Extreme Temperatures
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Alarm Clock

Best of the Web: The Ice Age Cometh

Andrew Kenny
The Sunday Mail
Sun, 14 Jul 2002 00:00 UTC
last ice age
© http://wattsupwiththat.com/
A new ice age is due now, but you won't hear it from the green groups, who like to play on Western guilt about consumerism to make us believe in global warming.

The Earth's climate is changing in a dramatic way, with immense danger for mankind and the natural systems that sustain it. This was the frightening message broadcast to us by environmentalists in the recent past. Here are some of their prophecies.
The facts have emerged, in recent years and months, from research into past ice ages. They imply that the threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.
(Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, in International Wildlife, July 1975)

The cooling has already killed thousands of people in poor nations... If it continues, and no strong measures are taken to deal with it, the cooling will cause world famine, world chaos, and probably world war, and this could all come about by the year 2000. (Lowe Ponte, The Cooling, 1976)
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Fish

Florida's Wildlife Freezing to Death

Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:45 UTC
Image
© Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation CommissionMore than 200 manatees have washed ashore since January, and carcasses are still turning up.
Manatees, sea turtles and fish in the Sunshine State are dying in record numbers because of the unusually long cold snap.

With temperature in central Florida dipping down again this week, conservationists are bracing for more animal and plant deaths due to unusually long winter cold snaps that have resulted in record wildlife losses.

Manatees have been among the hardest hit, with over 200 killed in January alone, and carcasses continuing to wash ashore. The highest number of manatee deaths for a single calendar year in Florida waters is 429, so local officials are closely monitoring these endangered marine mammals.

"Manatees can experience what is known as cold stress syndrome when they are exposed to water below 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degree Celsius) for long periods," Florida's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute spokesperson Carli Segelson told Discovery News. "This can result in death, or weaken manatees, leaving them more vulnerable to other health issues later."
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Igloo

Climate Modification Schemes: Are Mad Scientists Trying to Induce an Ice Age?

Spencer Weart
American Institute of Physics
Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:43 UTC
Image
© Kathleen Smith/LLNL A schematic representation of various geoengineering and carbon storage proposals: are such schemes selected on the basis that they assist in precipitating an Ice Age?
If human activities could change climate, why not change it on purpose, to suit us better? From 1945 into the 1970s, much effort went into studies of weather modification. American entrepreneurs tried cloud-seeding to enhance local rainfall, Russian scientists offered fabulous schemes of planetary engineering, and military agencies secretly explored "climatological warfare." The hopes and fears promoted basic research on climate change by raising large sums of government money and a few provocative ideas. In the mid 1970s the visionary projects were abandoned. Research turned instead to controversial "geoengineering" schemes for interventions that might restrain global warming if it started to become unbearable.
"Intervention in atmospheric and climatic matters . . . will unfold on a scale difficult to imagine at present. . . . this will merge each nation's affairs with those of every other, more thoroughly than the threat of a nuclear or any other war would have done." - John von Neumann1

Comment: Given that global warming has not in fact been happening, and presuming the chief scientists involved in these military geo-engineering projects are aware of this fact to one degree or another, what does that tell us about the real objective behind the drive to "counter the effects of global warming" while blaming ordinary humanity?

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Snowman

Croatian Scientist Warns Ice Age Could Start in Five Years


Croatian Times
Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:00 UTC
A top scientist in Croatia has warned Europe to prepare for an ice age instead of talking about global warming.

Physician Vladimir Paar suggests one would not need to cross the sea when travelling from Ireland or UK to Croatia via the rest of Europe.

"A majority of Europe will be under ice, including Germany, Poland, France, Austria, Slovakia and part of Slovenia", Paar said in an interview on Croatian news website Index.
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Bizarro Earth

Coral in Florida Keys suffers lethal hit from cold

Curtis Morgan
The Miami Herald
Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:54 UTC
Bitter cold this month may have wiped out many of the shallow water corals in the Keys.

Scientists have only begun assessments, with dive teams looking for "bleaching" that is a telltale indicator of temperature stress in sensitive corals, but initial reports are bleak. The impact could extend from Key Largo through the Dry Tortugas west of Key West, a vast expanse that covers some of the prettiest and healthiest reefs in North America.

