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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.For you to assert that a scientific consensus exists, supporting the hypothesis that humans are causing climate change, is not only wrong, it is completely irresponsible.There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
Ping!
I like that closing sentence -- "future decision-making could be made based on scientific data and not on political expediency". I wouldn't count on it, but that would be great.Caves reveal clues to UK weatherAt Pooles Cavern in Derbyshire, it was discovered that the stalagmites grow faster in the winter months when it rains more. Alan Walker, who guides visitors through the caves, says the changes in rainfall are recorded in the stalactites and stalagmites like the growth rings in trees. Stalagmites from a number of caves have now been analysed by Dr Andy Baker at Newcastle University. After splitting and polishing the rock, he can measure its growth precisely and has built up a precipitation history going back thousands of years. His study suggests this autumn's rainfall is not at all unusual when looked at over such a timescale but is well within historic variations. He believes politicians find it expedient to blame a man-made change in our weather rather than addressing the complex scientific picture.
by Tom Heap
I'll be interested to know if there is any elevation of rarer isotopes of other elements, particularly near the North Pole.Stalagmites reveal past climateThe researchers examined four stalagmites from Crevice Cave, the longest cave known in Missouri, located about 75 miles south of St. Louis. The stalagmites appeared to have been broken by natural forces such as floods or earthquakes and were found about 80 feet below the ground surface, says Dorale. The team determined when the stalagmite layers were deposited, then deduced paleotemperatures and the general types of vegetation growing in the vicinity during that era by examining the carbon and oxygen isotopes within the calcium carbonate. The profile showed that the area had been covered by forest 75,000 years ago, but by 71,000 years ago, it was savannah and by 59,000 years ago, had become a prairie. Between 55,000 and 25,000 years ago, the forest had returned and persisted. Dorale explains that the pattern is consistent with climatological records from the ocean.
by Kristina Bartlett and Devra Wexler
If there's an enrichment of C14 for a period, the following period will appear to be older. As volcanic eruptions are basically entirely C12 (C13 is a very rare isotope), they are not the source of the surfeit of C14. It has to be from space.Carbon clock could show the wrong timeA study led by physicist Warren Beck of the University of Arizona discovered an enormous peak in the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere between 45 thousand and 11 thousand years ago. Living organisms and some geological features absorb stable carbon-12 and radioactive carbon-14, which are present in the air in a well-known ratio. Scientists use carbon dating to determine when objects ceased to absorb carbon by measuring how much of the carbon-14 - which has a half-life of 5730 years - has decayed. Beck and colleagues tested slices of a half-metre long stalagmite that grew between 45 000 and 11 000 years ago in a cave in the Bahamas. Galactic cosmic rays create most of the carbon-14 in our atmosphere, while solar cosmic rays generate a smaller fraction. The Earth is partially shielded from galactic cosmic rays by its own magnetic field and the solar magnetic field, which fluctuates as the solar cycle proceeds. These effects are predictable and are thought to have changed little in the last million years - which means they cannot explain the glut of carbon-14. The team speculates that a supernova shock wave could have produced a flurry of cosmic rays.Stalagmite discovery throws doubt on carbon datingThe formations, recovered from a cavern which was created when sea levels were about 100m (330ft) lower than today, showed that more than 20,000 years ago there were dramatic shifts in the amount of radioactive carbon - often known as "carbon-14" - in the atmosphere. Because the ratio of carbon-14 to its stable cousin, carbon-12, is used as the basis of carbon dating of fossils, any widespread variation in that balance would confuse the dating of items such as plants or animals which existed around those times. "It means we have tended to underestimate the true age of objects from 20,000 to 40,000 years ago by up to 8,000 years," said Dr David Richards, of the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol. However, he added, "this may change the timings, but it won't change the order of events."
