[TheClimate.Vote] June 1, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Richard Pauli richard at theclimate.vote
Fri Jun 1 10:13:34 EDT 2018


/June 1, 2018/

[California fires]
*California Wildfires Scorch 500 Acres Outside San Francisco Bay Area 
<http://time.com/5296391/california-grant-fire-500-acres/>*
By Katie Reilly May 31, 2018
A fire near Byron, California started to spread quickly on Wednesday, 
growing to include seven wildfires across 500 acres, authorities said.
Firefighters from Contra Costa and Alameda counties were battling flames 
about 60 miles east of San Francisco, on Wednesday, the Alameda County 
Fire Department said. The first call came in reporting two separate 
fires around 1 p.m. Pacific Time, CBS San Francisco reported. But the 
number of wildfires quickly jumped to seven, in part due to strong winds.
Officials closed roads and shut down at least one school in the area on 
Wednesday in response to what they've named the Grant Fire. And by 3:30 
p.m. Pacific Time, the California Department of Forestry and Fire 
Protection said the wildfires were covering 500 acres.
More at: http://time.com/5296391/california-grant-fire-500-acres/
- - - -
[sharing blame]
*Power Lines Are Burning the West 
<https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/power-lines-are-burning-the-west/561212/>*
Human technology is responsible for more loss from fire than any other 
cause. But reducing fire's impact will require changes to how people 
live, not just to the infrastructure that lets them do so.
A pole supporting electric wires goes up in flames in a wildfire.
The Cocos Fire burns in San Marcos, California, in 2014.
Mike Blake / Reuters, Kendra Atleework May 25, 2018
In October 2017, 250 square miles burned in Northern California, 
destroying 
<https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Wine-Country-fire-damage-claims-rise-to-12410476.php> 
6,000 homes and businesses and killing 44 people. For now, the cause of 
these fires has not been determined. The private utility company Pacific 
Gas and Electric, known to Californians as PG&E, is under investigation. 
Total damage 
<https://kqed.org/news/11635263/insurance-claims-for-northern-california-wildfires-reach-9b> 
for the Northern California wildfires comes to $9 billion. PG&E has 
started stockpiling cash 
<https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Fingers-point-at-PG-E-in-Wine-Country-fires-12762854.php>.
- - - -
A power line can start a fire 
<https://wildfiremitigation.tees.tamus.edu/faqs/how-power-lines-cause-wildfires> 
if it breaks in the wind. It can start a fire when a tree or a branch 
falls across it, or when lines slap together, or when equipment gets old 
and fails without anyone noticing. In 2015, fires started by electrical 
lines and equipment burned more acres in California than any other cause 
<http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-utility-wildfires-20171017-story.html>. 
Power lines sparked fires that set records in New Mexico 
<https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0530/Enormous-forest-fire-in-New-Mexico-sets-state-record-for-acres-burned> 
and fed a blaze in Great Smoky Mountains National Park that entered 
<http://wildfiretoday.com/2017/06/13/nps-official-talks-about-the-wildfire-that-burned-into-gatlinburg/> 
the city of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and killed 14 people in 2016. In 
recent years, they have consistently been among 
<http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-utility-wildfires-20171017-story.html> 
the three major causes of California wildfires.
Hurricane-force winds periodically shriek off the Pacific and rattle 
California. Wind strong enough to break a power line spreads fire fast. 
This past October, when I sniffed the air and found that California was 
once again burning, I looked around and saw many wires thatching an 
orange sky. I was visiting my aunt in Northern California, 50 miles from 
the fires. We sat inside and watched the noon sun dim.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/power-lines-are-burning-the-west/561212/
- - - -
[Wildfire Today]
*Strategic withdrawal on the Horse Park Fire in Colorado 
<http://wildfiretoday.com/2018/05/29/strategic-withdrawal-on-the-horse-park-fire-in-colorado/>*
The Bureau of Land Management has released a 24-Hour Preliminary Report 
indicating that during initial attack on the Horse Park Fire in 
southwest Colorado May 27, 2018 a command vehicle was abandoned and is 
thought to be a total loss. The driver was turning around when the 
vehicle got stuck. Due to the advancing fire, the driver and passenger 
had to flee on foot. There were no reports of injuries.
In the second video below (at 0:06) you can hear a radio conversation 
about losing a vehicle but the firefighters made it out.
In the three days since the Horse Park Fire started in Southwest 
Colorado it has burned about 1,500 acres. It's not a huge fire yet but 
at times has shown some pretty aggressive fire behavior for the month of 
May in Colorado.
In the two videos shot May 27 and posted by the Hotchkiss Fire District 
you can see that in spite of the date on the calendar firefighters were 
forced to make a strategic withdrawal when the rapidly spreading fire 
started moving in their direction.
http://wildfiretoday.com/2018/05/29/strategic-withdrawal-on-the-horse-park-fire-in-colorado/


