initially grab my attention. It was only after I continued to dig that this remark about the possibility of knowing the truth about Antarctica's ice became important - and even scary!
The next item directly contradicted the above article's claims about the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. It was posted, in part, on the iceagenow website.
Greenland icecap growing thicker
20 Oct 2005 - Greenland 's ice-cap has thickened slightly in recent years despite wide predictions of a thaw, scientists said today. Satellite measurements show that more snowfall is thickening the ice-cap, especially at high altitudes, according to the report in the journal Science.
"The overall ice thickness changes are ... approximately plus 5 cms (1.9 inches) a year or 54 cms (21.26 inches) over 11 years," according to the experts at Norwegian, Russian and U.S. institutes led by Ola Johannessen at the Mohn Sverdrup center for Global Ocean Studies and Operational Oceanography in Norway. [...]
See more of this article HERE.
See also HERE.
This is where things began to get very squirrelly. The first link is to a Reuters article which, for some reason, has completely disappeared. I mean, there's not even a google cache of it. Nothing.
The second link is to a CNN report on the Reuters article. It also has disappeared. Go ahead, click the links...
Doing a search for the articles missing from Reuters and CNN I found only a blog mention:
October 23, 2005
Greenland ice cap thickens slightly
Thought you'd like this one:
Greenland's ice cap has thickened slightly in recent years despite wide predictions of a thaw triggered by global warming, a team of scientists said on Thursday.
Read more from this blogger: Greenland ice cap thickens slightly
The last link is to "newsclipping.co.uk". Wow! It looked like I might actually find the whole article!
Guess again.
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It really bugs me when I think somebody is hiding something. I know it might be "conspiracy minded" of me, but I can't get over the feeling that there is an attempt to sideline or seriously minimize particular (and important) information here.
I was, finally, able to read the original article. Go
HERE to read a version of the Science Journal article which one of our forum members obtained and posted.
Another forum member found a copy of the article on an Australian news site. Funny that this didn't show up on google when I was searching!!
Greenland icecap thickens despite warming
Reuters
Friday, 21 October 2005
Greenland's icecap has thickened slightly in recent years despite concerns that it is thawing out due to global warming, says an international team of scientists.
A team led by Professor Ola Johannessen, at the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in Norway, report their findings online ahead of print publication in the journal Science.
The 3,000-metre thick Greenland icecap is a key concern in debates about climate change because a total melt would raise world sea levels by about 7 metres. And a runaway thaw might slow the Gulf Stream that keeps the North Atlantic region warm.
Glaciers at sea level have been retreating fast because of a warming climate, making many other scientists believe the entire icecap is thinning.
But satellite measurements showed that more snowfall is falling and thickening the icecap, especially at high altitudes, say Johannessen and team.
"The overall ice thickness changes are ... approximately plus 5 centimetres a year or 54 centimetres over 11 years."
But, they say, the thickening seems consistent with theories of global warming, blamed by most experts on a build-up of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.
Warmer air, even if it is still below freezing, can carry more moisture. That extra moisture falls as snow below 0°C.
And the scientists say that the thickening of the icecap might be offset by a melting of glaciers around the fringes of Greenland. Satellite data is not good enough to measure the melt nearer sea level.
So far, so good. But then, the article veers off into the disinformation that suggests that all we are going to have to deal with is WARMING.
Ice sheets
Most models of global warming indicate that the Greenland ice might melt within thousands of years if warming continues.
Oceans would rise by about 70 metres if the far bigger icecap on Antarctica melted along with Greenland.
Antarctica's vast size acts as a deep freeze likely to slow any melt of the southern continent.
The panel that advises the United Nations has predicted that global sea levels might rise by almost a metre by 2100 because of a warming climate.
Such a rise would swamp low-lying Pacific islands and warming could trigger more hurricanes, droughts, spread deserts and drive thousands of species to extinction.
Separate study supports sea level rise due to ice melt
A separate study in today's issue of Science reports that sea levels are probably rising slightly because of a melt of ice sheets.
"Ice sheets now appear to be contributing modestly to sea level rise because warming has increased mass loss from coastal areas more than warming has increased mass gain from enhanced snowfall in cold central regions," the report by a team led by Professor Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University in the US says.
"Greenland presently makes the largest contribution to sea level rise."
Yes, we know that Greenland is presently melting like crazy around the edges. And that's the BIG problem as we see from the following BBC special that was broadcast two years earlier:
Greenland glacier advancing 7.2 miles per year! The BBC recently ran a documentary, The Big Chill, saying that we could be on the verge of an ice age. Britain could be heading towards an Alaskan-type climate within a decade, say scientists, because the Gulf Stream is being gradually cut off. The Gulf Stream keeps temperatures unusually high for such a northerly latitude.