by Charles Arthur
Technology Editor
11 July 2001
Here's another segment: An Anglo-American team found large variations in levels of the carbon-14 isotope, used as the basis of carbon dating, preserved in a 19in stalagmite recovered from a submerged cave in the Blue Holes of the Bahamas, limestone caverns created when sea levels were nearly 330ft lower than today. These findings suggested dramatic changes in the amount of radioactive carbon in Earth's atmosphere during the last Ice Age, much greater than previously thought, probably as a result of changes in the strength of the planet's magnetic field. The field shields Earth from cosmic rays that create carbon-14 in the atmosphere, altering levels of the isotope during the past 45,000 years.The Pitfalls of Radiocarbon Dating[A]s the method was refined, it started to show rather regular anomalies. First, it was noticed that, when radiocarbon dated, wood grown in the 20th century appears more ancient than wood grown in the 19th century. Suess explained the phenomenon by the fact that the increased industrial use of fossil carbon in coal and in oil changed the ratio between the dead carbon C12 and the C14 (radiocarbon) in the atmosphere and therefore also in the biosphere. In centuries to come a body of a man or animal who lived and died in the 20th century would appear paradoxically of greater age since death than the body of a man or animal of the 19th century, and if the process of industrial use of fossil, therefore dead, carbon continues to increase, as it is expected will be the case, the paradox will continue into the forthcoming centuries.
by Immanuel VelikovskyThe Testimony of Radiocarbon DatingThe carbon age of the wood from the tomb of Tutankhamen was found to be about 300 years younger than the accepted date of the death of this king -- more exactly, 320 years according to Libby's figure for the half-life of radiocarbon, or 230 years following the Washington scale (5730 half-life)... [T]he method with a fifty-year uncertainty exposed an error of several hundred years in Egyptian chronology. Obviously the lumber used in the tomb could not have been growing as a tree three hundred years later. But I was not completely satisfied with the result, and I suspected where the additional two hundred years or so may have lain hidden. In my reconstruction, Tutankhamen's death falls in the second half of the ninth century. In a letter to Dr. Ralph I inquired whether the carbon age of a trunk discloses the time when the tree was felled or the time of the formation of the tree rings... The three pieces of wood from the tomb of Tutankhamen consisted of Spina Christi (two pieces, aggregate weight 14.5 grams) and Cedar of Lebanon (weight 11.5 grams); since they together weighed but 26 grams, and 25 grams is considered the necessary minimum quantity for a test, all were tested as one batch. Spina Christi is a comparatively short-lived thorn plant; but Cedar of Lebanon is one of the longest living trees. There is no question that the Cedar of Lebanon was not cut for export as a sapling; the tree reaches the venerable age of a thousand and more years. Whoever visits the cedar forests still surviving in a few areas of Lebanon at elevations of five to nine thousand feet, and sees their majestic trunks and branches, will realize that since 43 percent of the wood from the tomb of Tutankhamen tested (11 grams out of 26) was Cedar of Lebanon, the probability is that an additional correction of several hundred years is necessary, thus making the discord between the accepted and the carbon dates much greater than three hundred years.Dating study 'means human history rethink'The scientists calculated the age of ancient limestone formations in caves using carbon dating. The results were checked using a newer, more accurate method known as uranium dating. They found that the carbon dates were wrong by thousands of years and that the further back in time they went, the more out-of-date they were. The reason is that carbon dating measures radioactive carbon and there may have been much more of it in the distant past than previously thought.
29 June, 2001Carbon dating 'might be wrong by 10,000 years'Their study could force a reappraisal of when certain events occurred, notably in the period when modern humans lived alongside Neanderthals in Europe. It suggests that modern humans might have lived in Europe for longer than thought and that prehistoric paintings recently found in the Chauvet cave, in southern France, might be 38,000-years-old rather than the estimated 33,000 years... Radiocarbon dating, which depends on the steady decay of carbon-14, is less reliable if an artefact is older than 16,000 years. But the changes in radiocarbon, and dating, fluctuate greatly up to 45,000 years, the limit of the study.
by Roger Highfield
Science Editor
Saturday 30 June 2001
Carbon Dating Revision May Rewrite HistoryThese findings suggested dramatic changes in the amount of radioactive carbon in Earth's atmosphere during the last Ice Age, probably as a result of changes in the strength of the planet's magnetic field. The field shields Earth from the cosmic rays that create carbon-14 in the atmosphere, and this would have altered the levels of the isotope during the past 45,000 years.