[Yale mentions 12 important books]
*Truthsquading: Books and reports on the denial and obstruction of 
climate science 
<https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2018/05/books-and-reports-on-truthsquading/>*
Yale Climate Connections
NASA's leading climate expert, Dr. Hansen first broke the international 
news on global warming at a Senate hearing in 1988. Little did he expect 
the...
Nearly forty years ago, when their own scientists confirmed what 
government and university researchers were learning about the likely 
consequences of the rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere, fossil fuel 
companies like Exxon and Shell faced a choice: change their business 
models or challenge the science that threatened those models. The oil 
companies chose the latter option. And over the next several decades, 
through a variety of means and front organizations, they successfully 
blocked action on climate change by manufacturing doubt about climate 
science.
Below Yale Climate Connections presents a chronological listing of 
twelve books that reported on different aspects of this concerted effort 
to deny and obstruct climate science and policy-making. Also highlighted 
are three reports that offer tips for debunking climate-dismissive 
arguments.
As with previous YCC bookshelves, the descriptions are drawn from 
publishers' catalogue copy. When two dates of publication are provided, 
the second marks the release of the paperback.
*
Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and 
Activists Have Fueled the Climate Crisis - and What We Can Do to Avert 
Disaster 
<https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/ross-gelbspan/boiling-point/9780465027620/>*, 
by Ross Gelbspan (Basic Books 2004/2005, 288 pages, $17.99)

    In Boiling Point, Ross Gelbspan argues that the fossil fuel industry
    directed the Bush administration's energy and climate policies -
    payback for helping Bush get elected. Then the coal industry
    sabotaged an effort in the Senate to begin to regulate carbon
    dioxide. Officials of Switzerland, France, and Canada said that they
    intend to take the United States to court under the World Trade
    Organization, reasoning that the U.S.'s refusal to lower their
    carbon emissions amounts to an illegal subsidy - a "carbon subsidy"
    - on its exports. With the reelection of George W. Bush and a
    Republican-controlled congress, Boiling Point is more imperative
    than ever. [Substitute "Trump" for "Bush," and what was old is new
    again.]*
    <https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/300802/censoring-science-by-mark-bowen/9780452289628/>*

*Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and 
the Truth of Global Warming 
<https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/300802/censoring-science-by-mark-bowen/9780452289628/>*, 
by Mark Bowen (Dutton 2008, 336 pages, $16.00 paperback)

    NASA's leading climate expert, Dr. Hansen first broke the
    international news on global warming at a Senate hearing in 1988.
    Little did he expect the rising storm of politically motivated
    resistance, denial, and obstruction. Revealing the extent of the
    Bush administration's censorship of Dr. Hansen's findings, Censoring
    Science sets the record straight with solid scientific facts: for
    example, the hottest years on record have occurred in the last two
    decades, and ice is melting at record rates all around the planet.
    Dr. Hansen shows how we can still prevent environmental disaster if
    the country and the government are willing to face the truth about
    global warming.
    A look at 12 leading books and reports spotlighting long-term and
    ongoing efforts to create unwarranted uncertainty about #climate
    #science.
    Click To Tweet

