TBR News June 5, 2019

 

The Voice of the White House Washington, D.C. June 5, 2019: “Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.

When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.

I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.

He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.

He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.

His latest business is to re-institute a universal draft in America.

He wants to do this to remove tens of thousands of unemployed young Americans from the streets so they won’t come together and fight him.

Commentary for June 5:”It is beginning, after a long prelude, to feel like working in a nut house here. Trump has been insulting everyone within earshot, Republicans in Congress included. This will result in a mass movement at the top to boot him out of office and the sooner the better. He is doing more damage to the fabric of American democracy than Franklin Roovevelt and his friend Josef Stalin combined. And is is becoming common knowledge that Dirty Donny has made a good deal of his money laundering cash for the Russian drug mob. I predict that when, not if, this gets widespread play, Trump will be sharing a cell with Cohen.”

 

The Table of Contents

• Trump warns ‘foolish’ Republican senators in rare clash over Mexico tariffs
• Republican, Democratic senators seek to block Trump Saudi arms sales
• Encyclopedia of American Loons
• The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
• Ice Anyone?
• Warming to Cause Catastrophic Rise in Sea Level?
• Important Question
• EVER WONDER …….
• Things You Should’ve Learned By Middle Age
• Examples of typical email frauds

 Trump warns ‘foolish’ Republican senators in rare clash over Mexico tariffs

• Lawmakers in president’s own party voice firm opposition to threat over Mexico
• Migrants brave the ‘Beast’ as Mexico cracks down under US pressure

June 4, 2019

Associated Press

In a rare confrontation, Republican senators declared deep opposition Tuesday to Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs on all goods coming into the US from Mexico. But it’s unclear they have the votes to stop him, and Trump said they’d be “foolish” to try.

All sides, including officials from Mexico meeting Trump negotiators in Washington this week, remain hopeful that high-level talks will ease the president away from his threat. But with the tariffs set to start next Monday, and Trump declaring them “more likely” than not to take effect, fellow Republicans in Congress warned the White House they were ready to stand up to the president.

The public split and looming standoff over 5% tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico revealed a fundamental divergence in values between the president and his party. Trump uses tariffs as leverage to get what he wants, in this case to force Mexico to do more to halt illegal immigration. For Republicans, tariffs are counter to firmly rooted orthodoxy and viewed as nothing more than taxes they strenuously oppose.

The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said with understatement: “There is not much support in my conference for tariffs, that’s for sure.”

At a lengthy closed-door lunch meeting at the Capitol, senators took turns warning Trump officials there could be trouble if the GOP-held Senate votes on disapproving the tariffs. Congressional rejection would be a stiff rebuke to Trump, even more forceful than an earlier effort to prevent him from shifting money to build his long-promised border wall with Mexico.

“Deep concern and resistance” is how Senator Ted Cruz of Texas characterized the mood. “I will yield to nobody in passion and seriousness and commitment to securing the border, but there’s no reason for Texas farmers and ranchers and manufacturers and small businesses to pay the price of massive new taxes.”

Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who was among the senators who spoke up, said: “I think the administration has to be concerned about another vote of disapproval … I’m not the only one saying it.”

The outcome would be uncertain – Trump could try to veto a disapproval resolution as he did before. But many Republicans who voted against Trump earlier this year actually supported his ultimate goal of building the border wall. They were just uneasy with his executive reach to do it. The president doesn’t have anywhere near the same backing for the tariffs.

The GOP opposition is grounded in fears over what Trump’s tariffs would do to the livelihoods of ordinary Americans. Senators worry they would spike US consumers’ costs, harm the economy and imperil a major pending US-Mexico-Canada trade deal.

With jitters running high, the Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, said on Tuesday that he was prepared to respond to protect the economy, and stocks rallied on that signal that the Fed would probably cut interest rates later this year.

Mexico is concerned about the tariffs as well, but top officials seemed optimistic about a resolution.

“By what we have seen so far, we will be able to reach an agreement,” the foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said during a news conference at the Mexican embassy in Washington. “That is why I think the imposition of tariffs can be avoided.”

Trump, during a press conference in London, offered mixed messages.

“We’re going to see if we can do something,” he said on the second day of his state visit to Britain. “But I think it’s more likely that the tariffs go on.” He also said he doubted Republicans in Congress would muster the votes against him. “If they do, it’s foolish.”

The Mexican officials arrived in Washington over the weekend as Mexico launched a diplomatic counter-offensive and fresh negotiations. On Tuesday, Mexico’s trade negotiator Jesus Seade was meeting with the US trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, and Ebrard will meet on Wednesday with the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.

Republican senators are hopeful those talks will prevent the tariffs. But if negotiations should fail, the lawmakers warn they may have no choice but to take action to stop Trump. “Our hope is the tariffs will be avoided,” McConnell said.

Lawmakers and business allies worry the tariffs will derail the long-promised United-States-Mexico-Canada trade deal (USMCA), a rewrite of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) that Trump campaigned against and promised to replace.

Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the Republican chairman of the finance committee, told reporters Tuesday the tariffs made passage of USMCA “more difficult”.

Questions remained, meanwhile, over how, exactly, the president would invoke executive authority to slap tariffs on the Mexican goods – and what Congress could do to block him.

Trump has indicated he will rely on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a national emergency executive action he can take without congressional approval.

But lawmakers say they can quickly vote on a resolution to disapprove. That is what happened earlier this year when Congress, stunned by Trump’s claim of executive power, tried to block him from taking funds for the border wall with Mexico. Congress voted to disapprove of Trump’s actions, but the president vetoed the resolution.

This time, Republicans warn the numbers could be higher against the president –possibly a veto-proof majority in the Senate. But it’s unclear the president could be blocked in the House, where Republicans may be less likely to oppose him.

Democrats – and some Republicans – doubt the tariffs will ever take effect. The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said on Tuesday: “Trump has a habit of talking tough and then retreating.”

Trump struck back against Schumer on Twitter, insisting the tariff threat was “no bluff”.