Unknown Country
02-Jul-2001
Disaster that struck the ancientsProfessor Fekri Hassan, from University College London, UK, wanted to solve the mystery, by gathering together scientific clues. His inspiration was the little known tomb in southern Egypt of a regional governor, Ankhtifi. The hieroglyphs there reported "all of Upper Egypt was dying of hunger to such a degree that everyone had come to eating their children". Dismissed as exaggeration and fantasy by most other Egyptologists, Fekri was determined to prove the writings were true and accurate. He also had to find a culprit capable of producing such misery. He studied the meticulous records, kept since the 7th Century, of Nile floods. He was amazed to see that there was a huge variation in the size of the annual Nile floods - the floods that were vital for irrigating the land. But no records existed for 2,200BC. Then came a breakthrough - a new discovery in the hills of neighbouring Israel. Mira Bar-Matthews of the Geological Survey of Israel had found a unique record of past climates, locked in the stalactites and stalagmites of a cave near Tel Aviv. What they show is a sudden and dramatic drop in rainfall, by 20%. It is the largest climate event in 5,000 years. And the date? 2,200 BC.
Comets Tied To Fall Of Empires:At least five times during the last 6,000 years, major environmental calamities undermined civilizations worldwide. Some researchers say these disasters appear to be linked to collisions with comets or fragments of comets like the one that broke apart and smashed into Jupiter five years ago this summer. The impacts, yielding many megatons of explosive energy, produced vast clouds of smoke and dust that circled the globe for years, dimming the sun, driving down temperatures and sowing hunger, disease and death. The last such global crisis occurred between 530 and 540 -- at the beginning of the Dark Ages in Europe -- when Earth was pummeled by a swarm of cosmic debris.
Environmental Calamities
After Cosmic Clashes
Wiped Out Societies
by Robert S. Boyd
Free Press Washington Staff
August 17, 1999
Meteor clue to end of Middle East civilisations"Studies of satellite images of southern Iraq have revealed a two-mile-wide circular depression which scientists say bears all the hallmarks of an impact crater. If confirmed, it would point to the Middle East being struck by a meteor with the violence equivalent to hundreds of nuclear bombs.
by Robert Matthews
Science Correspondent
4,000-year-old planned community unearthed"'Evidently, the conception of what was urban in 2500 to 2000 B.C. was not all that different from what is considered urban today,' said Guillermo Algaze, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, San Diego, who has been directing the excavation of Titris Hoyuk, a 125-acre walled urban site in the Euphrates River Basin in southeastern Turkey that flourished for a brief time in the third millennium Bronze Age. In its heyday, Titris had about 10,000 residents. Titris was a failure as a city and as a civilization, rising and falling within a 300 year period, never again to be reoccupied. But, said Algaze, Titrus's failure -- probably due to a shifting in trade routes -- is also the key to its appeal to modern archaeologists."
Oct 13 2000Tuba"The women in the tomb were highly ornamented. The ibex (goat above) was made of lapis lazuli which was available only in Afghanistan at the time. Evidence amassed thus far by Schwartz and Curvers indicates that Tubaarose as a political and economic center around 2500 BC, with a population of 5,000 to 7,500 people. The city, which was on a major east-west trade route that connected the Mediterranean coast with upper Mesopotamia, collapsed and was abandoned around 2100 BC possibly due to drought, only to resurrect itself as the primary urban center of the Jabbul plain until around 1200 BC."
Oct 13 2000Space impact 'saved Christianity'It was just before a decisive battle for control of Rome and the empire that Constantine saw a blazing light cross the sky and attributed his subsequent victory to divine help from a Christian God. Constantine went on to consolidate his grip on power and ordered that persecution of Christians cease and their religion receive official status... Jens Ormo, a Swedish geologist, and colleagues working in Italy believe Constantine witnessed a meteoroid impact. The research team believes it has identified what remains of the impactor's crater. It is the small, circular Cratere del Sirente in central Italy. It is clearly an impact crater, Ormo says, because its shape fits and it is also surrounded by numerous smaller, secondary craters, gouged out by ejected debris, as expected from impact models. Radiocarbon dating puts the crater's formation at about the right time to have been witnessed by Constantine and there are magnetic anomalies detected around the secondary craters - possibly due to magnetic fragments from the meteorite.
by Dr David Whitehouse
Monday, 23 June, 2003
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