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A meteor or comet impact near Quebec heaved a rain of hot melted rock along North America's Atlantic Coast about 12,900 years ago, a new study claims. Scientists have traced the geochemical signature of the BB-sized spherules that rained down back to their source, the 1.5-billion-year-old Quebecia terrane in northeastern Canada near the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. At the time of the impact, the region was covered by a continental ice sheet, like Antarctica and Greenland are today. "We have provided evidence for an impact on top of the ice sheet," said study co-author Mukul Sharma, a geochemist at Dartmouth...

A new study by NASA scientists finds that the world's temperature is reaching a level that has not been seen in thousands of years. The study, led by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, N.Y., along with scientists from other organizations concludes that, because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels in the current interglacial period, which has lasted nearly 12,000 years. An "interglacial period" is a time in the Earth's history when the area of Earth covered by glaciers was similar or...

Evidence Of Global Warming In The Past Supports Greenhouse TheoryScientists have filled in a key piece of the global climate picture for a period 55 million years ago that is considered one of the most abrupt and extreme episodes of global warming in Earth's history. The new results from an analysis of sediment cores from the ocean floor are consistent with theoretical predictions of how Earth's climate would respond to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The new study, led by James Zachos, professor of Earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, will be published online...

"The most significant criticism is that Soon and Baliunas do not present their data quantitatively--instead they merely categorize the work of others primarily into one of two sets: either supporting or not supporting their particular definitions of a Medieval Warming Period or Little Ice Age." "if a proxy record indicated that a drier condition existed in one part of the world from 800 to 850, it would be counted as equal evidence for a Medieval Warming Period as a different proxy record that showed wetter conditions in another part of the world from 1250 to 1300. Regional conditions do not...

This one, we're afraid, has been a long time coming: The long-expected confrontation between Mike Mann's famous "Hockey Stick" temperature history and a massive, comprehensive analysis of long-standing climate records. The head-to-head arrives in the form of a new study from Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas and three others entitled, "Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes of the past 1,000 years: A Reappraisal," published in the latest issue of the journal Energy and Environment. The "Hockey Stick," readers will recall, is the core of the current climate hysteria...

Antarctic Ice Core over 500,000 Years Old Extracted CAMBRIDGE, UK, March 14, 2002 (ENS) - Ice more than half a million years old has been taken from deep below the East Antarctic ice sheet, setting what is believed to be a new record. The multi-nation European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) drilling at Dome Concordia has recovered ice believed to be around 530,000 years old, according to the British Antarctic Survey. Previously the Russian Vostok ice core, dating back 420,000 years, was regarded as the oldest ice to be drilled from Antarctica. The EPICA team, from 10...