Earlier on Tuesday, Trump claimed “millions of people” were entering the US through Mexico and criticized congressional Democrats for not passing new laws. He said: “Mexico should not allow millions of people to try and enter our country.”

It is unclear what more Mexico can do, and what would be enough, to satisfy Trump on illegal immigration, a signature issue of his presidency.

The US has not presented concrete benchmarks to assess whether its ally is sufficiently stemming the migrant flow from Central America. Mexico calls the potential tariffs hurtful to the economies of both countries and useless to slow the northbound flow of Central American migrants.

 

Republican, Democratic senators seek to block Trump Saudi arms sales

June 5, 2019

by Patricia Zengerle

Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican and Democratic U.S. senators said on Wednesday they would try to pass 22 separate joint resolutions that, if passed, would block President Donald Trump’s plan to complete $8 billion in military sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates without congressional review.

Backers said the introduction of the resolutions was intended to “protect and reaffirm Congress’ role of approving arms sales to foreign governments.”

The announcement followed furious rejection in Congress late last month of the Trump administration’s declaration that a growing threat from Iran was an emergency that forced it to sidestep lawmakers’ review of major arms deals and approve precision-guided munitions, aircraft engines, mortars and other equipment and services for Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Lebanon.

“We are taking this step today to show that we will not stand idly by and allow the President or the Secretary of State to further erode Congressional review and oversight of arm sales,” Senator Bob Menendez, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said.

The effort was led by Menendez, and Republican Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally who is also a critic of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.

Members of Congress had been blocking sales of offensive military equipment to Saudi Arabia and the UAE for months, angry about the huge civilian toll from their air campaign in Yemen, as well as rights abuses such as the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Turkey.

“While I understand that Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally, the behavior of (Saudi Crown Prince) Mohammed bin Salman cannot be ignored. Now is not the time to do business as usual with Saudi Arabia,” Graham said in a statement.

Graham said he expected “strong bipartisan support” for the resolutions.

Many lawmakers say that the powerful crown prince is ultimately responsible for Khashoggi’s murder and other rights abuses. The government in Riyadh denies that.

Two other Republican senators – Rand Paul and Todd Young – and three Democrats – Chris Murphy, Patrick Leahy and Jack Reed – also joined the announcement.

‘EMERGENCY’

Declaring the emergency, the Trump administration informed congressional committees on May 24 that it was going ahead with 22 military deals worth $8.1 billion, circumventing a long-standing precedent for lawmakers to review major weapons sales.

The decision angered members of both parties, who worried that Trump’s decision to blow through the “holds” process would eliminate Congress’ ability to prevent not just Trump but future presidents from selling weapons where they liked.

Announcing their plan to introduce the 22 resolutions, the senators said Trump’s “unprecedented” action is at odds with longstanding practice and cooperation between Congress and the executive branch.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that lawmakers were working on responses to the administration’s action and could file legislation within days. A separate set of legislative responses is being considered in the House of Representatives. [L2N23B1W6]

The Arms Export Control Act gives Congress the right to stop major weapons sales by passing a resolution of disapproval in both the Senate and House.

Opponents of the weapons sales said strong bipartisan support for such resolutions would send a forceful message to the administration – as well as defense contractors and the three countries – that Congress was unhappy about the process and could retaliate.

They also said it was possible, given the level of congressional anger over Trump’s use of the emergency declaration, that some of the resolutions would garner the two-thirds majorities in the Senate and House needed to override a Trump veto if necessary.

Additional reporting by Makini Brice; editing by Susan Thomas

 

Encyclopedia of American Loons

Victor Martinez

Woody Martin’s “Blood of Jesus oil” is so daft it probably doesn’t even count as a scam, and doesn’t quite qualify him for an entry here. Victor Martinez is hardly a household name either, but he has some influence in UFO circles, and did for instance moderate the maillist that first broke the hilarious Project Serpo story, a poorly written science fiction story (and possibly intended as a hoax) about how a number of American astronauts visited the (fictional) planet Serpo in a spacecraft reverse engineered from the Roswell crash UFO in the 1950s by travelling 40 times the speed of light. (We’ve covered it before). Of course, many of the maillist’s subscribers, already on board with this kind of stuff, apparently accepted the story as detailing real events.

And Martinez himself is a true believer, who implores his readers not to be sidetracked by inconsistencies and nonsense in the story but rather focus on the bigger picture, “that twelve of our citizens from the United States of America embarked on a 13-year mission to live on another world. That’s where the focus should be – not on all of these petty, nit-picky details! [Like evidence, truth, coherence or physical possibility] That’s what everyone should be in awe of.” Awesomeness trumps veracity every time, apparently. Martinez trust the general veracity of the story because of the testimony of impeccable sources like Richard Doty, Whitley Strieber, who “claims to have met a surviving team member of Project Serpo in Florida,” and a number of conveniently anonymous source who ostensibly talked to an acquaintance of fellow UFO enthusiast Bill Ryan, who (the acquaintance) was “amazed that details were now being released” but doesn’t want his name revealed and would deny everything if asked. When your conspiracy is as far out as Project Serpo you’ll take the sources you can get; to Martinez the story is simply too amazing not to be true.

“Why the secrecy?” wonders Martinez – why is the government not willing to share the details of the mission with him and his followers? The answer, of course, is well withing reach, but we wager that Martinez will never figure it out. Instead, he is patiently waiting for “at least some major announcement regarding the UFO subject being made public;” some government person in power needs to step up since “most people need an authority figure to come out and say this-and-that […] because most people can’t think for themselves. In other words, they can’t weigh and evaluate the evidence on its own merits and come to a definitive conclusion on their own; they need someone to do it for them.

Diagnosis: Some people are indeed unable to “weigh and evaluate the evidence on its own merits”, but that obviously doesn’t tend to prevent them from coming “to a definitive conclusion on their own”. Martinez is at least relatively harmless.