*Environmental Skepticism: Ecology, Power and Public Life 
<https://www.routledge.com/Environmental-Skepticism-Ecology-Power-and-Public-Life/Jacques/p/book/9780754671022>*, 
by Peter J. Jacques (Routledge 2009, 234 pages, $160.00)

    'Environmental skepticism' describes the viewpoint that major
    environmental problems are either unreal or unimportant. In this
    book, political scientist Peter Jacques describes, both empirically
    and historically, how environmental skepticism has been organized by
    mostly U.S.-based conservative think tanks as an anti-environmental
    counter-movement. This is the first book to analyze the importance
    of the U.S. conservative counter-movement in world politics and its
    meaning for democratic and accountable deliberation, as well as its
    importance as a mal-adaptive project that hinders the world's people
    to rise to the challenges of sustainability.

*The Lomborg Deception: Setting the Record Straight about Global Warming 
<https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300171280/lomborg-deception>*, by 
Howard Friel (Yale University Press 2010/2011, 258 pages, $20.00 paperback)

    In this major assessment of leading climate-change skeptic Bjorn
    Lomborg [ The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001); Cool It: The
    Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (2007) ],
    Howard Friel meticulously deconstructs the Danish statistician's
    claim that global warming is "no catastrophe" by exposing the
    systematic misrepresentations that are at the core of climate
    skepticism. His detailed analysis serves not only as a guide to
    reading the global warming skeptics, but also as a model for
    assessing the state of climate science, from Arctic sea ice to the
    Antarctic ice sheet. Friel's able defense of Al Gore's An
    Inconvenient Truth against Lomborg's repeated attacks is by itself
    worth an attentive reading.

*Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on 
Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming 
<https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/merchants-of-doubt-9781608193943/>*, by 
Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway (Bloomsbury Press 2010/2011, 355 pages, 
$18.00 paperback)

    Now a powerful documentary from the acclaimed director of Food Inc.,
    Merchants of Doubt was one of the most talked-about climate change
    books of recent years, for reasons easy to understand: It tells the
    controversial story of how a loose-knit group of high-level
    scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in
    politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public
    and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades.
    The same individuals who claim the science of global warming is "not
    settled" have also denied the truth about studies linking smoking to
    lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole.
    "Doubt is our product," wrote one tobacco executive. These "experts"
    supplied it.

*Straight Up: America's Fiercest Climate Blogger Takes on the Status Quo 
Media, Politicians, and Clean Energy Solutions 
<https://islandpress.org/book/straight-up>*, by Joseph Romm (Island 
Press 2010, 233 pages, paperback)

    In 2009, Rolling Stone named Joe Romm to its list of "100 People Who
    Are Changing America." Romm is a physicist, energy consultant, and
    former official in the Department of Energy. But it's his
    influential blog that caught national attention. Straight Up draws
    on Romm's most important posts to explain the dangers of and
    solutions to climate change that you won't find in the main-stream
    media. Despite the dearth of reporting, polls show that two in five
    Americans think the press is actually exaggerating the threat of
    climate change. That gives Big Oil, and others with a vested
    interest in the status quo, a huge opportunity to mislead the
    public. Romm cuts through the misinformation and presents the truth
    about humanity's most dire threat. [See also Romm's Hell and High
    Water (2007), Language Intelligence (2012), and Climate Change (2016).]

*The Inquisition of Climate Science 
<https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-inquisition-of-climate-science/9780231157193>*, 
by James Lawrence Powell (Columbia University Press 2011/2012, 272 
pages, $25.00 paperback)

    The Inquisition of Climate Science is the first book to
    comprehensively take on the climate science denial movement and the
    deniers themselves, exposing their lack of credentials, their
    extensive industry funding, and their failure to provide any
    alternative theory to explain the observed evidence of warming.
    Geochemist James Lawrence Powell shows that the deniers use a wide
    variety of deceptive rhetorical techniques, many stretching back to
    ancient Greece. Carefully researched, fully referenced, and
    compellingly written, his book clearly reveals that the evidence of
    global warming is real and that an industry of denial has deceived
    the American public, putting them and their grandchildren at risk.

*Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand 
<https://www.routledge.com/Climate-Change-Denial-Heads-in-the-Sand/Washington-Cook/p/book/9781849713368>*, 
by Haydn Washington and John Cook (Earthscan 2011, 192 pages, $31.95 
paperback)

    Humans have always used denial. When we are afraid, guilty,
    confused, or when something interferes with our self-image, we tend
    to deny it. But when it impacts the health of oneself, or society,
    or the world, denial becomes a pathology. Climate Change Denial
    explains the social science behind denial. It contains a detailed
    examination of the principal climate change denial arguments, from
    attacks on the integrity of scientists, to impossible expectations
    of proof and certainty, to the cherry picking of data. Climate
    change can be solved - but only when we cease to deny that it
    exists. This book shows how we can break through denial, accept
    reality, and thus solve the climate crisis. It will assist anyone
    seeking to roll back denial and act.

*The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines 
<https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-hockey-stick-and-the-climate-wars/9780231152549>*, 
by Michael E. Mann (Columbia University Press 2012/2013, 395 pages, $19.95)

    The Hockey Stick - a graph correlating global temperatures with the
    use of fossil fuels - achieved prominence in a 2001 UN report and
    quickly became a central icon in the "climate wars." The real issue
    has never been the graph's data but rather its implied threat to
    those who oppose governmental regulation and other restraints to
    protect the environment and planet. Mann, lead author of the
    original Hockey Stick paper, shares the story of the science and
    politics behind this controversy. He reveals key figures in the oil
    and energy industries - and in the media frontgroups who do their
    bidding, sometimes bare-knuckled ways. Mann concludes with the real
    story of the 2009 "Climategate" scandal, in which climate
    scientists' e-mails were hacked.

*Climatology versus Pseudoscience: Exposing the Failed Predictions of 
Global Warming Skeptics 
<https://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A4372C>*, by 
Dana Nuccitelli (Praeger Books 2015, 212 pages, $48.00)

    This book is the first to illustrate the accuracy - and inaccuracy -
    of global warming predictions made by mainstream climate scientists
    and by climate contrarians. Writing in simple, non-technical
    language that provides accessible explanations of key concepts, Dana
    Nuccitelli, an environmental scientist and risk assessor, discusses
    some key climate discoveries dating back to the 19th century and
    debunks myths such as the idea that climate scientists and climate
    models have grossly over-predicted global warming. He addresses
    recent findings of a 97-percent consensus in the peer-reviewed
    scientific literature that humans are causing global warming - a
    nearly unanimous agreement that formed in the early 1990s and has
    grown through the present.

*The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our 
Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy 
<https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-madhouse-effect/9780231177863>*, by 
Michael E. Mann and Tom Toles (Columbia University Press 2016/2018, 208 
pages, $18.95 paperback)

    Award-winning climate scientist Michael E. Mann and Pulitzer
    Prize-winning political cartoonist Tom Toles have been on the front
    lines of the fight against climate denialism for most of their
    careers. The Madhouse Effect portrays the ways denialists twist
    logic to explain away the clear evidence that human activity has
    changed Earth's climate. Toles's cartoons collapse
    counter-scientific strategies, helping readers see how to best
    strike at these fallacies. Mann's skillful science communication
    restores sanity to a debate that continues to rage against
    scientific consensus. The synergy of these two climate science
    crusaders enlivens the gloom and doom of so many climate-themed
    books - and may even convert die-hard doubters to the side of sound
    science.

*Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for 
Survival <http://www.claritypress.com/Carter.html>*, by Dr. Peter Carter 
and Elizabeth Woodworth (Clarity Press 2018, 269 pages, $27.95 paperback)

    Unprecedented Crime lays out the culpability of governmental,
    political and religious bodies, corporations, and the media for
    their failure to report or act on the climate emergency. Extreme
    weather reporting never even hints at the need to address climate
    change. Carter and Woodworth then report how, independently of
    governments, scores of proven zero-carbon game changers have been
    coming online all over the world. These exciting technologies can
    now power both households and energy-dense, heavy industries. We
    already have the technical solutions to the CO2 problem, and with
    these solutions we can act in time to reduce greenhouse gas
    emissions to near-zero within 20 years. This book will show readers
    how to overcome climate denial.

