Free Republic

Geologists long rejected the notion that cataclysmic flood had ever occurred—until one of them found proof of a Noah-like catastrophe in the wildly eroded river valleys of Washington State. After teaching geology at the University of Washington for a decade, I had become embarrassed that I hadn’t yet seen the deep canyons where tremendous Ice Age floods scoured down into solid rock to sculpt the scablands. So I decided to help lead a field trip for students to see the giant erosion scars on the local landforms.We drove across the Columbia River and continued eastward, dropping into Moses Coulee, a...

Brasilia, Jun 7 (Prensa Latina) Record cold winter temperatures have come to South America this year, in places such as the town of Quaraí in the Brazilian region known as the Western Frontier, where a temperature of 2.2 degrees Celsius, the lowest of the year, was registered. In this region, where winter extends between June and September, the outbreak of Antarctic air keeps millions of people on alert. According to the Meteorological Institute, other Brazilian towns reported freezing temperatures, such as Vacaria with -2.1 degrees, Sao Jose dos Ausentes, with -0.9 degrees, Sao Gabriel, -0.8 and Santa Rosa, -0.8 degrees....

Apparently, the magnetic shifts in the Sun mimic those that occurred during the mini-Ice Ages of the 17th century, reports the Japanese Astronomical society. They also claim that this is the reason for the "halting" in the progress of global warming. Basically the sun's magnetic field has shifted from a straight N-S configuration - to a N-Equator Equator-S, 4 pole configuration This supposedly occurred during the 17/18th century and was responsible for the mini Ice Age.

MOSCOW (AP) -- It was an Ice Age squirrel's treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years. From the fruit tissues, a team of Russian scientists managed to resurrect an entire plant in a pioneering experiment that paves the way for the revival of other species. The Silene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated, the researchers said, and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds. The experiment proves that permafrost serves as a natural depository for ancient life forms, said the Russian researchers,...

Normally I don’t go for anonymous guest posters, but this one is from the famous “zombie” of zombietime.com whose identity remains hidden so that he/she may continue to record the anarchy and socially bereft behavior that permeates the McKibbenesque protestor culture of America. Zombie wrote to me yesterday asking that I bring attention to the post, and I’m happy to do so. The text is below, but please follow the link to the evidence (dozens of scanned pages) presented. The Coming of the New Ice Age: End of the Global Warming Era? Guest post by “Zombie”I just finished reading a...

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years. The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century. Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world...

The supposed ‘consensus’ on global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years. The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century. the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food. there is a 92% chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place...

You need to curb those carbon emissions or else you’ll be responsible for warming up the planet, sinking the Maldives and ruining skiing season for everyone. Just ask Al Gore. But apparently the “settled science” still isn’t quite so settled, at least not at Cambridge. Scientists there have concluded a lengthy study of climate cycles as they relate to “wobbles” in the Earth’s orbit around the sun and reached a somewhat different conclusion… man’s emissions of carbon might be the only thing standing between us and another ice age. Researchers used data on the Earth’s orbit and other things to...

They come out from under their rocks every time we have a few tornados and never miss an opening when it comes to exploiting popular ignorance. An AP column last Friday titled Science panel: Get ready for extreme weather opened by asserting – “Think of the Texas drought, floods in Thailand and Russia's devastating heat waves as coming attractions in a warming world. That is the warning from top international climate scientists and disaster experts after meeting in Africa.” And of course their thesis is that this weather is the fault of mankind. They fail to mention that for the...

The eruption of a volcano in Virunga National Park near Goma is seen at night. Volcano fanatics will have to pay $300...The eruption of a volcano in Virunga National Park near Goma is seen at night. Almost three weeks after a fissure opened amidst dense flat forest, the Democratic Republic of Congo's Virunga National Park has seen an increasing number of tourists seeking to be guided on treks to witness the Nyamulagira volcano spewing geysers of lava into the night.

The climate may be less sensitive to carbon dioxide than we thought – and temperature rises this century could be smaller than expected. That's the surprise result of a new analysis of the last ice age. However, the finding comes from considering just one climate model, and unless it can be replicated using other models, researchers are dubious that it is genuine. As more greenhouse gases enter the atmosphere, more heat is trapped and temperatures go up – but by how much? The best estimates say that if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles, temperatures will rise...