Rodney Martin

Rodney Martin is a white supremacist, supporter of the National Alliance Reform & Restoration Group (NARRG) – a spinoff of the neo-nazi National Alliance – part of the American Nationalist Network, and anti-semitic conspiracy theorist. “There are all sorts of [degeneracy], porn, lowering the age of consent, prostitution […] The hand print of Jews are all over that sexual decadence in the United States … The whole homosexual agenda …which is pushed by Jews. Not only did Jews create NAACP to direct black action against white people, but they started a whole host of homosexual organizations to promote the homosexual agenda,” says Martin.

As you’d expect, Martin is very much opposed to (liberal) immigration reform: “I think if they do, if they ramrod this amnesty bill through, then I think where I talked about the United States being a Soviet Union, I think overnight, we become Yugoslavia, and it becomes not a pretty picture,” said Martin, and claimed it is “genocide” (the referent of “it” being admittedly a bit unclear). Martin seems unsure about the meaning of – among other things – “overnight”.

Diagnosis: We apologize for the brevity of this post, but we cannot be bothered to delve too deeply into the kind of disgusting nonsense Martin is into. Stupid git. It would admittedly be a potential mistake to dismiss him as entirely harmless, however.

 

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

June 5, 2019

by Dr. Peter Janney

On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.

Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.

Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.

After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.

The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.

When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..

A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.

The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.

Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks. ”

Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.

Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas in 1993 when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publication.

 

Conversation No. 106

Date: Saturday, October 4, 1997

Commenced: 1:55 PM CST

Concluded: 2:10 PM CST

RTC: Hello to you, Gregory. How is is going with you?

GD: I’m making it. Listen, you’ve read the first Mueller book, haven’t you?

RTC: Yes, and enjoyed it very much. Why?

GD: I got this letter from Bender. It was sent to him from Spain and he forwarded it on to me with a note suggesting the writer might be an interesting person. I wrote to him….I think he was in Madrid,…and he had sent me two letters since. He said he was a top level Spanish intelligence agent but also worked for the German Abwehr and the Japanese. Was telling me that he was in Berlin in ’45 and in Hitler’s bunker. Said he helped Hitler and Bormann escape to South America. I asked him some technical questions about Bunker security and it was pretty obvious he knew nothing about Berlin, Hitler, Bormann or even Mueller. He told me that he helped Mueller and Bormann escape to South America and that Hitler went with them. This was a crock of shit because both of us knew Mueller and he was never in South America. Also, Bormann’s body was found back in 1972, in, as I recall, December, in Berlin and there is no doubt it was his. I got a copy of the German forensic report and believe me, they spent a long time on this one. So, Count this or that insisted that I include some information about his great findings. As I said, I wrote him with questions about technical details and he was further off factual base than old Gitta Sereny and her fake interviews. Well, we know Bormann was positively dead and you and I know that Mueller lived in Georgetown after the war and we both know that Georgetown is not in South America.

RTC: Who was your correspondent, out of curiosity?

GD: If you wait a moment, I’ll dig his idiot letters out of the file

(Pause)

Fine. His name is Senor Don Angel Alcazar de Velasco.

RTC:(Laughter) Oh, that one. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to him, Gregory. He’s about as real as Santa Claus.

GD: How do you know that, pray tell?

RTC: That’s one of our cover names for disinformation. Don Angel doesn’t exist.

GD: I can’t say that surprises me, what with the leadership of the Third Reich packed into submarines and shipped off to a secret base in Argentina. And why would you bother with such idiotic fairy stories?

RTC: We had certain reasons for that, Gregory. Are you going to follow up on this?

GD: Why not? I love to kick the shit out of liars. And what a liar! And stupid as a post. Why don’t you hire intelligent people?

RTC: Well, the Argentina underground Nazi base has its uses. Oh, and have you heard about the bases in the Antarctic?

GD: Oh, yes, that too. SS troops disguised as penguins and a big flying saucer base down there. But why are your people interested in that ancient history?

RTC: Question here. Did Mueller ever discuss this Hitler business with you?

GD: Yes, indeed, he did.

RT: And what did he tell you?

GD: That Hitler got out and just where he went.

RTC: And that was….?

GD: Well, it wasn’t South America, that’s for sure.

RTC: Could you…would you tell me what Mueller said?

GD: Surely, if you explain all of this mysterious business to me.

RTC: It’s far too sensitive, Gregory.

GD: What? That Hitler got away? You people had nothing to do with it. The CIA wasn’t even in existence in 1945.

RTC: I don’t….are you going to poke fun at Don Angel? And I really would like to know what Mueller told you. As a personal favor.

GD: Central America.

RTC: Could you be more specific?

GD: Yes, I could. And could you help me out here a bit?

RTC: Tell me what Mueller said and we can get to your request.

GD: Costa Rica.

RTC: Shit. Pardon me. Yes, shit. Did he tell you where in Costa Rica.

GD: Yes, he was very exact. Now please enlighten me, if you can.

RTC: Gregory, this is a very sensitive issue, you understand. If I fill you in a little, will you promise me, in advance, that you will not write about it while I am still alive?

GD: Promise.

RTC: We found out about this later. You are right in that we had nothing to do with it. We did, and do, have a significant base in Costa Rica and if the word got out that Hitler had gone there, all the whining Jews like Wiesenthal and Elie the Weasel will go down there, after begging for bags full of money from their suckers, and make life miserable for our people. I would really not want to see hordes of screeching Hebrews pouring into San Jose and sounding like parrots on a hot stove. The Jews are such pests and I think the bubonic plague would be more welcome. And besides, the Germans run that country and I doubt if they would want a plane full of bagle snappers down there. That’s why we encourage our fronts to stress South America, preferably Argentina. Of course Hitler didn’t go there but we stress Argentina because we do have, or have had, some high-level SS and police people in Paraguay and Chile and it is better that the twits all go to another country. We also took under consideration…but this was back in the ‘40s don’t forget…that if Joe Stalin actually did try to invade Europe, as we know he wanted to, we could bring Hitler back from retirement to lead the German people in a new crusade but this time with American support and, don’t forget, atomic weapons. Old Adolf is probably dead by now but at the time, we had to touch all bases. But if you publish any of this and if you put down that country, the Hebrews will make trouble. Let them go to Argentina. And please keep away from that Don Angel person because if you jerk his covers off, it could cause the Company endless problems. Hitler and Mueller are dead now, as dead as Bormann so why not use some of the really interesting material I sent you and please, I really ask you, stay away from Hitler in Costa Rica. It’s bad enough that you are publishing that Mueller survived the war and worked for our people and even worse that he lived in Georgetown. If that ever gets really going, every Jew in the lower forty eight will rise up and howl with rage and then to put Hitler into it would be the end. I’m sure you can grasp this, can’t you?

