Tunguska Event Responsible For Warming Climate?

So an eminent Russian scientist says. Russians tend to be rather devoted to their mysterious Tunguska event but it may nonetheless have some explanatory role



It's enough to give you a migraine, trying to reconcile all the possible factors that might contribute to climate change. But what if they're all inconsequential, and there's only a single event causing the warming trend? The 1908 Tunguska meteor's explosion over Siberia is what one Russian scientist believes could be behind current global temperature rises. His paper on the subject, which claims that climate change is not the result of man-made greenhouse gases at all, is currently being considered for publication in the journal Science First Hand (published by the Russian Academy of Sciences).

Detailing his theory, Vladimir Shaidurov, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, explains how changes in the amount of ice crystals at high altitude could damage the layer of clouds found in the mesosphere that influence the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth's surface. Vladimir posits that the Tunguska event early last century could have driven just such a process.

Current global warming models show that the rise in carbon dioxide emissions neatly coincides with the onset of the industrial revolution, but Shaidurov's own analysis of yearly mean temperature changes over 140 years indicate that there was actually a slight cooling in temperature up until the early twentieth century. Shaidurov believes that it was not the industrial revolution that caused the rise in temperature, but the catastrophe known as the Tunguska event, or Tungus meteorite.

The Tunguska event was a large meteor or asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere and exploded 8 km above the Tunguska River in Siberia. The cataclysm was calculated to have released energy equivalent to that of a 15 megaton nuclear explosion. It felled 60 million trees over an area covering 2000 square kilometers. There wasn't much in the way of any formal analysis done on the atmospheric effects of the explosion, presumably because it occurred in a remote part of Siberia in 1908. Despite this, crucial to Shaidurov's theory is his claim that the explosion would have caused: "considerable stirring of the high layers of atmosphere and changes in its structure," which he says could have been the catalyst for the rise in global temperatures.

Shaidurov's theory is supported by other studies on Earth impacts and celestial debris that is scattered about at high altitude. Scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division, the University of Western Ontario, Aerospace Corporation, Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories have already laid their cards on the table and declared in a paper published in Nature that dust from asteroids entering the Earth's atmosphere has a bigger effect on weather than once thought. "Our observations suggest that [meteors exploding] in Earth's atmosphere could play a more important role in climate than previously recognized," the researchers write. These research teams urge that climate modelers should take such events into serious consideration, because dust from asteroids, meteors and the like regularly find their way into high altitude cloud. On one research field trip, Dee Pack, of Aerospace Corporation, watched as an: "asteroid deposited 1,000 metric tons in the stratosphere in a few seconds, a sizable perturbation," adding that meter-sized asteroids hit Earth 50-60 times every year. They suggest that asteroid dust could be modeled as the: "equivalent of volcanic eruptions of dust, with atmospheric deposition from above rather than below." This new information on micron-sized particles might "have much greater implications for extraterrestrial visitors like Tunguska," explains Peter Brown at the University of Western Ontario.

Shaidurov explains that these disturbances can alter the delicate bands of clouds that regulate the amount of solar energy entering the Earth's atmosphere. Shaidurov says that it doesn't take much of a change in atmospheric levels of water - in the form of vapor and ice crystals - before it contributes to a significant change in the Earth's surface temperature. He also notes that the most potent greenhouse contributor is water, arguing that a variance in water levels has a far greater effect on temperatures than the greenhouse gases usually blamed for global warming. A rise in water vapor of just 1 percent can raise the global average temperature of Earth's surface more then 4 degrees Celsius.

It was Irish scientist John Tyndall who discovered the importance of water in regard to the Earth's climate 150 years ago, when he stated: "The strongest radiant heat absorber, is the most important gas controlling Earth's temperature. Without water vapor the Earth's surface would be held fast in the iron grip of frost." Tyndall's discovery shows that the system whereby heat reaches the Earth's surface and is then radiated back through a thin band of high altitude cloud is a delicate one.

Further supporting Shaidurov's hypothesis, Andrew E. Dessler of the Texas A & M University, writing in The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change, claims that: "Human activities do not control all greenhouse gases, as the most powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapor. Human activities have little direct control over its atmospheric abundance, which is controlled instead by the worldwide balance between evaporation from the oceans and precipitation."

Shaidurov believes that only something as destructive as the Tunguska event could have disturbed high altitude atmospheric water levels and destroyed noctilucent clouds in the mesosphere. The event also happens to coincide with the period when warming began rising steadily during the twentieth century.