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| Waiho-glacier |
One of Greenland's largest glaciers has already doubled its rate of advance, moving forward at the rate of 12 kilometers (7.2 miles) per year. To see a transcript of the documentary, go to
The Big Chill
What is important is that there IS a heating up of the planet, a Global Warming, which is causing a lot of ice to melt. It is also causing a lot of evaporation which then falls as snow in certain areas, and this put pressure on the ice sheets and squeezes them outward so that they actually melt faster around the edges. This adds a LOT of fresh water to the oceans. In the Antarctic regions, it may not be so bad, but in the Arctic, it is a building cataclysm.
The implications are so huge that it is really no wonder that the Bush Reich and others of the ruling elite are trying to shush it up and convince people that it's just going to get hotter and we all have to make sacrifices to try to slow it down. As if! Bush is certainly right when he goes his merry way acting as if Global warming is nothing. He might as well because he, and the rest of them, know that there is nothing that anyone can do about it to stop it. That's a fact. And so, they continue to do the one thing that they believe will save their own skins: continue to follow the plan of imposing total control over everyone and everything so that when the disasters fall fast and hard - as they will - the masses will be controllable. And it certainly doesn't hurt to kill of as many as they can get away with killing in advance; that many fewer mouths to feed, doncha know?
In short, the economic, political and national security implications of sudden cataclysm are what is driving the political machine these days. Britain is headed for a climate worse than Alaska's. And it could be here sooner than anyone expects.
An ice age is one of the Great Forces of Nature. They are dynamic and destructive. Massive glaciers form and begin to march across the land destroying and grinding up everything in their path. They can fill valleys, grind rocks to nothing and reduce the height of mountains. They wipe the land clean. Vast stretches of the earth are buried in a literal tomb of ice.
Preserved in the ice of Greenland is an ancient thermometer, a record of the climate of the earth for a very long time. The ice records traces of disasters and pollution, acids from volcanoes, lead refining residue from Roman times, and so on. But most important of all there is a record of the temperature which can be read by determining how much heavy water is locked in the ice. The rule is: the more heavy water, the warmer the climate.
And so, researchers obtained cores of the Greenland ice and began to examine and analyze them. Based on the conventional rules about climate change that are being promoted by the Global Warming due to human activities, they should have seen slow changes in the heavy water evidence in the ice cores as the world warmed and cooled.
But that's not what they found.
Instead, they found that temperatures can drop suddenly and catastrophically. And it has happened many times.
The change can come as fast as turning off a light.
Professor Wally Broecker of Columbia University became convinced that the driver was the ocean. Because of the profound climate changes that had been recorded in Britain, Broecker focused on the gulf stream. Britain's mild climate is due to the heat of the Gulf Stream. Without the Gulf Stream, it would be like the frozen North of Alaska.
The Gulf Stream begins south of the equator and as it flows around the gulf of Mexico it absorbs heat from the tropics which it then carries with it North, to Britain. Scientists estimate that the Gulf Stream carries the heat of a million power stations. This heat enables Brits to swim in waters at the same latitudes that Canada has polar bears.
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| A diagram of the Gulf Stream conveyor and related currents. |
The most important thing about the Gulf Stream is that, at the end of its journey North, it sinks. It sinks because it cools and becomes denser. And once it cools and sinks, the flowing continues, only in the other direction. In other words, it is like a Global radiator, a constantly circulating flow of warm water that carries the heat up to the northern latitudes. And the sinking and flowing the other way is crucial.
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| This image shows how England, Western Europe and Scandinavia are bathed in the heat of the Gulf Stream |
The question that Wally Broecker asked himself was: "What would happen if this conveyor stopped?
Although many scientists had never thought about this, and believed that the established currents of the oceans never changed, other evidence was forthcoming that this had happened - more than once. This evidence was found in mud core samples from the bottom of the ocean. In other words, at various times in the past the conveyor switched off. And when the conveyor switched off, Britain - and the whole northern region that benefits from the Gulf Stream - froze.
So, what does the shutting off of the conveyor have to do with Global Warming?
Climate experts are predicting temperatures to rise faster than at any time since the last ice age. The models that scientists are using (as described above), all suggest that in a hundred years, we'll experience warming of about 1.5 to 6 degrees. The Earth hasn't been that warm in hundreds of thousands - or millions - of years! We can all see and feel the effects of global warming. Everyone is talking about how to prepare for hotter weather and all the attendant extremes.
For example, among the main topics covered by the "experts" are that Global Warming will increase winter rains in Britain causing flooding. There will be things like tropical cyclones much further north. It is this sort of thing that the governments are preparing people to consider and expect.