GD: I did promise.

RTC: So you did but I am just reminding you. And now you have the reason. Does it satisfy you?

GD: It would be much more fun if Hitler lived in Miami. There are thousands of illegal Jewish immigrants there.

RTC: You can be rather annoying at times, Gregory. Tell me, did you ever tell the Mueller story about Hitler to anyone?

GD: Yes, I told Jack Meanen, an old friend.

RTC: Meanen?

GD: Yes. A militaria dealer in New Hampshire. Used to work for your people.

RTC: Whereabouts in New Hampshire?

GD: Keene.

RTC: Thank you. Well, I will see to it that Don Jose de Cabeza de Vaca won’t write to you again.

GD: (Laughter) That’s not nice, Robert. Still, it fits. I was expecting him to tell me how he and the Pope used to play tennis with Joe Stalin.  You should really pick your snitches with a bit more care. Vet them better. That one is the worst liar I ever encountered.

RTC: We run with what we can sometimes, Gregory.

GD: And why are your people in Costa Rica?

RTC: As a base against the Communists and to protect the Panama Canal.

GD: I can see some of that but the Canal?

RTC: The Company uses it for big time deals and black operations if you must know.

GD: Drugs from Columbia, no doubt.

RTC: A very bad person, Gregory and my request for your silence extends to this subject as well.

GD: I keep my word, Robert. I take some pride in this.

RTC: Well, I knew Mueller and if you and he got along as well as you did, I assume you can keep quiet when it suits you. I would just like to live out whatever time is left to me in peace. I have enough problems with the Justice people calling me up and telling me how evil you are. I plan to ask Kimmel to stop this crap and I really don’t want to hear howls of anger from Langley because of some new nastiness you have launched. Well, enough of that nonsense. Anything else new?

GD: I should tell the world about Hitler’s presence so close to the United States and take tours down there.  I can point out the buildings over the secret underground caves with the gold bars and the UFO parts and for a few dollars, sell them a piece from the special U Boat that brought Hitler, his wife and dog over. I do know that there were some SS and SD people with him but not that many. His cook and a few others. Mueller was very informative. Just think that instead of being burnt in the Chancellery garden, Hitler was living out his life in comfort just south of the border. That would put the fox in the hen house, wouldn’t it?

RTC: I don’t even want to think about that one. I do assure you, Gregory, that we never brought him over or dealt with him. Some of his people, of course, that we did.

GD: Well, Rauff was not one of his top people and I am somewhat taken aback that the CIA worked with Mengele.

RTC: Well, we did fund the Remote Viewing nonsense so why not genetic engineering?

GD: Wiesenthal would crap his drawers if he ever heard about that.

RTC: From what I hear, old Simon wears diapers and talks to dead relatives.

GD: That might be an interesting subject.

RTC: I tell you what. Send me a copy of what Mueller told you about Costa Rica and I will be in your debt.

GD: My pleasure, Robert. You have sent me boxes of historical explosive material so I do own you. No problem at all.

(Concluded at 2:10 PM CST)

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Conversations+with+the+Crow+by+Gregory+Douglas

Ice Anyone?

Earth’s climate was in a cool period from A.D. 1400 to about A.D. 1860, dubbed the “Little Ice Age.” This period was characterized by harsh winters, shorter growing seasons, and a drier climate. The decline in global temperatures was a modest 1/2° C, but the effects of this global cooling cycle were more pronounced in the higher latitudes. The Little Ice Age has been blamed for a host of human suffering including crop failures like the “Irish Potato Famine” and the demise of the medieval Viking colonies in Greenland.

The Polar Ice Cap Effect

As long as the continent of Antarctica exists at the southern pole of our planet we probably will be repeatedly pulled back into glacial ice ages. This occurs because ice caps, which cannot attain great thickness over open ocean, can and do achieve great thickness over a polar continent– like Antarctica. Antarctica used to be located near the equator, but over geologic time has moved by continental drift to its present location at the south pole. Once established, continental polar ice caps act like huge cold sinks, taking over the climate and growing bigger during periods of reduced solar output. Part of the problem with shaking off the effects of an ice age is once ice caps are established, they cause solar radiation to be reflected back into space, which acts to perpetuate global cooling. This increases the size of ice caps which results in reflection of even more radiation, resulting in more cooling, and so on.

Continental polar ice caps seem to play a particularly important role in ice ages when the arrangement of continental land masses restrict the free global circulation of equatorial ocean currents. This is the case with the continents today, as it was during the Carboniferous Ice Age when the supercontinent Pangea stretched from pole to pole 300 million years ago.

Stopping Climate Change

Putting things in perspective, geologists tell us our present warm climate is a mere blip in the history of an otherwise cold Earth. Frigid Ice Age temperatures have been the rule, not the exception, for the last couple of million years. This kind of world is not totally inhospitable, but not a very fun place to live, unless you are a polar bear.

Some say we are “nearing the end of our minor interglacial period” , and may in fact be on the brink of another Ice Age. If this is true, the last thing we should be doing is limiting carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, just in case they may have a positive effect in sustaining present temperatures. The smart money, however, is betting that there is some momentum left in our present warming cycle. Environmental advocates agree: resulting in a shift of tactics from the “global cooling” scare of the 1970’s to the “global warming” threat of the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Global climate cycles of warming and cooling have been a natural phenomena for hundreds of thousands of years, and it is unlikely that these cycles of dramatic climate change will stop anytime soon. We currently enjoy a warm Earth. Can we count on a warm Earth forever? The answer is most likely… no.

