Shaidurov explained how changes in the amount of ice crystals at high altitude could damage the layer of thin, high altitude clouds found in the mesosphere that reduce the amount of warming solar radiation reaching the earth's surface.

Shaidurov has used a detailed analysis of the mean temperature change by year for the last 140 years and explains that there was a slight decrease in temperature until the early twentieth century. This flies in the face of current global warming theories that blame a rise in temperature on rising carbon dioxide emissions since the start of the industrial revolution.

Shaidurov, however, suggests that the rise, which began between 1906 and 1909, could have had a very different cause, which he believes was the massive Tunguska Event, which rocked a remote part of Siberia, northwest of Lake Baikal on the 30th June 1908.

The Tunguska Event, sometimes known as the Tungus Meteorite is thought to have resulted from an asteroid or comet entering the earth's atmosphere and exploding. The event released as much energy as fifteen one-megaton atomic bombs.

As well as blasting an enormous amount of dust into the atmosphere, felling 60 million trees over an area of more than 2000 square kilometres. Shaidurov suggests that this explosion would have caused "considerable stirring of the high layers of atmosphere and change its structure." Such meteoric disruption was the trigger for the subsequent rise in global temperatures.

Global warming is thought to be caused by the "greenhouse effect". Energy from the sun reaches the earth's surface and warms it, without the greenhouse effect most of this energy is then lost as the heat radiates back into space. However, the presence of so-called greenhouse gases at high altitude absorb much of this energy and then radiate a proportion back towards the earth's surface. Causing temperatures to rise.

Many natural gases and some of those released by conventional power stations, vehicle and aircraft exhausts act as greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide, natural gas, or methane, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are all potent greenhouse gases.

Carbon dioxide and methane are found naturally in the atmosphere, but it is the gradual rise in levels of these gases since the industrial revolution, and in particular the beginning of the twentieth century, that scientists have blamed for the gradual rise in recorded global temperature. Attempts to reverse global warming, such as the Kyoto Protocol, have centred on controlling and even reducing CO2 emissions.

However, the most potent greenhouse gas is water, explains Shaidurov and it is this compound on which his study focuses. According to Shaidurov, only small changes in the atmospheric levels of water, in the form of vapour and ice crystals can contribute to significant changes to the temperature of the earth's surface, which far outweighs the effects of carbon dioxide and other gases released by human activities. Just a rise of 1% of water vapour could raise the global average temperature of Earth's surface more then 4 degrees Celsius.

The role of water vapour in controlling our planet's temperature was hinted at almost 150 years ago by Irish scientist John Tyndall. Tyndall, who also provided an explanation as to why the sky is blue, explained the problem: "The strongest radiant heat absorber, is the most important gas controlling Earth's temperature.

"Without water vapour, he wrote, the Earth's surface would be 'held fast in the iron grip of frost'." Thin clouds at high altitude allow sunlight to reach the earth's surface, but reflect back radiated heat, acting as an insulating greenhouse layer.

Water vapour levels are even less within our control than CO2 levels. According to Andrew E. Dessler of the Texas A & M University writing in 'The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change', "Human activities do not control all greenhouse gases, however.

The most powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapour, he says, "Human activities have little direct control over its atmospheric abundance, which is controlled instead by the worldwide balance between evaporation from the oceans and precipitation."

As such, Shaidurov has concluded that only an enormous natural phenomenon, such as an asteroid or comet impact or airburst, could seriously disturb atmospheric water levels, destroying persistent so-called 'silver', or noctilucent, clouds composed of ice crystals in the high altitude mesosphere (50 to 85km).

The Tunguska Event was just such an event, and coincides with the period of time during which global temperatures appear to have been rising the most steadily - the twentieth century. There are many hypothetical mechanisms of how this mesosphere catastrophe might have occurred, and future research is needed to provide a definitive answer.

Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories basked in temperatures that were more than 6 degrees Celsius above norm.

"We are known as the second coldest country in the world and it was anything but that. It was really quite un-Canadian," Phillips said.

Canada began keeping national weather records, including records from the Far North, in 1948.

While the warmer winter might be good news for homeowners worried about heating bills, it was bad for communities in the Far North that depend on seasonal ice roads across rivers or lakes for the delivery of heavy supplies.

Phillips said while temperatures add to the circumstantial evidence of global warming, he cautioned against reading too much into the findings from a relatively short period of time.

"This is chaotic nature of the atmosphere that it can turn on you. And that cold pole could sit us over next year and we'll end up in the freezing-in-the-dark type of situation," he said.