With people becoming increasingly aware of the damage a massive Earth-bound asteroid could cause, Shaidurov's theory demonstrates how Earth impacts can have varying degrees of effect other than the impact itself; but with results just as devastating. Is it feasible, then, to argue that many of the significant climate fluctuations observed throughout Earth's history have been caused by asteroids, meteorites or comets entering the Earth's atmosphere or impacting the Earth? One of the most cogent explanations for the rise and fall of great civilizations is by Jared Diamond, who argues that a civilization eventually reaches a critical point where it declines and collapses as it extends itself beyond a sustainable level. But is it equally plausible that the resources these civilizations relied upon disappeared through significant climate change caused by the fallout of an Earth impact?

The Earth impact theory is a convenient way to explain why the simultaneous collapse of a number of powerful civilizations during the Bronze Age, for example, also coincided with the rise of cultures and societies elsewhere. In the past this was attributed to such things as war, famine and natural disasters, until researchers started bandying about ideas of Earth impacts being responsible for all of the above. One thing's for certain, an impact on a large enough scale could knock ecological systems around a lot, perhaps even enough to alter the balance of power and give rise to a whole new cultural dominance. This is nothing new, as there are numerous examples of major climate fluctuations throughout history, with some of them being significant enough to plausibly displace or wipeout once prosperous societies. Farming areas scattered about the Sahara and the Dead Sea eventually became deserts around 2350BC, as the terrible growth conditions reflected in tree rings show, while sediment samples taken from the rivers and lakes of Europe and Africa show a ruinous drop in water levels during the same period. These observations are not unlike the predicted changes that could occur in the near future. The latest scientific estimates predict, for example, that during this century and the next, rainforests will disappear, fertility in some regions will drop dramatically, sea levels will rise and some areas in cooler climes will be as hot as today's deserts.

So, are extraterrestrial bodies the cause of climate fluctuations on Earth, and if so, will we see an end to the current rise in temperatures as the effects of the Tunguska event recede; or are some of our cultures destined to suffer the same fate as civilizations before us? Shaidurov doesn't try to predict when the effects of the Tunguska catastrophe might abate, or even if levels will ever return to pre-Tunguska normalcy. The interesting thing to note here, if Shaidurov's theory proves correct, is that if current and past climate changes can be attributed to single isolated events; do our current scientific projections for a worsening of global warming really add up?

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UNCOMPENSATED ENVIRONMENTAL "PROTECTION" HAS THE OPPOSITE EFFECT TO THAT INTENDED

Over the past six months, landowners here have been clear-cutting thousands of trees to keep them from becoming homes for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. The chain saws started in February, when the federal Fish and Wildlife Service put Boiling Spring Lakes on notice that rapid development threatened to squeeze out the woodpecker. The agency issued a map marking 15 active woodpecker "clusters," and announced it was working on a new one that could potentially designate whole neighborhoods of this town in southeastern North Carolina as protected habitat, subject to more-stringent building restrictions.

Hoping to beat the mapmakers, landowners swarmed City Hall to apply for lot-clearing permits. Treeless land, after all, would not need to be set aside for woodpeckers. Since February, the city has issued 368 logging permits, a vast majority without accompanying building permits. The results can be seen all over town. Along the roadsides, scattered brown bark is all that is left of pine stands. Mayor Joan Kinney has watched with dismay as waterfront lots across from her home on Big Lake have been stripped down to sandy wasteland. "It's ruined the beauty of our city," Ms. Kinney said. To stop the rash of cutting, city commissioners have proposed a one-year moratorium on lot-clearing permits.

The red-cockaded woodpecker was once abundant in the vast longleaf pine forests that stretched from New Jersey to Florida, but now numbers as few as 15,000. The bird is unusual among North American woodpeckers because it nests exclusively in living trees. In a quirk of history, human activity has made this town of about 4,100 almost irresistible to the bird. Long before there was a town, locals carved V-shaped notches in the pines, collecting the sap in buckets to make turpentine. These wounds allowed fungus to infiltrate the tree's core, making it easier for the woodpecker to excavate its nest hole and probe for the beetles, spiders and wood-boring insects it prefers. "And, voila! You have a perfect woodpecker habitat," said Dan Bell, project director for the Nature Conservancy in nearby Wilmington.

The woodpecker gouges a series of holes around the tree, creating "sap runs" to discourage the egg-gobbling black snake, the bird's chief enemy. Because it can take up to six years to excavate a single nest hole, the birds fiercely defend their territory, said Susan Miller, a biologist for the Fish and Wildlife Service. "They're passed from generation to generation, because it's such a major investment in time to create one cavity," Ms. Miller said.

Like the woodpeckers, humans are also looking to defend their nest eggs. Bonner Stiller has been holding on to two wooded half-acre lakefront lots for 23 years. He stripped both lots of longleaf pines before the government could issue its new map. "They have finally developed a value," said Mr. Stiller, a Republican member of the state General Assembly. "And then to have that taken away from you?"

