Dry lake reveals evidence of Southwestern ‘megadroughts’

Los Alamos National Laboratory ^ | February 28, 2011 | Unknown

[decimon]

Where have all the FReepers gone,
long time posting.

[Cvengr]

Do you mean to say that dry lake beds indicate a lack of rain?

[DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis]

More significantly, a portion of the research indicates that an ancient period of warming may be analogous to natural present-day climate conditions... Must have been caused by all the SUVs they were driving back then.... ;-)

[SunkenCiv]

Evolution in Your Face
by Patrick Huyghe
Omni

Lake Victoria, Africa's largest lake, is home to more than 300 species of cichlids. These fish, which are popular in aquariums, are deep-bodied and have one nostril, rather than the usual two, on each side of the head. Seismic profiles and cores of the lake taken by a team headed by Thomas C. Johnson of the University of Minnesota, reveal that the lake dried up completely about 12,400 years ago. This means that the rate of speciation of cichlid fishes has been extremely rapid: something on average of one new species every 40 years!

[muawiyah]

They have a dirt core and it apparently validated earlier studies.

Nothing wrong with that.

Let's hope they get their quick and dirty stuff out of the way and then carefully put it away where it's safe.

Future technology will make it possible to check through it to find DNA so we can identify the presence of various species.

[Bernard Marx]

They have a dirt core and it apparently validated earlier studies.

Please direct me to where they credit any previous studies. It's announced like the discovery of the Millennium.

We already can identify the presence of various species through stratigraphic fossil correlation and pollen/spore studies, etc. I'm not against using better technology to examine old data but the young Turks should not take credit for previous work. Also this seems to be a another AGW ploy posing as "objective science."

[Bernard Marx]

Do you mean to say that dry lake beds indicate a lack of rain?

Cute. I mean to say that currently populated areas -- the Los Angeles Basin, Las Vegas, Phoenix and the rest of the Southwest -- are subject to severe periodic 200 to 1,000-year or longer droughts, not the brief alternating dry and wet spells of historical record. That knowledge has been around for generations. These guys give the impression they discovered it. It's nice they added a few new data points but the references to AGW make me think their "study" is not the least bit objective.

[wolfcreek]

Visited here a few years back. One of the most unusual and interesting place we’ve ever been.

So many vestiges of the past with an advanced nuclear research facility in the middle.