Earth Changes
Previous studies have suggested the arrival of the last Ice Age nearly 13,000 years ago took about a decade - but now scientists believe the process was up to 20 times as fast.
In scenes reminiscent of the Hollywood blockbuster The day After Tomorrow, the Northern Hemisphere was frozen by a sudden slowdown of the Gulf Stream, which allowed ice to spread hundreds of miles southwards from the Arctic.
Geological sciences professor William Patterson, who led the research, said: 'It would have been very sudden for those alive at the time. It would be the equivalent of taking Britain and moving it to the Arctic over the space of a few months.'
"Global warming isn't a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves 'regardless of what we do,'" climatologist James Hanson wrote.
"If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies...twenty to 50 percent of the planet's species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk."
Hansen, who has directed the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies for nearly three decades, has published numerous articles on the subject of climate change.

A dying pelican crawls away from the surf to die on the beach of Paita, in Tumbes province, 1,100 kilometres north of Lima and close to the border with Ecuador on May 2.
The country's northern beaches were earlier this week declared off-limits as scientists scrambled to pin down what was causing such a massive toll, with non-government organizations blaming oil exploration work.
But Peru's deputy environment minister Gabriel Quijandria, disputed this and said warming waters, which disturbs species' food supplies, was a possible cause.
He said that although tests conducted on 877 dolphins found dead on the coast had not been completed, contamination from heavy metals or the presence of bacterial infections was not responsible.
The magnitude 8.6 earthquake that struck in the Indian Ocean off the western coast of Sumatra on April 11was one of the 10 largest earthquakes ever recorded, and was felt as far away as Bangladesh and India. However, no quake-related fatalities were reported.
Seismologists have done preliminary studies on the earthquake and found that it had some unusual aspects, ones that could help them better understand earthquakes that happen away from the boundaries between tectonic plates and better appreciate how powerful those quakes could potentially be.
During a 2009 expedition, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography researchers took water samples 1,000 miles west of California, and then compared the amount of plastic they detected with samples dating back to 1972.
While many of the samples taken 40 years ago included little or no plastic, vast stretches of the North Pacific are now polluted with billions of tiny pieces of confetti-like trash that come from flotsam and jetsam that is swept into the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone by circulating ocean currents known as a gyre, and is then broken down by winds and waves.
The particles of 'microplastic' - pieces of plastic smaller than 5 milometer in diameter - sit on or near the surface, where they are consumed by fish, sea turtles and other marine animals.
The latest samples show that the garbage patch - which is about the size of Texas - has become much denser: There are roughly 100 times more pieces of plastic per cubic meter of water than were in samples during the 1970s, according to the study cited by the San Jose Mercury News.
'We were really surprised. It is a very large increase,' said Miriam Goldstein, a Ph.D. graduate student in biological oceanography and lead author of the study.
The image shows the activity on Pagan Island, the largest and one of the most active of the Marianas volcanoes, a NASA release reported Thursday.
Fires and smoke on the island was imaged on Tuesday by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite.
The last time May was colder was in 1698, at 8.5C over the whole month.
And the Met Office has warned that weeks of wet weather ahead could wash out the Queen's diamond jubilee celebrations.
The Environment Agency issued two flood warnings and 14 alerts, warning of high tides swamping coastlines across South Wales.
Up to 2cm of rain will fall across the south and Midlands today. Severe weather warnings have been issued in the south-west. Wednesday and Thursday will see many parts hit by another 3cm of rain - totalling 5cm, or a month's worth, in 24 hours - with localised flooding and transport problems expected. Warnings have been issued.
Gales hitting 50mph will buffet vehicles, rip branches from trees and threaten property damage.
The tornadoes formed at the front edge of a powerful storm system that moved across the region yesterday afternoon.
Tim Osborn, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coast Survey was just finishing up a meeting on Grand Isle when he spied a man out the window do a double-take and point to the skies.
"He came running in and said, 'There's a waterspout out there!'" Osborn told OurAmazingPlanet. So Osborn grabbed his camera and started snapping, catching the birth of not one, but two waterspouts as they spun up over waters just north of the island.
"You could clearly see them forming in the sky," he said, "and I was able to get them on the camera as they were starting to drop."
Comment: Rare?
This is from a year ago:
Amazing waterspout 'tornadoes' caught on camera off Australia
Not one or two but THREE waterspouts!

Bottom Image: This radar image of bedrock elevation reveals the new sub-glacial basin (purple and blue regions). The basin is divided into two components (A and B) and lies just inland of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet's grounding line (black line), where streams of ice flowing toward the Weddell Sea begin to float. Top Image: White box indicates location of bottom image. Pine Island Glacier (PIG) and Thwaites Glacier—two parts of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet previously studied by the U.S. and U.K. researchers—drain into the Amundsen Sea.
Team members at The University of Texas at Austin compared data about the newly discovered basin to data they previously collected from other parts of the WAIS that also appear highly vulnerable, including Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier. Although the amount of ice stored in the new basin is less than the ice stored in previously studied areas, it might be closer to a tipping point.
"If we were to invent a set of conditions conducive to retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, this would be it," said Don Blankenship, senior research scientist at The University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics and co-author on the new paper. "With its smooth bed that slopes steeply toward the interior, we could find no other region in West Antarctica more poised for change than this newly discovered basin at the head of the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf. The only saving grace is that losing the ice over this new basin would only raise sea level by a small percentage of the several meters that would result if the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet destabilized."













Comment: Hanson is pushing the Global Warming agenda. As we have stated on Sott.net many times, Global Warming does occur, but according to our research it is NOT man made; Global Warming is actually a precursor to rapid 'Ice Age' onset. And although oil consumption and drilling is harming the planet to a great extent, the environmental effects have nothing to do with Global Warming as described by Hanson.
For more information, please read:
Climate Change Swindlers and the Political Agenda
Global Warming on Mars & Cosmic Ray Research Are Shattering Media Driven "Consensus"
Ice Ages Start and End So Suddenly, "It's Like a Button Was Pressed," Say Scientists
Reflections on the Coming Ice Age
'Forget global warming, prepare for Ice Age'
Scientist predicts 'mini Ice Age'