But all of these experts are not considering the factor that Global Warming may very well be the switch that turns the conveyor - the Gulf Stream - OFF.
Greenland is one of the biggest ice-cubes in the world. It consists of enough water to raise the sea level by about six or seven metres if it melted completely.
And indeed, it IS melting. The equivalent of fifty cubic kilometres of ice and snow disappear from Greenland each year - around the edges, that is. That is the same as fifty gigo-tons of water. And it is accelerating. Less than five years ago, one of the Greenland glaciers was moving at about six, seven kilometers per year. And that was more or less in balance with the snowfall. Now in the five years since then the speed is almost doubled. It was advancing at 12 kilometers per year in 2003. In 2005, it was moving 15 kilometers per year. And certainly, the increase is due to "Global Warming."
The problem is that the increase means that a hundred cubic kilometres of fresh water is being dumped into the ocean per year and that fresh water is flowing towards the sinking zone of the conveyor.
Wally Broecker and his associates began to wonder just what could be the effect of all that fresh water on the conveyor. They began to realise that because the conveyor was driven by the salty water sinking, too much fresh water would dilute the salt and if the salt was diluted too much the conveyor would not sink. The possibility is that a 1 percent change in the salinity of the water - at the moment that point is reached - could tip the balance; the water would be too fresh to sink and the conveyor - the Gulf Stream - would stop. Just like that.
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| Gulf Stream Temps and Chlorophyll Concentration |
What's worse is that it isn't just the Greenland ice sheet that is pouring fresh water into the ocean where the conveyer sinks and reverses direction: Global warming leads to a wetter world because warm air holds more moisture. When that moisture heads north and cools, there will be more rain. And if that rain accompanies a big system such as a hurricane, it can be a very great amount indeed!
At the same time, there are some very big rivers in Siberia dumping fresh water into the polar regions. If those rivers increase in size due to increased rainfall in Siberia, there can be an increase in annual discharge of a hundred and twenty eight cubic kilometers of fresh water per year. With the current rate at which the atmosphere is heating, we are facing a horrifying prospect of a fifty percent increase in some of the world's biggest rivers. A "vast wall of fresh water will soon come flooding through northern Siberia. An extra thousand cubic kilometres a year more could flow in to the salty waters of the conveyor."
Dr. Bill Turrell has been monitoring the saltiness of the Gulf Stream as it flows past the Faro Isles north of Scotland. If the saltiness of the water decreases, that is a sign that the driver of the conveyor is weakening.
Until the 1970s the salinity had been almost constant. But then it began to drop. Dr. Bill Turrell tells us:
"After the late seventies we began to see a freshening of the bottom water. So much so that we, we began to doubt our own results. We took further samples, we checked with other countries who are sampling the same water, until eventually we became convinced that this change was actually happening."
Turrell had measured the fact that the flow of the Gulf Stream return had fallen by a massive twenty percent. Turrell says:
Now we really do know that fresh water input to the Arctic is increasing. The Siberian rivers are pumping out more fresh water. The Arctic ice sheets are melting and there is more release of fresh water. It, it's the most fundamental change I've observed in my career.
In short, the process that could shut off the Gulf Stream conveyor began in the 1970s. No one knows where the absolute shut-off point is. We only know we are getting closer day by day.
Let's recap the facts. Science indicates that a shut off of the Gulf Stream is closely connected to ice ages. The mechanism of the conveyor function of the Gulf Stream is generally understood and the effect of fresh water on same is theorized - with strong evidence. We know that the temperature of the Earth is increasing and that this is increasing the amount of moisture in the air, general precipitation, as well as the zone of precipitation. This is dumping the fresh water into the zone of conveyor return. Measurements have been taken showing that the salinity of the ocean in the critical area is decreasing. So it is safe to say that it is a certainty that the result will be a shutting off of the Gulf Stream conveyer resulting in an ice age. You can pretty well take that to the bank.
The remaining two questions are: when? and how bad will it be?
The scientists analyzing the data can only say that the implications are huge, the results will be catastrophic, but we we will come back to this soon enough. For now, let us continue with the little discoveries I was making as I dug into the issues.
Notice that all the information about the anomalies in the melting/growing ice problem are coming from European sources. The articles on Reuters and CNN about the anomalous increase of ice in the center of Greenland and Antarctica were scrubbed from the U.S. web. This brings us back to the CryoSat issue. Remember in the article above entitled "East Antarctica puts on weight," there is the following remark:
However, the European Space Agency satellite CryoSat, due to be launched later this year, should be able to make very accurate altitude measurements around the coast, providing evidence of exactly how much ice is being lost there. Only when scientists put all these measurements together will the full truth about Antarctica's ice become clear...