*Three Reports from Skeptical Science*

    A pivotal figure in the effort to counter global warming skepticism
    is John Cook, who started the Skeptical Science website in 2007,
    while still a student at the University of Queensland in Australia.
    Since then Cook has (co)authored reports to alert readers to the
    manufactured arguments they're likely to encounter when discussing
    climate change in public. Two - The Scientific Guide to Global
    Warming Skepticsm
    <https://www.skepticalscience.com/The-Scientific-Guide-to-Global-Warming-Skepticism.html>
    (2010) and The Debunking Handbook
    <https://www.skepticalscience.com/Debunking-Handbook-now-freely-available-download.html>
    (2011) - can be downloaded from the Skeptical Science website. The
    third, The Consensus Handbook
    <https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Consensus_Handbook-1.pdf>
    (2018), is available from the Center for Climate Change
    Communication at George Mason University, where John Cook now works
    as a research assistant professor.

https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2018/05/books-and-reports-on-truthsquading/


[Fiction]
*Margaret Atwood: women will bear brunt of dystopian climate future 
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/margaret-atwood-women-will-bear-brunt-of-dystopian-climate-future>*
Booker prize-winning author predicts climate reality will not be far 
from scenarios imagined in her post-apocalyptic fiction
Climate change will bring a dystopian future reminiscent of one of her 
"speculative fictions", with women bearing the brunt of brutal 
repression, hunger and war, the Booker prize-winning author Margaret 
Atwood is to warn.
"This isn't climate change - it's everything change," she will tell an 
audience at the British Library this week. "Women will be directly and 
adversely affected by climate change."
The author, whose landmark novel The Handmaid's Tale has been turned 
into an acclaimed TV series depicting a dystopian future in which women 
are deprived of all rights and turned into breeding machines for men, 
predicts conflict, hardship and an increasing struggle for survival for 
women as climate change takes hold.
"More extreme weather events such as droughts and floods, rising sea 
levels that will destroy arable land, and disruption of marine life will 
all result in less food," she explained before the event. "Less food 
will mean that women and children get less, as the remaining food 
supplies will be unevenly distributed, even more than they are."...
More at: 
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/margaret-atwood-women-will-bear-brunt-of-dystopian-climate-future