But Phillips also noted the warm winter follows three unusually warm seasons in 2005, and seasonal temperatures have been above normal for the past eight years.

One dam in particular was in imminent danger of collapsing, Hooser told ABC's "Good Morning America." He said workers were trying to drain off the water behind it.

"It's still raining. I don't think it's over with. The entire island is kind of flooding in different parts," Hooser said Wednesday. "We're just hoping and praying for the rain to pass and the skies to clear and get on with the work of rebuilding the community."

The water cut off access to and from thousands of rural houses and luxury condominiums along Kauai's north shore.

"Sounded like a 747 jet crashing here in the valley, all the trees popping and snapping and everything," said John Hawthorne. "It was just a horrendous sound, and it never quit."

Search crews recovered the body of an unidentified man, and area residents said one family whose home was swept away was missing several children.

"To my knowledge, there was no warning whatsoever," Hooser said. "We're still hopeful that we'll find some of the missing."

Gov. Linda Lingle, who planned to tour the area Wednesday, extended state disaster programs and services Tuesday to the residents affected by recent rains and flooding. She also made loans available to people whose homes or businesses were damaged and authorized the use of National Guard troops to help with disaster relief.

State officials were assessing the safety of other dams in the island's steep hills. Ed Teixeira, state vice director of civil defense, said officials were worried about erosion.

"I would characterize this as a growing crisis on Kauai," he said.

Nearly all of Hawaii's dams were built early in the past century before federal standards existed or the advent of the state's program for assessing dam and levee safety, according to Edwin Matsuda, an engineer who heads the state's safety programs.

The 40-foot-high Kaloko Reservoir dam, which captured runoff from small streams, gave way about an hour before dawn Tuesday. Authorities estimated that about 1,400 acre-feet of water poured out of the reservoir, enough water to cover 1,400 acres a foot deep, or more than 60 million cubic feet.

"You could hear a roar and trees breaking. It was nuts. It was totally loud," said Brendan O'Connor, who was awakened by the thunderous sound of rushing water.

Officials feared Morita Reservoir's dam, located downstream from Kaloko, might also fail.

"Everybody's on edge," resident Victoria Stamper said.

Late Tuesday, road crews began clearing mud, trees and other debris from the highway by the truckload until work was stopped so water could be released from Morita Reservoir, state transportation spokesman Scott Ishikawa said.

One lifelong north shore resident, Be Chandler, waited patiently in her pickup truck in hopes her mother, who was stranded on the other side of the Kuhio Highway, would be allowed through. Her 74-year-old mother is in a wheelchair and requires dialysis three times a week.

"Somehow, we have to get her over," said Chandler. "I'm just praying to see my mom."

Roy Matsuda, lead forecaster at the Honolulu office of the
National Weather Service, said Tuesday that a storm had dumped 5 to 6 inches of rain on Kauai in 24 hours.

An exhausted Katie Carlin, of San Mateo, Calif., arrived Monday night with her husband and two young children only to find they were unable to reach their hotel room in Hanalei because of a flooded bridge.

"We're trapped," she said. "It's small potatoes to what's going on here, but I just don't want to spend another night in the car."

Kieffer, UI Professor Gustavo Gioia, and graduate student Pinaki Chakraborty believe they know what caused the unusual cloud.

The volcano erupted Nov. 3, 2002, sending ash down nearby valleys, heating the surrounding air, which then rose in a volcanic plume.

"A volcanic plume rises until the atmosphere becomes so thin that the mixture of air and ash loses buoyancy and starts to spread laterally, forming an umbrella," Gioia said.

But the Reventador eruption appears to have been laden with fairly cool ash, preventing the umbrella from spreading. It rapidly became a heavy mixture of air, steam and ash hovering over the lighter air below.

"Turbulence magnifies the wavelength," Chakraborty, the paper's lead author, said. "It gave the Reventador umbrella its distinctive scallops, which were hundreds of meters in wavelength."

This experimental weather modification bill will impact residents across the United States not just in California. Many current and ongoing weather modification programs (47 listed by NOAA in 2005), including the one in Wyoming that is designed to increase the snowpack, may be diverting rainwater away from Oklahoma and Texas, two states that are currently fighting fires caused by a lack of rainfall. We have no idea what the unintended consequences of the Wyoming action or other experimental weather modification programs might be now or in the future.

In addition to the experimental weather modification programs listed by NOAA, there are both private and ongoing government sponsored atmospheric testing and heating programs underway in Alaska and across the United States. Alaska Senator Stevens recently received $50 million in funding for Alaska's atmospheric heating program.