Now, read the excerpts of the following article:
Earth - melting in the heat?
By Richard Black,
Environment Correspondent, BBC News website
Predictions vary from the catastrophic to the cataclysmic.
Glaciers are melting, the ice caps disappearing into the oceans. Sea levels may rise by many metres as a consequence.
Indigenous Arctic peoples will find their food stocks gone, while fresh water supplies in Asia and south America will disappear as the glaciers which provide them melt away; penguins, polar bears and seals will find their habitats gone, their traditional lives unliveable.
But how realistic is this picture? Is the world's ice really disappearing, or is it unscientific hot air?
A European satellite named CryoSat was designed to provide definitive answers to some of these questions.
A launcher fault destroyed the mission in October 2005, but the European Space Agency has approved a replacement. In the meantime, here is our global snapshot.
THE ANTARCTIC
Huge, pristine, dramatic, unforgiving; the Antarctic is where the biggest of all global changes could begin.
There is so much ice here that if it all melted, sea levels globally would rise hugely - perhaps as much as 80m. Say goodbye to London, New York, Sydney, Bangkok, Rio... in fact, the majority of the world's major cities.
But will it happen? Scientists divide the Antarctic into three zones: the east and west Antarctic ice sheets; and the Peninsula, the tongue of land which points up towards the southern tip of South America.
"Everybody thinks that the Antarctic is shrinking due to climate change, but the reality is much more complex," says David Vaughan, a principal investigator at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK.
"Parts of it appear to be thickening as a result of snowfall increases. But the peninsula is thinning at an alarming rate due to warming.
"The West Antarctic sheet is also thinning, and we're not sure of the reason why."
On the up
Temperatures in the Peninsula appear to be increasing at around twice the global average - about 2C over the last 50 years. Those figures are based on measurements made by instruments at scientific stations.
Earlier this year, David Vaughan's group published research showing that the vast majority of glaciers along the Peninsula - 87% of the 244 studied - are in retreat.
The ice dumped into the ocean as the glaciers retreat should not make much difference to global sea levels - perhaps a few cm.
More worrying, potentially, are the vast ice sheets covering the rest of Antarctica.
Making temperature measurements for the continent as a whole is difficult; it is a vast place - more than 2,000km across - there are few research stations, and temperatures vary naturally by 2-3C from year to year.
But measurements indicate that in the west, melting is underway.
"About one-third of the West Antarctic ice sheet is thinning," says Dr Vaughan, "on average by about 10cm per year, but in the worst places by 3-4m per year." [...]
Eastern mass
And what of the big monster, the much larger east Antarctic sheet?
A recent study using altimeter data suggested it is getting thicker, by about 1.8cm/yr; another, using the gravity satellite mission Grace indicates its mass remains stable.
But could rising temperatures in time drain the ice away?
"It is not going to happen on any realistic human timescale," says David Vaughan.
"It's so cold that you could raise temperatures by 5-10C without having much of an impact; it's on rock above sea level, so warming in the ocean can't affect it."
Largely insulated from global trends and so big as to generate its own climatic systems, most of Antarctica appears to be immune to the big melt for now, though answers to what is happening in the west are eagerly awaited.
THE ARCTIC
At the top of the world, the Arctic is a region built on water.
Around the North Pole is ocean, with ice floes crowding in each winter and thinning again in the summers.
In September, we learned from scientists at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center that the extent of ocean covered by ice is getting smaller each year; the current rate of shrinkage they calculate at around 8% per decade.
Their projection is that within about 60 years, there will be no summer ice at all on the Arctic Ocean.
"Overall, the extent has been declining, with some oscillations, since the 1970s when satellites were able to map it," comments Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics at Cambridge University, UK, and currently at the Laboratoire Oceanographique in Villefranche-sur-mer, France.
"There's been a slow decline, but now the thinning appears to be more rapid.
"In the last two decades, not only has the area shrunk but the ice has got thinner by about 40%; the prediction is that it will vanish altogether during summers in the second half of this century."
Military records
Measurements of thickness come mainly from military submarines, which spent long periods under the Arctic ice during the Cold War.
Peter Wadhams was one of the scientists who afterwards persuaded the authorities in Britain and the United States to de-classify their data.
But as a method of measurement, it is far from perfect; and satellites have given only limited help.
The existing satellite fleet gives good measurements of ice extent, but is not so good at detecting thickness, partly because the orbits of satellites with radar altimeters do not cover every portion of the ocean.
This data deficit has led to a rival theory; that the ice is not melting at all, it is simply piling up in another part of the ocean, perhaps along the north Canadian coast. ...