Given the depth and duration of frigid weather, Meaghan Johnson, marine science coordinator for The Nature Conservancy, expected to see losses. But she was stunned by what she saw when diving a patch reef 2.5 miles off Harry Harris Park in Key Largo.

Star and brain corals, large species that can take hundreds of years to grow, were as white and lifeless as bones, frozen to death. There were also dead sea turtles, eels and parrotfish littering the bottom.
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Info

Cave reveals Southwest's abrupt climate swings during Ice Age

Mari N. Jensen
University of Arizona
Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:50 UTC
Image
© 2010 Stella Cousins.Sarah Truebe, a geosciences doctoral student at the University of Arizona, checks on an experiment that measures how fast cave formations grow in Arizona's Cave of the Bells.
Ice Age climate records from an Arizona stalagmite link the Southwest's winter precipitation to temperatures in the North Atlantic, according to new research.

The finding is the first to document that the abrupt changes in Ice Age climate known from Greenland also occurred in the southwestern U.S., said co-author Julia E. Cole of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

"It's a new picture of the climate in the Southwest during the last Ice Age," said Cole, a UA professor of geosciences. "When it was cold in Greenland, it was wet here, and when it was warm in Greenland, it was dry here."
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Igloo

Florida: Thousands of Snook Fish Dead in Cold Snap's Wake

Del Milligan
The Ledger
Sun, 17 Jan 2010 15:27 UTC
Snook fish
© Stacey Lynn Brown
Thousands of dead snook are belly up on the surface in the Tampa Bay area and around the southern half of Florida, with hundreds more still floating up off the bottom along both coasts as the thermometer rises.

"If you went around and looked at some of these fish, you would cry," said Capt. Scott Moore of Anna Maria.

The coldest water temperatures in Tampa Bay since 1989 took a heavy toll on the tropical snook, which died when the water stayed in the low 50s and upper 40s for 10 straight days.
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Bizarro Earth

Hummingbird Rarely Seen in Massachusetts Hospitalized


The Associated Press
Sun, 17 Jan 2010 08:35 UTC
A hummingbird rarely seen in Massachusetts and trying to survive a brutal Cape Cod winter has wound up in the hospital. The Cape Cod Times reported that the Allen's hummingbird was brought to the Wild Care of Cape Cod animal rehabilitation center in Eastham after being found in the snow with ice crystals on its wings on Sunday.

The thumb-sized bird had survived two major snow storms, subfreezing temperatures and high winds by feeding on sugar water from a Harwich woman's back yard feeder.

Lela Larned, Wild Care's executive director, said the bird was "at the end of the line."

She says it appears to be getting better, but whether it survives remains uncertain.
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Igloo

Korea: Is Current Cold Winter Ushering In 'Mini-Ice Age'?

Park Si-soo
The Korea Times
Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:07 UTC
The ongoing winter has shattered many records in Korea's modern meteorological history and more records are expected to be rewritten before it is over.

Record high snowfall in central parts of the country early this month already broke a 73-year-old record. In Seoul on Wednesday, the mercury dropped to minus 15.3 degrees Celsius, challenging the lowest temperature in the capital city of -16.7 degrees, set on Jan. 22, 2004.

Southern parts of the peninsula are also struggling with "unprecedented" blizzards.

According to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA), Younggwang, a rural country in South Jeolla Province, was bombarded with 20.5 centimeters of snow, while other towns in the vicinity saw snowfall ranging from three to 10 centimeters.
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Fish

Thousands of dead crabs wash up on Kent beaches


BBC News
Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:18 UTC
Image
The crabs should not pose a danger to people or animals
Thousands of dead crabs have been washed up on Kent's beaches after being killed by the cold weather.

The velvet swimming crabs are littering beaches around Thanet, along with smaller numbers of whelks, sponges and anemones.

It is the second year that icy temperatures have killed off the sea creatures in such large numbers.

Last year the Environment Agency set up an inquiry amid fears a mystery virus could be to blame.
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