Since the climate has always been changing and will likely continue of it’s own accord to change in the future, instead of crippling the U.S. economy in order to achieve small reductions in global warming effects due to manmade additions to atmospheric carbon dioxide, our resources may be better spent making preparations to adapt to global cooling and global warming, and the inevitable consequences of fluctuating ocean levels, temperatures, and precipitation that accompany climatic change.

But is global warming real?

The overwhelming scientific consensus is that global warming is real, and that it’s upon us now. In the last century, the average temperature of the Earth has warmed roughly 1° Fahrenheit [0.56° Celsius]. That means an enormous additional amount of heat energy has been built into the system, and there are serious consequences to that warming.

What role does human activity play in global warming?

The atmosphere of the Earth is like a blanket that traps heat. It keeps the temperature at the surface of the Earth about 50° or 60° [Fahrenheit/28° or 33° Celsius] warmer than it would be otherwise, which is great because it makes the world a pleasant place to live. But humans have been adding to the gases that help trap this heat.

We’ve been adding to the stock of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by taking coal, oil, and natural gas out of the ground and burning them as fuels. Combined with deforestation, this has raised the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by about one-third since pre-industrial times.

And what does this do the welfare of the Earth?

If you think of an automobile engine—when you step on the accelerator, the engine speeds up because you’re putting more energy into it by increasing the fuel flow, so everything runs harder and hotter and faster. The extremes get more extreme.

That’s what’s happening with the climate. We’re stepping on the accelerator by adding greenhouse gases to the climate and increasing heat energy in the system.

How does climate change manifest itself?

Ocean levels are rising, because water expands as it heats up. Since there is more energy in the system, storms may become more frequent and more violent. Increased incidents of flooding create heavier runoffs and soil erosion. Indirect effects of climate change can also cause entire species to go extinct.

How realistic is this movie?

It has a kernel of truth, although it has been “Hollywoodized.” There is evidence that abrupt climate change has happened a couple of times in the last 13,000 years, but it’s never happened in a few days, as it does in the movie. That’s completely impossible.

What is the ocean conveyor belt referred to in the movie, and what is its importance to the Earth’s climate?

It’s the system of currents that flows around the oceans of the world and carries heat from the tropics to the northern latitudes. There is evidence that the North Atlantic branch of the current has failed in the distant past—8,200 and 12,700 years ago—causing a great cooling of the climate.

In the movie, the influx of fresh water, caused by the melting of a massive ice sheet, changes the salinity of the oceans, shutting down the Gulf Stream. Could that happen?

In theory, that is realistic. Salty water is heavier than fresh water. When the cold, salty current reaches the northern latitudes and gives out its heat, the current actually sinks and flows back along the bottom of the ocean toward the tropics.

When then there’s a lot of fresh water added to that current, it may stop flowing, because it’s not dense enough to sink anymore. In the past, retreating glaciers dumped enormous amounts of fresh water very suddenly into the North Atlantic, and the currents stopped

“Our years are turned upside down; our summers are no summers; our harvests are no harvests”

-John King, 1595

Though it may appear to be, the earth and its surroundings are far from perfectly stable and constant. We humans find it quite easy to understand daily and seasonal Weather fluctuations as being perfectly normal. But when longer-term fluctuations, cycles, and changes in our Climate are considered, it becomes harder and harder for us to imagine these things about the earth that seem so infinitely static to us as, in truth, dynamically inconstant and defined by change. The planet’s crust is steadily being stretched and bunched up like a baggy sweater; our Earth wobbles on its axis like a top and deviates on its course around an inconsistent sun. These are hard things for us to imagine considering that we view these changes is such a minutely small increment; that is to say, merely a lifetime.

Nevertheless, small blips in the Progression of the Climate can appear to (as an the Elizabethan preacher quoted above believed in 1595) make everything ‘turn upside down’. This is certainly the case to a number of people who lived through what has been called by some the most recent “dramatic shift in Climate”, The Little Ice Age of 1550-1700. During this ‘reign of cold’, the global average temperature dropped between 1 and 2 degrees Celsius for a span of several hundred years. Ice sheets advanced over farms, villages, valleys…Greenland (Seabrook A1). The Baltic Sea and the Thames River froze regularly. Crops failed; famine and disease defined Europe (Schaefer 35). Sea Ice surrounded Iceland occasionally during this time to the extent that, from the highest point of the island, one could not see the ocean (Lamb 15). Glaciers around the globe advanced during this time, and have only beginning to recede in the 20th century. According to some “the rates of famine and mortality increased all over the world” as a result of the Little Ice Age (Schaefer 35).

Centuries of personal accounts, harvest records, and scientific data exist that tell of the effects of this period of cold (Appleby, Pfister, Vries). But, almost all of this information is European in origin. Whether or not the better-termed European Little Ice Age was in fact a global phenomenon is an important question. Beyond any doubt, the period of cold in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries had drastic affects on many Europeans, but the question remains to whether the rest of the world’s population (which is by far the majority of the people) experienced similar disruptions.

Ice Ages and Glaciers

What is an ‘ice age’ necessarily? And what is a ‘little’ one for that matter? The defining characteristic of an ‘ice age’ is the uniform, global advance of glaciers and sea ice. How is this so? The advance of glaciers and sea ice are primarily the result of a decrease in climatic temperature. This is true because of the very nature of what makes a glacier form. Glaciers are the accumulation of years of snow that had fallen in winter months, yet did not melt in the summer. As more and more layers are deposited, the snow is compressed, changes into ice, and is compacted more and more densely with each succeeding year. At a critical depth, approximately 18 meters, the ice sheet begins to move as a result of its own weight and gravity. Although ice within a glacier is always moving (like a conveyor belt), if the amount of annual accumulating snowfall which feeds the glacier equals the amount of ice that melts, then the glacier will sustain its present frontal ‘terminus’ position. But, “glaciers periodically retreat or advance, depending on the amount of snow accumulation or ice melting they experience” (Cheshire 3). The extent of these retreats and advances depends on (1) the type of glacier (expansive ice sheet glacier, mountain glacier, valley glacier, tidewater glacier, etc.), (2) precipitation, and/or (3) temperature. The question is, then, is there a general advance of glaciers around the world during the time of the Little Ice Age?

