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


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

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

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

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

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

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Star

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

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


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

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

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

Comment: What has SoTT been saying for ages?

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Target

SOTT Focus: Majesterium and the Tipping Point

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


Angel by William Blake


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

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

'Forget global warming, prepare for Ice Age'

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

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

Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh

Phil Chapman
The Australian
Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:04 UTC
THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.

What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot.

Image
©SOHO

Comment: Chapman has it only partly right. He excludes the evidence for cometary dust loading that contributed to the last ice age (and most likely previous ones). The increased depositional flux evidenced from Gabrielli's paper shows that it was not the sun alone that caused the last ice age:

Depositional Fluxes
©Nature

And from Victor Clube's talk:
You first take the modern sky accessible to science, especially during the Space Age, and you look at its' darker debris with a view to relating its behavior to the more accessible human history which we can, in principle, really understand. And by this approach you discover from the dynamics of the material in space which I'm talking about that a huge comet must have settled in a Taurid orbit some 20,000 years ago, whose dense meteor stream for 10,000 years almost certainly produced the last Ice Age.
Now the question must be asked, Is there a relationship between the sun's missing spots and a 100,000 year ice age cycle coupled with cometary debris entering the solar system?

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Better Earth

Whatever happened to our ice age?

Sarah Lewis
The Argus
Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:45 UTC
Today scientists are warning of a warming planet - but didn't they claim a new ice age was on the way just 40 years ago? SARAH LEWIS gets in a time machine and takes a look at the science of the 1970s.

In the 1970s, scientists predicted an ice age.

Nearly 40 years later, there is worldwide alarm as we are repeatedly warned of catastrophic warming to our climate.
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Better Earth

The Little Ice Age in Southern Chile


CO2 Science
Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:48 UTC
Reference:

Araneda, A., Torrejon, F., Aguayo, M., Torres, L., Cruces, F., Cisternas, M. and Urrutia, R. 2007. Historical records of San Rafael glacier advances (North Patagonian Icefield): another clue to "Little Ice Age" timing in southern Chile? The Holocene 17: 987-998.
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Cow Skull

US: Skeleton of a Giant Sloth from Great Ice Age Found in Carlsbad (CA)


fox6.com
Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:34 UTC
The skeleton of a giant ground sloth has been found buried deep beneath an old ranch in northern Carlsbad, it was reported Monday.

The skeleton was found late last month beneath Robertson Ranch and is the second fossil of an ancient mammal to be discovered by construction crews digging in the area, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

skeleton of sloth
©Unknown
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Snowman

Snakeless in Ireland: Blame Ice Age, Not St. Patrick

James Owen
National Geographic
Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:37 UTC
During St. Patrick's Day next week, most revelers won't remember the patron saint of Ireland for his role as a snake killer.

But legend holds that the Christian missionary rid the slithering reptiles from Ireland's shores as he converted its peoples from paganism during the fifth century A.D.

St. Patrick supposedly chased the snakes into the sea after they began attacking him during a 40-day fast he undertook on top of a hill.

An unlikely tale, perhaps - yet Ireland is unusual for its absence of native snakes.

It's one of only a handful of places worldwide - including New Zealand, Iceland, Greenland, and Antarctica - where Indiana Jones and other snake-averse humans can visit without fear.

Image
©ohn Cancalosi/NGS
This grass snake swimming in duckweed belongs to one of only three snake species native to Britain.

After the last ice age about 10,000 years ago, swollen seas prevented snakes from migrating throughout parts of northern Europe - and none made it to Ireland.

Even still, the legend that St. Patrick banished snakes from the Emerald Isle in the fifth century A.D. lives on in popular culture.
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Cloud Lightning

Solar Activity Diminishes; Researchers Predict Another Ice Age

Michael Asher
Daily Tech
Sat, 09 Feb 2008 13:15 UTC
Global Cooling comes back in a big way

Dr. Kenneth Tapping is worried about the sun. Solar activity comes in regular cycles, but the latest one is refusing to start. Sunspots have all but vanished, and activity is suspiciously quiet. The last time this happened was 400 years ago -- and it signaled a solar event known as a "Maunder Minimum," along with the start of what we now call the "Little Ice Age."

Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, says it may be happening again. Overseeing a giant radio telescope he calls a "stethoscope for the sun," Tapping says, if the pattern doesn't change quickly, the earth is in for some very chilly weather.
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