Landowners have overreacted, says Pete Benjamin, supervisor of the federal agency's Raleigh office. Having a woodpecker tree on a piece of property does not necessarily mean a house cannot be built there, Mr. Benjamin said. A landowner can even get permission to cut down a cavity tree, as long as an alternative habitat can be found. "For the most part, we've found ways to work with most folks," he said. [Pity if you are not "most folks"]

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Inhofe Complains the Media Failed to Report Climate Change `Ketchup Money' Grant

Sen. James M. Inhofe took his ongoing battle with supporters of climate change legislation to the Senate floor Monday, where he accused NASA scientist James Hansen of being too close to the "left-wing" Heinz Foundation and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. In comments aimed at discrediting a recent CBS "60 Minutes" story on Hansen, Inhofe, who has called the threat of global warming a hoax, noted that Hansen had received a grant from the foundation and had endorsed Kerry's 2004 run for president. The foundation, Inhofe pointed out, is run by Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz.

The "60 Minutes" report, he complained, failed to mention the "ketchup money" and the "subsequent" endorsement. "Many in the media dwell on any [oil] industry support given to so-called climate skeptics. . . . The foundation's money originated from the Heinz family ketchup fortune. So it appears that the media make a distinction between oil money and ketchup money," said Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of Environment and Public Works. Hansen could not be reached for comment, and Kerry's office had no comment on Inhofe's floor statement.

More here

Excerpt from Senator Inhofe's Speech regarding James Hansen:

"On March 19th of this year "60 Minutes" profiled NASA scientist and alarmist James Hansen, who was once again making allegations of being censored by the Bush administration. In this segment, objectivity and balance were again tossed aside in favor of a one-sided glowing profile of Hansen. The `60 Minutes' segment made no mention of Hansen's partisan ties to former Democrat Vice President Al Gore or Hansen's receiving of a grant of a quarter of a million dollars from the left-wing Heinz Foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry. There was also no mention of Hansen's subsequent endorsement of her husband John Kerry for President in 2004.

Many in the media dwell on any industry support given to so-called climate skeptics, but the same media completely fail to note Hansen's huge grant from the left-wing Heinz Foundation. The foundation's money originated from the Heinz family ketchup fortune. So it appears that the media makes a distinction between oil money and ketchup money. "60 Minutes" also did not inform viewers that Hansen appeared to concede in a 2003 issue of Natural Science that the use of `extreme scenarios' to dramatize climate change "may have been appropriate at one time" to drive the public's attention to the issue.

Why would "60 Minutes" ignore the basic tenets of journalism, which call for objectivity and balance in sourcing, and do such one-sided segments? The answer was provided by correspondent Scott Pelley. Pelley told the CBS News website that he justified excluding scientists skeptical of global warming alarmism from his segments because he considers skeptics to be the equivalent of `Holocaust deniers.'"

For full Senator Inhofe speech - Click Here




SUN'S ACTIVITY INCREASED SIGNIFICANTLY DURING THE 20TH CENTURY, STUDY CONFIRNMS

The energy output from the Sun has increased significantly during the 20th century, according to a new study

Many studies have attempted to determine whether there is an upward trend in the average magnitude of sunspots and solar flares over time, but few firm conclusions have been reached. Now, an international team of researchers led by Ilya Usoskin of the Sodankyl Geophysical Observatory at the University of Oulu, Finland, may have the answer. They examined meteorites that had fallen to Earth over the past 240 years. By analyzing the amount of titanium 44, a radioactive isotope, the team found a significant increase in the Sun's radioactive output during the 20th century. Over the past few decades, however, they found the solar activity has stabilized at this higher-than-historic level.

Prior research relied on measurements of certain radioactive elements within tree rings and in the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica, which can be altered by terrestrial processes, not just by solar activity. The isotope measured in the new study is not affected by conditions on Earth. The results, detailed in this week's issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters, "confirm that there was indeed an increase in solar activity over the last 100 years or so," Usoskin told SPACE.com.

The average global temperature at Earth's surface has risen by about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1880. Some scientists debate whether the increase is part of a natural climate cycle or the result of greenhouse gases produced by cars and industrial processes. The Sun's impact on climate has only recently been investigated. Recent studies show that an increase in solar output can cause short-term changes in Earth's climate, but there is no firm evidence linking solar activity with long-term climate effects.

The rise in solar activity at the beginning of the last century through the 1950s or so matches with the increase in global temperatures, Usoskin said. But the link doesn't hold up from about the 1970s to present. "During the last few decades, the solar activity is not increasing. It has stabilized at a high level, but the Earth's climate still shows a tendency toward increasing temperatures," Usoskin explained. He suspects even if there were a link between the Sun's activity and global climate, other factors must have dominated during the last few decades, including the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Space.com, 26 September 2006

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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