The period before the Little Ice Age was in fact preceded by a several hundred-year period with generally warmer-than-average temperature conditions. During this time, Greenland (which was actually green during this warm period) was settled near the end of the 10th century. From 1000-3000 CE, the colony flourished: a cathedral was built, a monastery and a nunnery existed, and more than 3,000 colonist lived on 300 farms. But as the Little Ice Age approached, Weather continually degenerated for the colonists. Harvests failed, settlements to the north were abandoned as the permafrost level rose and glaciers spread south. In fact, today archeological studies of the Greenland colony date graves based on how shallow the coffin was buried because of the increased permafrost level over time.

Personal accounts, like those of a trader in 1751, tell the story of glacial advance: “The ice increases every year, which is mostly recognizable from the fact that tracks where the Greenlanders used to go hunting are now quite overridden and covered by ice, and, as far as may be concluded from their simple chronometry, the change that has taken place in a score of years is very considerable” (Grove 266). Due to the high latitude of their settlements, the people of Greenland were hard hit by glacial advance of “ice which has laid itself over the entire hinterland” that buried many northern settlements (ibid).

Of the Research done after the 19th century in Greenland glacial sheets (203 in all) the Study of their movement ‘strongly suggests’ that the dominant determinant of their movement is temperature. That is to say, glacial advances and retreats in Greenland over the past hundred years reflect shifts in lower and higher than average temperatures during this time. It is possible to assume, therefore, that this is also the case with the major glacial advance during the Little Ice Age. The next question, then, is what about the other regions of the world? Were there coinciding advances? And if there were, are they the result of temperature or some other factor?

Glaciers in the Southern Hemisphere during the Little Ice Age

In actuality, very little is known about many of the glaciers in Africa and South America, presently and historically. “These are amongst the least known of the world’s glaciers. All -or nearly all- of them have retreated in the course of this century, but information about the timing of their fluctuations in earlier centuries is sparse” (Grove 264). With lack of information on glaciers during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries even a problem in Europe, it is even more difficult in the Southern Hemisphere (or anywhere else other than Europe, for that matter) to be precise about the fluctuations in glacial frontiers over the past four to five hundred years. In spite of this, moraines (elliptical shaped debris deposits left during a glacial recession) of a significant number of glaciers in southern Patagonia, South America, point to a general advance culminating in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, and then followed by a 20th century recession. As early as 1895, in fact, it was observed that “the present glaciers (of South America) clearly indicate not only that until a short time ago they were of much greater extent but also that they are now losing volume and receding at a great rate” (Hauthol, 1895 in Grove 273). For example, on the western edge of the Cordon Limite in southern Patagonia, the Ada glacier was observed in 1858 to reach down to 1,797 meters; by 1882 the front had risen to 1,929 meters and in 1980, it had risen further to 2,500 meters above sea-level (Groeber 168).

As well, observations of the snow-line in the Andes since European arrival show an overall retreating tendency in the snowline

In New Zealand, where much more Research of the glaciers on its two islands has taken place, extensive advances also preceded a twentieth century retreat in earlier centuries. An interesting and dynamic example of the general behavior of New Zealand glaciers is that of the Franz Josef glacier, whose impressive retreat (with occasional advances, like a 200 meter one in 1985) in the past century has been credited, with much debate and controversy, to increased temperature since the time of the Little Ice Age. Although information about the glaciers of the Southern Hemisphere during the 16th through 18th century is very scarce, it is certainly true that they have generally been on a recession since the 19th century.

Glaciers in the Himalayas

Glaciers of Asia, as those in the Southern Hemisphere, are scarcely known, thus making conclusions about their movement in the past quite difficult to determine. In fact, of the first three IAHS/Unesco volumes published on the fluctuations of glaciers, “the first contained only European material, and even the third had data from only one Himalayan glacier” in spite of the fact that the area covered by ice in the Himalayas is thirty-three times greater than that of Europe’s ice cover and is the largest ice covered region outside of the Arctic and Antarctic (Grove 199).

Evidence does exist, though, to support the belief that mountain glaciers there were greater during the European Ice Age than present. For example, there exist many Hindu temples near the glacial source of the Ganges River, which plays an important role in the Hindu religion. But these temples are now over 30km from the actual source of the Ganges that leads many to wonder that the glacier was much closer when these temples were initially built (Grove 207-209). More concrete evidence (tree ring studies and observations of Chinese glaciers in the 20th century) leads many to believe that temperatures throughout Asia were lower from the 14th century until the middle 19th century than present.

When looking at the areas of the Earth that is prone to glaciers, it is generally safe to say that around the world, many of the glaciers are presently holding recessed positions when compared to where they were during the Little Ice Age. Still, it is still not totally certain that this correlation is due to falling, then rising temperatures. One cannot forget the fact that glaciers like the Franz Josef in New Zealand may be contracting more due to a change in precipitin patterns over the past one hundred years that is totally independent of climatic changes elsewhere in the globe. There still remains sufficient evidence, nevertheless, that the European Little Ice Age was at least climatically important (albeit devastating) to places and people situated at polar extremes and mountainous regions where glacial and permafrost encroachment offers little or no alternative, as in the case of the Greenland Colony.

Sources of the Little Ice Age

The factors of Climate change can be divided upon a scale of time and space. That is to say, in order to figure out what factors are most responsible for any particular Climate change, one must be sure to keep in mind the size the affected area (local, regional, global, extra-global) and the time over which the change occurred. In regards to the Little Ice Age, then, one must look for climatic influences that operate within a two to three hundred year cycle of this Age and were global in nature. But, to be sure not to close our scope too much, let us begin with the external variables, and ultimate (initial) determinants of climatic change on earth: the sun and the earth’s relation to it.