[hot spots hotter]
*Climate change is making the Arab world more miserable 
<https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2018/06/02/climate-change-is-making-the-arab-world-more-miserable>*
Expect longer droughts, hotter heatwaves and more frequent dust storms
Apathy towards climate change is common across the Middle East and north 
Africa, even as the problems associated with it get worse. Longer 
droughts, hotter heatwaves and more frequent dust storms will occur from 
Rabat to Tehran, according to Germany's Max Planck Institute for 
Chemistry. Already-long dry seasons are growing longer and drier, 
withering crops. Heat spikes are a growing problem too, with countries 
regularly notching lethal summer temperatures. Stretch such trends out a 
few years and they seem frightening - a few decades and they seem 
apocalyptic.
The institute forecasts that summer temperatures in the Middle East and 
north Africa will rise over twice as fast as the global average. Extreme 
temperatures of 46 degrees C (115 degrees F) or more will be about five 
times more likely by 2050 than they were at the beginning of the 
century, when similar peaks were reached, on average, 16 days per year. 
By 2100 "wet-bulb temperatures" - a measure of humidity and heat - could 
rise so high in the Gulf as to make it all but uninhabitable, according 
to a study in Nature (though its most catastrophic predictions are based 
on the assumption that emissions are not abated).
*Dry and discontented*
Water presents another problem. The Middle East and north Africa have 
little of it to begin with, and rainfall is expected to decline because 
of climate change. In some areas, such as the Moroccan highlands, it 
could drop by up to 40%. (Climate change might bring extra rain to 
coastal countries, such as Yemen, but that will probably be offset by 
higher evaporation.) Farmers struggling to nourish thirsty crops are 
digging more wells, draining centuries-old aquifers. A study using NASA 
satellites found that the Tigris and Euphrates basins lost 144 cubic 
kilometres (about the volume of the Dead Sea) of fresh water from 2003 
to 2010. Most of this reduction was caused by the pumping of groundwater 
to make up for reduced rainfall.
Climate change is making the region even more volatile politically. When 
eastern Syria was ravaged by drought from 2007 to 2010, 1.5m people fled 
to cities, where many struggled. In Iran, a cycle of extreme droughts 
since the 1990s caused thousands of frustrated farmers to abandon the 
countryside. Exactly how much these events fuelled the war that broke 
out in Syria in 2011 and recent unrest in Iran is a topic of 
considerable debate. They have certainly added to the grievances that 
many in both countries feel.
The mere prospect of shortages can lead to conflicts, as states race to 
secure water supplies at the expense of downstream neighbours. When 
Ethiopia started building an enormous dam on the Nile, potentially 
limiting the flow, Egypt, which relies on the river for nearly all of 
its water, threatened war. Turkish and Iranian dams along the Tigris, 
Euphrates and other rivers have raised similar ire in Iraq, which is 
beset by droughts.
- - - -
Politics often gets in the way of problem-solving. Countries are rarely 
able to agree on how to share rivers and aquifers. In Gaza, where the 
seepage of saltwater and sewage into an overused aquifer raises the risk 
of disease, a blockade by Israel and Egypt has made it harder to build 
and run desalination plants. In Lebanon there is little hope that the 
government, divided along sectarian lines, will do anything to forestall 
the decline in the water supply predicted by the environment ministry. 
Countries such as Iraq and Syria, where war has devastated 
infrastructure, will struggle to prepare for a hotter, drier future.
- - - -
"But now I think the most important argument is the economic one."
States in the Middle East and north Africa can do little on their own to 
mitigate climate change. Inevitably, though, they will need to adapt. So 
far depressingly little has been done. "Sometimes I feel like I'm on a 
treadmill," says Mr Musa.
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2018/06/02/climate-change-is-making-the-arab-world-more-miserable


[Paleo-Climatology Outlier Studies]
Catastrophism
An Overview from Dr. Martin Sweatman
April 22, 2018
*Exploring abrupt climate change induced by comets and asteroids during 
human history*
*The Younger Dryas Impact research since 2007 
<https://cosmictusk.com/hancock-comet-research-group/>*
The epoch which geologists call the Younger Dryas (after a species of 
Alpine flower that flourishes in cold conditions) has long been 
recognized as mysterious and tumultuous. When it began 12,800 years ago 
the earth had been emerging from the Ice Age for roughly 10,000 years, 
global temperatures were rising steadily and the ice caps were melting. 
Then there was a sudden dramatic return to colder conditions - nearly as 
cold as at the peak of the Ice Age 21,000 years ago. This short, sharp 
deep freeze lasted for 1,200 years until 11,600 years ago when the 
warming trend resumed with incredible rapidity, global temperatures shot 
up again and the remaining ice caps quite quickly melted away, dumping 
all the water they contained into the oceans and raising sea level 
significantly all around the world.
- - - -
Looking at the data, the implications of this new research were 
immediately obvious to me. What it offered, if it checked out, was an 
elegant and potentially revolutionary explanation both for the sudden 
onset of the Younger Dryas itself and for the accompanying extinctions, 
and perhaps for much else besides - including the cataclysmic flooding 
that left its scars on the channeled scablands of Washington State.

This seemed all the more plausible when I learned that Firestone, 
Kennett and West's proposal for their comet was that it was a 
conglomeration of impactors including one that might have been as much 
as 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) in diameter. Furthermore, that 
four-kilometer object would itself have been just one amongst multiple 
fragments resulting from the earlier disintegration - while still in 
orbit - of a giant comet up to 100 kilometers or more in diameter. Many 
of the fragments of the parent comet remained in orbit. Those that hit 
the earth at the onset of the Younger Dryas underwent further explosive 
fragmentation (accompanied by powerful airbursts that would themselves 
have had cataclysmic effects), as they entered the atmosphere over Canada.