Great expanse
Temperatures, meanwhile, show a similar pattern to that seen along the Antarctic Peninsula; an average warming of about 2C in the last 50 years, about twice the global average, albeit with significant variations between different parts of the Arctic.
This is reflected in changes to ice cover on land as well as on sea.
The Greenland ice sheet is, after Antarctica, the second biggest expanse of ice in the world.
Its fringes expand and contract with the seasons; but images show it is melting more each summer now than a decade ago.
In February 2006 researchers discovered glaciers in Greenland were moving much faster than before, meaning that more of its ice was entering the sea.
In 1996, Greenland was losing about 100 cubic km per year in mass from its ice sheet; by 2005, this had increased to about 220 cubic km.
A complete melt of the ice sheet would cause a global sea level rise of about 7m; but the current picture indicates that while some regions are thinning, others are apparently getting thicker. [...]
Notice that they are referring to the Greenland Ice Sheet in this last remark about "getting thicker." They fail to note that the most important factor is the massive amount of fresh water being dumped into the ocean.
We now come back to the remark:
A European satellite named Cryosat was designed to provide definitive answers to some of these questions. A launcher fault destroyed the mission in October 2005...
Considering the disappearance of the articles about Greenland on the U.S. controlled websites, this just sort of gives me the willies. What do they mean a "launcher fault destroyed the mission" ???
CryoSat crashes into the sea
By Team Register,
8th October 2005
The European Space Agency's latest satellite has broken up and crashed into the sea.
The 135 million euro satellite, called Cryosat, blasted off this evening from Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome, aboard a modified intercontinental ballistic missile, called Rockot. But it went missing a couple of hours later, around the time it should have shot into final orbit.
Cryosat was supposed to examine the effects of global warming on the polar ice caps. Instead it did its own little bit for global warming as it plunged into the icy Arctic Sea.
In a statement this evening, The European Space Agency said that Russian authorities blamed the crash on "an anomaly in the launch sequence".
The second stage performed nominally until main engine cut-off was to occur. Due to a missing command from the onboard flight control system the main engine continued to operate until depletion of the remaining fuel. As a consequence, the separation of the second stage from upper stage did not occur. Thus, the combined stack of the two stages and the CryoSat satellite fell into the nominal drop zone north of Greenland close to the North Pole into high seas with no consequences to populated areas.
A joint Russian-ESA team will investigate the cause of failure and expects to report back within a few weeks.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think it is strange that the Cryosat crashed in the same month that the Journal Science articles about the build-up of ice in Greenland sort of disappeared from Reuters and CNN?
BBC gives an update on the crash:
Cryosat rocket fault laid bare
By Helen Briggs
BBC News science reporter
27 October 2006
Russian space officials have identified the rocket fault that led to the loss of Europe's Cryosat satellite.
A problem with the onboard flight-control system of the newly built upper stage of the rocket was to blame.
The Russian state commission report clears the launcher for future use.
It was grounded on 8 October when the mission to map the Earth's ice sheets fell into the ocean shortly after lift-off from Plesetsk in Russia.
The (135m euro) satellite was riding atop a Rockot launch vehicle, a former military rocket modified by the addition of a newly manufactured third stage.
The Russian Failure Investigation State Commission says a set of measures is being implemented to prevent a recurrence of the incident.
"We confirm from the information we have from the State Commission that there was a problem with the software flight-control system in the Breeze upper stage of the launcher," European Space Agency spokesperson, Simonetta Cheli, told the BBC News website.
"This problem led to a failure of the Breeze upper stage to generate the command to shut down the second stage engine."
The error meant that separation of the rocket's second and third stages did not occur, denying the satellite the final boost it needed to reach orbit and causing it to nosedive into the sea.
A board set up by the rocket operator, Eurockot, is to review the findings of the State Commission next week.
The British scientist who proposed the mission, Prof Duncan Wingham, is calling for the spacecraft to be re-built.
So, it was a software flight control problem; probably one of the easiest ways to sabotage a mission via remote control. We next see that ESA is not giving up, but the work may not be done in time based on all of the above information:
Workshop on Antarctic sea-ice highlights need for CryoSat-2 mission
9 August 2006
Sea-ice thickness is an important parameter in modelling global climate, and moreover, long-term changes are considered to be a reliable indicator of climate change. However, estimates of sea-ice thickness trends around Antarctica are currently very limited. An international workshop held recently made it clear that these essential data can only be obtained from satellite missions such as CryoSat-2. [...]
Over the three-day event, which was held on 5 - 7 July 2006, talks highlighted the fact that ice-thickness trends around Antarctica are still largely unknown and that information on seasonal, inter-annual and decadal thickness variations is very scarce. [...]