The basic reason why the earth has Weather is because the energy it receives from the sun is not absorbed equally. Winds, currents, and storms occur because of the transfer of the sun’s energy from one place to another and/or from one form to another. Changes in the Weather pattern (i.e. Climate) can at length be a result of a change in the energy transfer relationship between the sun and the earth’s atmosphere, land, and oceans. These external changes can be caused by fluctuations in the output of the sun, earth-sun geometry, and atmospheric chemistry. They differ from internal processes of the earth that involve feedbacks from one part of the climatic system to another, such as surface albedo and the atmosphere-ocean relationship (Adams 1-10).

Wavering sun

It is known that the sun’s output and the earth’s relationship to the sun are quite complicated to quantify. To begin with, the sun regularly fluctuates in intensity by about a fourth of a percent during an eleven-year cycle. But also, studies of other stars have shown that they can regularly go through extended quiet periods where a star’s intensity fell by up to five percent for a number of years. These quiet periods are measured by observing the reduction in sun spot activity of a star. Of thirteen stars routinely measured since 1966, four have exhibited this extended ‘flat’ period throughout the Study (Gribbin 19). Not to mention the fact that our sun is constantly getting hotter, and thus affecting earth’s Climate, it also has quite the potential (based on studies of other similar stars) to fluctuate its intensity over years, decades, and even centuries. It is believed that these fluctuations are a function of the sun’s rotation. More specifically, “the rotation speed of the sun is inversely correlated with sunspot numbers” because an increased rotation “inhibits transport of the magnetic field from the Deep interior to the surface and could cause a reduction of solar wind” (Grove 366-367).

Support for sun fluctuations as the source of the Little Ice Age comes from a recorded decrease in sunspots during part of the Little Ice Age. As early as the 1880’s, a German astronomer, Gustav Sporer, began wondering why it was that very few sunspots were seen in parts of the 17th and 18th century, even though there were “so many observers of the sun, as were then perpetually peeping in upon (it) with their telescopes in England, France, Germany and Italy” (Eddy 1976, in Grove 366). The prolonged absence of sunspots between 1645 and 1715 came to be known as the Mauder minimum. During this period, based on drawing of early astronomers, the sun’s rotation was faster during the Little Ice Age than present, which accounts for the low numbers of sunspots. Still, the Mauder Minimum does not occur through the whole period of the Little Ice Age, thus making a definitive correlation problematic.

Earth-sun Geometry

As well, Earth’s orbit around the sun is far from perfectly static. Rather, as Serbian astronomer Milutin Milankovitch hypothesized in the 20’s and 30’s, the earth’s rotation around the sun and its tilt are subtly influenced by the gravitational forces of other planets and celestial bodies. The subtle changes, though, can “result in different distributions and intensities of sunlight, which then lead to dramatic variations in Climate over tens of thousands of years” (Alley 80). These dramatic variations are, in fact, the 100,000 year glacial-interglacial cycle (due to the eccentricity of earth’s orbit), and the shorter-term 20,000 and 40,000 year cycles (due to the earth’s angle of tilt and then the precision of this tilt, respectively). As a side note, we are presently on the tailend of an interglacial period; Milankovitch cycles, though, are on a much too large of time scale to explain the relatively short period of the Little Ice Age. The rest of climatic change variables can be grouped as internal changes on Earth. The four possible factors are volcanism, Greenhouse gases, surface albedo, and the ocean-atmosphere relationship.

Volcanism

It is well known that volcanic injection of micro-particles and gases into the stratosphere reduce the amount of solar energy that reaches the surface of the Earth. Successive volcanoes (or even one) can temporarily dust the sky of the entire Earth and thus affect the Climate of the Earth on a variety of time-scales. For example, the eruption of Mt. Agung in 1963 had a marked effect on the Climate of the American high Arctic as well as in the tropical troposphere, where temperature decreased almost one degree Celsius from August 1964 to August 1965. But other equally large eruptions, like Bezymyannyy in 1956, have not been followed by a similar decline in temperature, most likely due to difference like the location and chemical make-up of the eruption, which make simply equating more eruptions with lower temperatures a bit troublesome. Consequently, “there seems little doubt that volcanic activity influences Climate but the extent of this influence is controversial” (Grove 368).

Nevertheless, an ice-core from Crete, Greenland shows a rather provocative correlation between increased volcanic activity and lower than average temperatures over the past fourteen hundred years. In the following graph, lower-than-average acidic levels of the Greenland core, which refers to decreased amounts of sulfate in the atmosphere due to volcanic activity, matches almost perfectly with the warm periods of this era.”The quietist period volcanically was from CE 1100 to 1250, that is in the medieval warm period. The most active period volcanically came between CE 1250 and 1500 and between CE 1550 and 1700, suggesting that it had an important role in the causation of the Little Ice Age” (Grove 376).

Surface Albedo

A very important amplifier to any glacial-like advance is the reflective effect of ice and snow. An increase in snow and ice reflects back larger amounts of solar energy, thus making surface temperatures even colder and therefore resulting in the possibility for even more snow and ice: a classic feedback situation. Given the fact that the amount of snow and ice can easily be increased or decreased given minor changes in temperature due to, for example, small changes in solar output or volcanism, surface albedo can become an intense resonator to further decreases in surface temperature (Adams 7).

Ocean-Atmosphere conveyor system

One of the most interesting and plausible factors for the Little Ice Age is the relationship between the ocean and the atmosphere. Both are huge sinks for energy and compounds; any change in their relationship “must have effects on the prevailing Climate…” (Lamb 1). Possibly the most famous region for the ocean-atmosphere relationship is in the North Atlantic, where the tropical Gulf Stream brings warm currents and air far north to meet the cold Arctic waters off the coasts of Greenland, Iceland, and Norway. It is well known that the shutting off or slowing down of the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic has amplified affects on the Climate of Europe because it is responsible for keeping the water and air around Europe (which is very far north) much warmer than its Latitude would imply.

Warm, tropical water is brought so far north because the movements of surface winds and surface currents follow each other. Air and Water are both fluid and therefore they tend to follow similar courses. ” The general world map of ocean currents is very similar to the pattern of the prevailing winds that drive them. And when the wind-flow pattern is distorted by great meandering of the steering current aloft, …the ocean current system must tend to be distorted as well” (Lamb 3). For example, an atmospheric low, which is by definition is cyclonic, will push air away from the air mass’ center due to the correolis effect. These outward tending winds will also force ocean currents to diverge from the center as well. The opposite is true of an atmospheric high, where anti-cyclonic winds and currents will both diverge towards the center of the air mass.