Nonetheless, the authors thought it likely that a number of large 
impactors, up to two kilometers in diameter, would have remained intact 
to collide with the ice-cap. There, as West had earlier told New 
Scientist, any craters would have been transient, leaving few permanent 
traces on the ground after the ice had melted. "Lasting evidence," the 
PNAS paper added, "may have been limited to enigmatic depressions or 
disturbances in the Canadian Shield, e.g. under the Great Lakes, or 
Hudson Bay."...
- - - - -
Younger Dryas (YD) mystery. At 12,800 years ago there was a sudden 
plunge in global temperatures as measured in the Greenland ice cores. 
Then 11,600 years ago there was an equally steep rise in global 
temperatures bringing an abrupt end both to the Younger Dryas interlude 
and to the Ice Age

There are several distinct and compelling curiosities about the terminal 
Younger Dryas event and the global warming and flooding that accompanied it.

First, just as was the case 12,800 years ago, and as noted above, the 
date of 11,600 years ago coincides with an immense episode of global 
flooding - nominated by geologists as Meltwater Pulse 1B - as the 
remnant ice caps in North America and northern Europe collapsed 
simultaneously amidst worldwide global warming. The late Cesare 
Emiliani, Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the 
University of Miami, carried out isotopic analysis of deep-sea sediments 
that produced hard evidence of cataclysmic global flooding "between 
12,000 and 11,000 years ago".

Secondly, and rather strikingly, The Greek lawmaker Solon visited Egypt 
around the year 600 BC and there he was told a very remarkable story by 
the priests at the Temple of Sais in the Nile Delta - a story that was 
eventually handed down to his more famous descendant Plato, who in due 
course shared it with the world in his Dialogues of Timaeus and Critias.

It is, of course, the story of the great lost civilization of Atlantis 
swallowed up by flood and earthquake in a single terrible day and night 
nine thousand years before Solon's visit to Egypt - in other words in 
9,600 BC, or 11,600 years before the present. Since that date (give or 
take a margin of error of a few decades) coincides with Meltwater Pulse 
1B and is accepted by geologists as the "official" end of the last Ice 
Age - the end of the "Pleistocene" epoch and the beginning of our 
current epoch, the "Holocene" - it is intriguing, to say the least, that 
it coincides so precisely with the date that Plato gives us for the 
destruction, and submergence beneath the sea, of the lost civilization 
of Atlantis...
- - - -
Professor Robert Schoch of Boston University prefers the date of 9700 BC 
- 11,700 years ago - for the sudden warming and flooding at the end of 
the Younger Dryas but agrees that this event was extremely abrupt. 
Indeed: "given our inability to resolve the finest details of something 
that happened so long ago, it may literally have happened overnight…"
https://cosmictusk.com/hancock-comet-research-group/
- - - -
[And...]
*Publications about the Younger Dryas Impact Event 
<We%20have%20included%20publications%20in%20support%20of%20our%20central%20hypothesis,%20as%20well%20as%20publications%20in%20disagreement.>*
The selected references below present evidence (both pro and con) about 
the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) impact event 12,800 years ago, about 
impact-related population changes, and/or about climate change at the 
beginning of the Younger Dryas episode.
We have included publications in support of our central hypothesis, as 
well as publications in disagreement.
https://cometresearchgroup.org/publications/


*This Day in Climate History - June 1, 2007 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/31/AR2007053101173.html?sub=AR> 
- from D.R. Tucker*
June 1, 2007:

    NASA scientist James Hansen calls out NASA Administrator Michael
    Griffin for his assertion in a May 31, 2007 NPR interview that
    climate change isn't that big of a deal: "It was a shocking
    statement because of the level of ignorance it indicated with regard
    to the current situation. He seemed unaware that 170 nations agreed
    that climate change is a serious problem with enormous
    repercussions, and that many people will suffer if it is not
    addressed." Jerry Mahlman of the National Center for Atmospheric
    Research also calls out Griffin.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/31/AR2007053101173.html?sub=AR 


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