All of these unregulated, private, government, and public weather modification programs, may also have unintended synergistic effects. Senate Bill 517 does not address these issues but intends to implement more experimental weather modification programs without a national debate or public oversight.

Artificial weather modification can impact all of us by reducing water supplies, changing agricultural crop production cycles, reducing crop production, and water availability. Since most experimental weather modification programs use chemicals released into the atmosphere the public could be subjected increasingly toxic or unknown substances that could adversely impact agricultural crops and trees.

Trimethyl Aluminum (TMA) and barium are just two of the toxic chemicals used in recent atmospheric heating and testing programs according to NASA. The Alaska H.A.A.R.P. atmospheric heating program may have the capability of changing the Jet Stream which could also change our weather.

Many private weather modification companies admit that precipitation effects may be positive or negative. Fog dispersal programs, using dry ice, liquid nitrogen, liquid propane or silver iodide may improve visibility while adversely impacting Redwood Trees along the California coast by depriving them of needed water they derive from the fog.

The increasing use of varied chemicals like aluminum (coupled with increasing air pollution), can severely impact tree health by depriving trees of water and nutrients normally absorbed through their root systems.

The December 2005 Popular Science Magazine discussed a plan to use an oil slick to stop hurricanes without noting the adverse environmental impacts of the oil used to cover the ocean.

Popular Science also noted that a private company, Dyn-O-Mat, plans to purchase jets to drop thousands of pounds of a water absorbing chemical powder (unknown substance), into hurricanes to absorb moisture that may dissipate hurricanes. There is no agriculture oversight or public hearings to determine the consequences of this and other actions or to monitor or prevent adverse impacts of this chemical once it falls on the surface of the ocean or on land.

Alaska and other areas across the United States are beginning to feel the impacts of climate change. Enormous changes are being seen in the declining health of native plant and tree communities in many areas across the United States.

NASA noted in an October 2005 newsletter that increasingly persistent contrails are "…trapping warmth in the atmosphere and exacerbating global warming…" NASA goes on to note that: "…Any increase in global cloud cover will contribute to long-term changes in Earth's climate. Likewise, any change in Earth's climate may have effects on natural resources…"

Global dimming and the persistent contrails, that produce man-made clouds, may have serious impacts on crop production. A recent corn crop study in Illinois shows that cloud cover reduces corn crop production while direct sunlight increases production. In addition, increasing man-made clouds may reduce the effectiveness of solar panels.

Gil Smolin, an Avian Bird Flu expert, noted on the Ron Owens Show on KGO Radio (January 5, 2006), that the flu was spread more quickly in the winter when there was a "lack of sunlight". Would man-made clouds be contributing to the lack of sunlight which might cause the Avian Bird flu to spread more quickly at other times of the year? Experimental weather modification programs could also exacerbate this problem by changing climate patterns, increasing man-made cloud cover, and changing our weather and climate patterns.

Senate Bill 517 does not address any of these important issues. Its sole purpose is to establish an experimental weather modification policy without any agriculture or public oversight of private, military, and government programs. Without oversight or public hearings agriculture, our natural resources, and watersheds may be negatively impacted. And who will be responsible to determine the synergistic effects of these programs or pay for unintended disasters created by this experimentation. If these programs change growing seasons and interrupt the pollination process crop losses could be substantial exacerbating economic losses.

Please contact all of your elected local, state and federal officials to stop this bill in its present form. This bill needs to have appropriate agriculture and public oversight, with public hearings included, prior to any more experimental projects. We need a national dialogue on this subject before more experimentation takes place.

Venus Project

Flu spread through water droplets from coughs and sneezes that could typically travel one metre, Dr McAnulty said. "Masks catch the droplets … we are advocating it for people who have got the flu when they are visiting the doctor, who may be in a crowded waiting room with other people who are already sick."

In some Asian cities mask use was so routine "that people look at you askance if you have a respiratory illness and you don't have a mask". But there was no evidence to back their use by healthy people who wished to avoid infection.

A public health specialist, Ron Penny, said people with coughs and fever should wear masks on public transport and in crowded places. Professor Penny said advocating masks now was similar to promoting condom use in the 1980s to prevent HIV/AIDS.

"I think we should socialise masks as a means of minimising what is a much more prevalent problem," he said. People with flu needed to be aware that it could kill children, elderly or sick people and take responsibility for avoiding its spread. "It's not a big ask."

Dr Ian Barr, the deputy director of the World Health Organisation's Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, in Melbourne, said the use of masks could cause needless fear. "It is something a little foreign to Australians. I'd be concerned about frightening people."