Comments on: Climate change Chicken Littles look at ordinary phenomenon and extrapolate their way to Armageddon

By: MorowbieJukes

MorowbieJukes — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 20:04:47 +0000

Robert Ballard is a little late to the game re: the world-wide floods that inspired the flood legend of Noah’s Ark (and Deucalion, Gilgamesh and other flood legends). Catastrophic world-wide inundations were addressed by Graham Hancock in his book “Underworld” ten years ago.

As the glaciers of the northern hemisphere gradually melted the exterior ice of the glaciers acted as containment vessels for the melted water. At some point the ice walls structurally failed and a gigantic volume of water was discharge literally at once. As I recall, when the Canadian glacier walls failed, one million cubic miles of water was discharged in the space of a few hours. The world-wide sea level would have jumped overnight around 30 feet. It would have been very much like the tidal surge of a tsunami where the waters do not eventually recede. This was one of a number of sudden inundations as other glaciers discharged water in a similar manner at the end of the last ice age. A theory, of course, but based on compelling physical evidence which is cited in the book.

What was very interesting was that the last global inundation agreed closely with the dates for Atlantis. An Egyptian priest told Plato’s uncle Solon around 500 BC that the great civilization of Atlantis had suddenly sank 9500 years previously, or 12,000 years before our current time. Atlantis may have been an actual civilization that got submerged by one of these global inundations and inspired an oral tradition or legend that lasted 10,000 years until a written account survived (Plato’s).

By: Charles Martel

Charles Martel — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 02:17:58 +0000

The most memorable floods in Marin in my memory came in the winter of ’82 when a very wet rainstorm stalled over the county and dropped 10 inches in one night during a king tide. I live in a neighborhood that sits only four feet above sea level, so noticed as I left for work that morning that water was furiously spouting through the holes in the manhole covers on my street.

A few hours later at work, hearing radio reports of very high winds on the Golden Gate Bridge and local flooding in various Marin towns, I left work and told my co-workers that I had a feeling it was now or never for getting home.

I managed to get across the GG Bridge minutes before it was closed down because of wind and low visibility, then wracked my brain for the next hour taking every dinky, out-of-the-way back road I knew to get around street closures that the Highway Patrol and local cops were putting up faster than the spread of communicable disease at an Occupy camp.

Finally made it home, but not before hitting the local Safeway for a couple of salmon filets and a bottle of chardonnay. I set up the grill—dammit, I’m a native Southern Californian and even a supernova can’t keep us from grilling—and my bride and I made ready to ride out the rainstorm in style. (By the this time the street in front of our house was under two feet of water. Fortunately, ours is the high house in the nabe, sitting a lofty five feet above sea level.)

Then the power went out.

No matter. We brought out our trusty Coleman camping lamps, and I consigned the salmon to the charcoal briquet-powered grill. The chardonnay had already been chilling for a couple of hours, so having it sit waiting in the still-cool fridge was no big deal.

We spent the next five or six hours in the semi-dark, enjoying one of the best salmon dinners we’d ever had, sipping a good white, playing Scrabble, reading to each other by Coleman light, and having one high old time. When the lights came back on around 10 that night, both of us spontaneously let out a moan of disappointment. It had been one of the best nights, with or without power, of our lives.

Now if I were a progressive, I would spin an entire philosophy of life around that night, praising how the lack of power made food taste so good and my wife and I draw close together in simple pleasures. But I’m not a progressive. Some good people, using abundant, planet-killing electrical power, fished that salmon, crafted that wine, produced those briquets and Coleman lamps, built our well-insulated refrigerator, and paved the roads that got me home. The break from routine was nice, and made for a great memory. But thank God it never got to be more than a pleasant story, instead of a way of life.

By: Wolf Howling

Wolf Howling — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 01:44:33 +0000

1. Next time someone mentions “sea level rise,” point them to the fact that the satellite data on which claims of current sea level rise are based have been acknowledged by NASA as lacking any sort of base reference point, thus rendering all claims unproven. See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/03/why-ice-loss-and-sea-level-measurements-via-satellite-and-the-new-shepard-et-al-paper-are-highly-uncertain-at-the-moment/
2. Next time someone speaks of global warming, ask them how much the earth has warmed in the past 16 years. Answer – zero degrees. That from the UK’s MET Office a few months ago. See ww.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released–chart-prove-it.html#ixzz29IJTC82d
3. Next, ask them what is the one single underlying assumption of every global warming computer model on which all claims of global warming are based? Answer – as carbon dioxide levels rise, so will temperatures. We have had sixteen years of increasing concentrations of CO2, and yet not 1 tenth of a degree of warming, not on land and not at sea (http://wolfhowling.blogspot.com/2012/02/warmie-angst-agw-theory-hanging-by.html and http://wolfhowling.blogspot.com/2012/02/in-post-here-i-pointed-out-that-surface.html)
4. Finally, ask them, what evidence will it take for them to believe that global warming is a canard – a political movement, not one based in science? When they go quiet, you might want to explain to them the difference between science and faith. Maybe they will have an epiphany.
5. Hmmm, if you just want to have fun with them, you might want to ask them what is the percentage human activity contributes to carbon dioxide our atmosphere as opposed to all other naturally occurring sources. Answer – Of all the sources putting CO2 in our atmosphere annually, humans and the burning of fossil fuels are responsible for all of 3%. The claim that CO2 is the prime driver of our climate has no basis in geological history. The earth has been far hotter than it is now, and we are still in the process of coming out of our world’s fifth ice age. Geologists calculate the end of an ice age as being when the earth is free of year round ice.