ESA's ice mission CryoSat-2
07-Jan-2007
The question of whether global climate change is causing the polar ice caps to shrink is one of the most hotly debated environmental issues we currently face. By monitoring precise changes in the thickness of the polar ice sheets and floating sea ice, CryoSat-2 aims to answer this question.
The go-ahead to build and launch the CryoSat-2 mission came in February 2006 after the loss of the first CryoSat last October due to a launch failure. The mission's objectives remain the same as before - to measure ice thickness on both land and sea very precisely to provide conclusive proof as to whether there a trend towards diminishing polar ice cover, furthering our understanding of the relationship between ice and global climate. CryoSat-2 is due for launch in 2009.
It is now generally agreed that the Earth's atmosphere is getting warmer, and although the impact of climate change is expected to be amplified at the poles, it is extremely difficult to predict what effect this is having on the polar ice cover. On one hand, recent years have already seen record summer reductions, in extent and concentrations, of sea ice in the Arctic. In Antarctica, giant icebergs have calved and part of the Larsen ice shelf has disintegrated. However, on the other hand, ships have recently been trapped for weeks in unusually heavy Antarctic pack ice conditions. [...]
Ryan, the Australian forum member found a couple more interesting pieces of this puzzle:
Considerations Over the Loss of CryoSat ESA Satellite
On 8th October 2005, following a successful preparation of the satellite by the joint ESA and industrial teams, the launch of CryoSat satellite on board a Rockot launch vehicle ended in failure. Due to an anomaly towards the end of the planned 2nd stage operations and approximately five minutes after lift-off, at a height of 230 km, the launch vehicle automatically interrupted its mission and began to fall. The combination of the re-entry heat and the explosion of the fuel tanks completely destroyed CryoSat. Debris of the launch vehicle (2nd, 3rd stage) and of the satellite impacted into the Arctic Ocean.
Formed in 1995, the launch services provider Eurockot Launch Services GmbH, is a joint venture between EADS Space Transportation (DE) and Krunichev (Russia) that provides commercial launch services with the Rockot launch system to operators of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites and operates from launch facilities in Plesetsk Cosmodrome, northern Russia. [...]
The root cause of the CryoSat failure has been unambiguously identified and corrective measures for Rockot's return-to- flight are now under way. A Russian State Commission was convened immediately after the accident. The conclusions of its investigation work have been issued in a report including subsequent recommendations, and its main conclusion is that human error and not an inherent design flaw of the launch vehicle caused the failure. [...]
This remark becomes even more interesting when we read the ESA Chairman's introduction to the bulletin:
A Word from the Chairman"
Space Law Games
Some of you may well have seen the American film in which a supercomputer takes control and directs the fighting between the two superpowers, resulting in the annihilation of the armed forces of the two opposing camps. It turns out that it's only a game with the battle, entirely virtual, won by the computer, which has been brilliantly programmed by a young boy. Proof, if any is needed, that games can be your downfall. ...
Next, let's look at what the Cassiopaeans had to say about all of this 10 years or so ago which is now proving to be astonishingly accurate. And if their remarks about the Global Climate changes have support in science, maybe we ought to consider the other things they have said with a bit more attention? If you read the following in the context of 9/11 and the Global Warming issue, it all begins to make sense.
22 Feb 97
Q: (Laura) Ok, we have several things that we discussed earlier, is there anything you wish to say before we launch into questions?
A: Underground bases see dramatic budget increase.
Q: (Laura) Ok, why do they have a budget increase?
A: Because there is much more activity to come.
Q: (Laura) Ok, what kind of activity?
A: Broad range.
Q: (Laura) Can you list, say, the top three?
A: Experimentation, utilization and implementation.
Q: (Laura & Terry) Of what?
A: Human "resources." Plan falling into place for "harvest."
Q: (Terry) The new underground bases, along with all the old ones are for the coming harvest?
A: And other purposes of STS forces' plans.
Q: (Terry) And other STS plans... (Laura) What is this thing called 'The Harvest'?
A: What do you think?
Q: (Laura) Well, is that harvest in a negative event, or harvest in a positive one? I mean, as in the harvesting of the wheats and the tares...
A: Either/or.
Q: (Laura) Ok, now you say the plans are falling into place. What specific events of the past, say, several weeks, or months, whatever period of time set aside, are these plans that are falling into place? I mean, what's the key in the lock?
A: Have you been paying attention, as we have always suggested you should?
Q: (Laura) Of course! I just asked you because I wanted you to enumerate! Of course I'm paying attention!
A: Lately, there has been diversion for you.
Q: (Laura) Well, it doesn't mean I'm asleep!
A: V*** mentioned the weather. Was that a bit "nippy" for you in central Europe in December and January, Arkadiusz?