At Watts Up With That, data from the National Climatic Data Center are reviewed. The results are quite startling. Every region of the continental United States has shown a cooling trend during the winter from 2001 to the present, and five of the nine regions have also had a cooling trend during the summer. With respect to annual mean temperature, only one of nine regions–the Northeast–has gotten warmer; the other eight have gotten cooler.

Look at this weekend’s Halloween snowstorm. Headlines across the U.S.A. called it “historic.” Historic because it dumped record snowfall on at least 20 cities from Maryland to Maine. Historic because it was the most snow – and the earliest – in many areas since the end of the Civil War. And we’re not talking mere tenths-of-an-inch here. This snowfall shattered the old records, it obliterated them.

Paleontologist Guillermo Rougier, Ph.D., professor of anatomical sciences and neurobiology at the University of Louisville, and his team have reported their discovery of two skulls from the first known mammal of the early Late Cretaceous period of South America. The fossils break a roughly 60 million-year gap in the currently known mammalian record of the continent and provide new clues on the early evolution of mammals. Details of their find will be published Nov. 3 in Nature. Co-authors are Sebastián Apesteguía of Argentina's Universidad Maimónides and doctoral student Leandro C. Gaetano. The new critter, named "Cronopio dentiacutus" by the paleontologists,...

Nations most at risk from global warming Save this story to read later AAP October 26, 2011 10:17AM A THIRD of humanity, mostly in Africa and South Asia, face the biggest risks from climate change and rich nations in northern Europe will be least exposed, according to a new report. Bangladesh, India and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are among 30 countries with "extreme'' exposure to climate shift, according to a ranking of 193 nations by Maplecroft, a British firm specialising in risk analysis. Five Southeast Asian nations - Indonesia, Burma, Vietnam, the Philippines and Cambodia - are also...

"Nobody can afford right off the bat to buy 20 years of dehydrated mashed potatoes," he said. He would buy a little extra every time he went to the store. Peace of mind increases as the larder grows, he said. "If you stock food for a year and lose your job, you can at least eat for a year," he said. Besides food and water, his stash includes certain medicines and some cash -- "If it's worth anything in the end" -- and important documents, some of which he's duplicated and stored off site. "You can't be prepared for everything,...

Britain should brace itself for another freezing winter with the return of La Niña, a climate phenomenon known to disrupt global weather, ministers have warned. The warning coincides with research from the Met Office suggesting Europe could be facing a return of the “little ice age” that gripped Britain 300 years ago, causing decades of bitter winters. The prediction, to be published in Nature, is based on observations showing a slight fall in the sun’s emissions of ultraviolet radiation, which over a long period may trigger mini ice ages in Europe. –Jonathan Leake, The Sunday Times, 9 October 2011 BRITAIN...

Science & Technology 9/16/02 Defrosting the past Ancient human and animal remains are melting out of glaciers, a bounty of a warming world BY ALEX MARKELS As he hiked near Colorado's Continental Divide in the summer of 2001, Ed Knapp noticed a strange shape jutting from a melting ice field at 13,000 feet. "It looked like a bison skull," the building contractor and amateur archaeologist recalls. "I thought, 'That's strange. Bison don't live this high up.' " Knapp brought the skull to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, where scientists last month announced that it was indeed from a...

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Anthony Watts THE DEMISE OF SUNSPOTS—DEEP COOLING AHEAD?Don J. Easterbrook, Professor of Geology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WAThe three studies released by NSO’s Solar Synoptic Network this week, predicting the virtual vanishing of sunspots for the next several decades and the possibility of a solar minimum similar to the Maunder Minimum, came as stunning news. According to Frank Hill, “the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.” The last time sunspots vanished from the...

It’s official: a new Ice Age is on its way. In what has been described as “the science story of the century”, heavyweight US solar physicists have announced that the sun is heading for a prolonged period of low activity. This makes global cooling a much more plausible prospect in the next few decades than global warming. Indeed, it might even usher in a lengthy period of climate grimness such as we saw during the Maunder Minimum (when Ice Fairs were held on the Thames) or the Dalton Minimum (which brought us such delights as the 1816 Year Without A...