Here, I wonder if the "nippy" wasn't a clue?
Q: (Terry) V*** mentioned the weather, and the changes in it. What was the name of that movie we watched up in Tallahassee, I forgot the name of it...
[Terry then spoke about a science fiction. Aliens were here among us, and were plotting to affect the weather in such a way as to make the planet uninhabitable for us, but perfect for them. Naturally, there was secrecy and coverups. Then the subject moved to the cell phone towers that were noted in rural areas of North Florida. This then lead to a question about the cell phone towers. First part of question lost.]
Q: (Terry)...transmit to us and back... what can be transmitted? Can the negative energy be focused through these microwave towers?
(V***) And what was the correlation between the strange weather and the harvesting?
(Laura) Because we were told that the weather changes were due to the energy buildup of the wave. That was two years ago. And it had nothing to do with the 'harvest.'
(Terry) But it could also be that HAARP adds to it.
(Jan) Ok, well, let's ask...
(Laura) Well, they would love for us to think that HAARP has something to do with weather. 'Yes, we're having bizzare weather. Let's blame it on HAARP!' because we're going to think about HAARP... What a perfect...
(Terry) Well, HAARP has a lot more to do than just the weather. They can put all the energy-based stuff that they've been experimenting on in one place, because they can do whatever they want, just by changing the frequencies...
(Jan) Or, even just continue to mess the weather up, to continue to create negative vibrations, worry and uncertainty...
(V***) I guess the point I'm trying to get at is, are these weather changes promoting some changes in the physical body, that's making the physical body more 'harvestable?'
(Terry) Could very well be.
(Laura) Well, it's all interconnected, but I wouldn't say that one is the cause of the other, just to say that they occur...
(Terry) But why, as we were talking about earlier, is all this weird stuff going on all through the media?
A: We told you that "HAARP" was being designated for capturing and modulating electromagnetic fields for the purpose of total control of brainwave patterns in order to establish a system of complete"order on the surface of the planet" in either 3rd or 4th density.
Q: (Laura) Is HAARP in operation at the present time?
A: Yes, in its early stages.
Q: (Terry) Is the spreading of all these communication towers out across the country the equivalent of a HAARP program on a continental scale?
A: Back up system.
Q: (Laura) So, they don't need the towers to operate the HAARP system, but they are there as the backup?
A: Towers serve dual and lateral purposes.
Q: (Terry) Local and regional authorities can use the towers to track people, amongst other things. (Laura) Is the weather being controlled or changed or in any way affected by HAARP?
A: Climate is being influenced by three factors, and soon a fourth.
Q: (Laura) All right, I'll take the bait; give me the three factors, and also the fourth!
A: 1) Wave approach. 2) Chloroflorocarbon increase in atmosphere, thus affecting ozone layer. 3) Change in the planet's axis rotation orientation. 4) Artificial tampering by 3rd and 4th density STS forces in a number of different ways. ...
Q: (Laura) All right, were those given in the order in which they are occurring? The fourth being the one that's coming later?
A: Maybe, but remember this: a change in the speed of the rotation may not be reported while it is imperceptible except by instrumentation. Equator is slightly "wider" than the polar zones. But, this discrepancy is decreasing slowly currently. One change to occur in 21st Century is sudden glacial rebound, over Eurasia first, then North America. Ice ages develop much, much, much faster than thought.
[Discussion of new scientific theory recently presented that the earth is expanding.]
Q: (Terry) Is the Earth expanding? That's just putting it bluntly, but, is the Earth expanding, how did you put that? (Ark) Yes, that's the theory: the idea is that the continents move away because the Earth is expanding, and this is much faster than you know, than geologists were thinking.
A: Continental "drift" is caused by the continual though variable, propelling of gases from the interior to the surface, mainly at points of magnetic significance.
Q: (Jan) What causes the change in the axis?
A: By slow down of rotation. Earth alternately heats up and cools down in interior.
Q: (Laura) Why does it do that? What's the cause of this?
A: Part of cycle related to energy exerted upon surface by the frequency resonance vibrational profile of humans and others. [...]
Q: (Terry) Ok, let's go back to the beginning of the session, when we were talking about the acceleration/expansion on underground bases in preparation for the harvest. Is that world-wide, we're talking here?
A: Yes, but United States is focus, due to particularly cooperative power structure profile.
Q: (Terry) Do we want to ask about the power structure profile?
(Laura) No, we know what that is; they agreed to work with them. But, what I would like to know is what particular steps are being taken, what particular activities are being stepped up?
A: Acquisition, staging, testing of planned activity.
Q: (Laura) And what is the planned activity?
A: Control of absolutely everything.
Like I said earlier, when the C's were talking about this sort of thing we simply could not even imagine how such a scenario might be initiated and play out. It was all just theoretical fun and games for us. We listened, took notes, and said, basically, "yeah, right!" That 9/11 could be planned and carried out, and all that has followed it was simply out of the range of our limited imaginations!
Q: (Laura) Well, swell! (Terry) That's the one world government! That's what they want! (Laura) OK, is there anything in particular that we can do to...
A: Knowledge protects, ignorance endangers. Awareness makes you less vulnerable, both directly and indirectly. Heard anything about synthetic blood, and blood and plasma alteration lately?
Q:(Laura) There's a can of worms for you! All right, I'll bite! Go ahead, tell us about the synthetic blood and the blood plasma.
A: Less "mutes" needed.
Q: (Laura) Cattle Mutilations. They don't need as many cattle mutilations.
[...]
A: Bio and cyber/genetic humanoid types now increasing exponentially in general population. You may have already encountered one or two during the past 10 days.
Q: (Laura) You, who? You, as in me, you as in F***, who?
A: Reflect upon activities, and power and influence centers for answer.
It took us another 5 years to figure that one out: psychopaths, and then later, ponerology. This next exchange gives some additional clues and insight:
9 May 1998
Q: ... I would like to know what the geographic coordinates, according to our current grid system, that would frame Atlantis. I don't need the exact shape, just a general box shape... the perimeter...
A: Like asking: "What are the geographic coordinates of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization?"
Q: Okay, let me get more specific: the Atlantean land that was supposed to have existed in the Atlantic Ocean... what was the farthest north of any any part of Atlantis that was in the ocean, that no longer exists?
A: It is "time for you" to know that Atlantis was not a nation, land, Island, or continent, but rather, a civilization!
Q: All I wanted was to have an idea of a land mass in the Atlantic ocean that people talk about - where did it sit?
A: Where do you think?
Q: Well, I sort of think that the Azores and the Canary Islands are sort of...
A: Yes, but many other places too. Remember, the sea level was several hundred feet lower then...
Q: Why was the sea level several hundred feet lower? Because there was ice somewhere or because there was not as much water on the earth at that time?
A: Ice.
Q: Was the ice piled up at the poles? The ice sheet of the ice age?
A: Yes.
Q: So, Atlantis existed during the ice age?
A: Largely, yes. And the world's climate was scarcely any colder away from the ice sheets than it is today.
 |
| © |
| The World during the Ice Age |
Q: Well, how could that be? What caused these glaciers?
A: Global warming.
Q: How does global warming cause glaciers?
A: Increases precipitation dramatically. Then moves the belt of great precipitation much farther north. This causes rapid buildup of ice sheets, followed by increasingly rapid and intense glacial rebound.
So, let's put those two things together: How does global warming cause glaciers and lead to an Ice age?
Increases precipitation dramatically. Then moves the belt of great precipitation much farther north. This causes rapid buildup of ice sheets, followed by increasingly rapid and intense glacial rebound. ... One change to occur in 21st Century is sudden glacial rebound, over Eurasia first, then North America. Ice ages develop much, much, much faster than thought.
There is, of course, those two worrying questions to consider: how fast and how bad can it be?
Just the other day we published a news item on SOTT that read, in part:
A recent scientific theory called the "hydrate hypothesis" says that historical global warming cycles have been caused by a feedback loop, where melting permafrost methane clathrates (also known as "hydrates") spur local global warming, leading to further melting of clathrates and bacterial growth.
In other words, like western Siberia, the 400 billion tons of methane in permafrost hydrate will gradually melt, and the released methane will speed the melting. The effect of even a couple of billion tons of methane being emitted into the atmosphere each year would be catastrophic.
By the way, the "hydrate hypothesis" is a weeks old scientific theory, and is only now being discussed by global warming scientists. I suggest you Google the term.
There are enormous quantities of methane trapped in permafrost and under the oceans in ice-like structures called clathrates. The methane in Arctic permafrost clathrates is estimated at 400 billion tons.
Methane is more than 20 times as strong a greenhouse gas as CO2, and the atmosphere currently contains about 3.5 billion tons of the gas. [...]
Releases of methane from melting oceanic clathrates have caused severe environmental impacts in the past. The methane in oceanic clathrates has been estimated at 10,000 billion tons.
55 million years ago a global warming chain reaction (probably started by volcanic activity) melted oceanic clathrates. It was one of the most rapid and extreme global warming events in geologic history.
Meanwhile, a strong natural gas odor was reported a few days ago in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Jersey City, Weehawken, and Newark. As Wayne Madsen pointed out, last August, a similar unexplained gas odor sent people to the hospital in Staten Island and Queens. Although methane is odorless, natural methane
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