This fact becomes extremely important with an air mass over the Atlantic because

an atmospheric low will make waters diverge towards the out rim of the Atlantic Basin, while an atmospheric high will cause water currents to converge towards the middle. It is well known that it is the divergent tendencies of the North Atlantic that keep the Gulf Stream powered and if an atmospheric high were to replace the usual atmospheric low over the North Atlantic, the currents would converge, thus greatly weakening the Gulf Stream. In fact, reconstruction of average pressure Maps from 1790 to 1829 by Hubert Lamb and Johnson reveal that there was far less cyclonic wind stress south of Iceland then during the 20th Century (Grove 360). It is therefore possible to assume that the deteriorating Climate of the Little Ice Age in Europe can be partly explained by the slowing of the Gulf Stream.

The question is then, did this happen elsewhere in one of our seven oceans? Surely this is not an isolated relationship, right? In reality, many feel that it is, for the following reasons.

The North Atlantic is quite unique, in regards to the ocean-atmosphere connection, for a number of reasons. Firstly, in comparison to the Pacific, it is far more saline. The enriched salinity of Atlantic surface water enable it be become dense enough, when cooled, to sink to the ocean floor. By contrast, the fresher waters of the Pacific, no matter how much they are cooled in relation to the Deep water, will never be dense enough to sink more than to an intermediate level. The sinking of Gulf Stream waters in the north Atlantic causes more warm water from the tropics to be ‘pulled’ north like a conveyor.

This warm water brought north brings vast amounts of energy to the Arctic maters and atmosphere. Wallace Broecker, Dorothy Peteet, and David Rind estimate the byproduct of this Deep water formation to be about 5* 1021 calories of heat that is released to the atmosphere: “an amount corresponding to ~30% of the solar heat reaching the surface of the Atlantic Ocean in the region north of 35° N” (Broecker 24).

Obviously, the salinity of the Atlantic is quite important to the transfer of energy (5* 1021 calories of heat) to the region around Europe. If the salinity were changed, then, the Deep-water formation of the Gulf Stream would be shut off or diminished. A number of possible hypothesis exist that account for this. For example, there is evidence that the water exchange between the Atlantic and Pacific in the Bering Strait was much greater 300 years ago than present (Lamb 5). Also, the salinity of the Atlantic ocean, as Adams and Maslin suggest, “a pulse of fresh river water (could) dilute the dense, salty Gulf Stream and float on top, forming a temporary lid…”(Adams5). Either of these two scenarios, in conjunction with the anti-cyclonic winds of the time could have lowered (1) the salinity of the Atlantic, (2) made Deep water production impossible, (3) and caused arctic ice to form further south. In the winter, with a lack of warm water in the North Atlantic the temperatures in Europe would be much more Severe Weather. And in the summer, ice formation would (4) make the air reaching Europe cooler and dryer because of an albedo effect and therefore (5) diminish glacial melting in the latitude and altitude extremes, causing glacial advance.

But, this scope of ocean-atmosphere effects on Climate (i.e., just the north Atlantic) does not fully explain why there were glacial advances, due to decreased temperature, throughout the world during the Little Ice Age. As Broecker points out, “we may be dealing with a regional change in Climate involving primarily the area under the climatic influence of the northern Atlantic Ocean.” To explain global cooling, one must consider the evidence for diminished sunspots and increased volcanism during this time. As well, Broecker adds, “Evidence for such an oscillation (like the Deep water circulation in the North Atlantic) has been found elsewhere, that is, in the cordillera of South America and in New Zealand…(T)he situation may well be more complicated” (Broecker 24). Unfortunately, there is little historical data on ocean temperature in any other region other than the North Atlantic. But as Broecker points out, if the reasons why the Little Ice Age had global implications are to be found, the North Atlantic conveyor belt may only explain Climate change in the area around Europe. One must not drunkenly ‘look under the street light’, as the saying goes, when what is being looked for is in fact on the other, unlit curve.

The global implications of the Little Ice Age are still debatable, but it is rather safe to say that for a variety of reasons, the world was cooler for a period of time. And although the Little Ice Age devastated those who were sustaining themselves at a latitude and altitude extreme, it is important to keep in mind that this ‘ice age’ was a tiny blip in the climatic fluctuations of earth. By far, other climatic fluctuations in even the Holocene, like Younger Drias which last over 800 years, have been far more intense and last much longer. Determining the reasons for the Little Ice Age is quite a challenge. Imagine yourself in a time machine, going back in time about 20,000 years. You get out of the machine and all you can see is ice. All around you are miles and miles of ice. You’d think you must have landed on a glacier or frozen lake. Actually, you are in the ice age.

About 1/3 of the earth was ice. The most recent ice age was almost 10,000 years ago. As the earth started warming up the ice started to melt. The last ice age left traces that it was there. It left GLACIERS!!! Sheets of ice covered valleys and rivers. Ice spread to different parts of the world. Scientists called it the ice age. It kept melting, then froze again. This went on for about a million years. About 10,000 years ago the earth started to warm up. Sheets of ice started to melt. As the ice melted it left lakes and broad valleys with a mixture of rocks and soil. The only ice left was up high in the mountains. The glaciers that you see now are what is left over from the ice age.

Do you ever wonder how we know that ice ages really exist? Well one reason is that it left clues. Louis Aggasiz was one of the first scientists to study the clues of the ice age. An erratic is a large boulder, and when Aggasiz told some scientists that the boulders had been left there by a glacier they thought that he was out of his mind. The scientists thought they were put there by icebergs, Noah’s flood, and witches.

The reason Louis Aggasiz proved that they had been put there by glaciers is because they were made of a kind of rock that you can’t find naturally in that area – granite. Because of that he proved that they can’t be from there, they were from somewhere else. Other proof that the ice age really existed is: polished bedrock, sand and gravel piles, big valleys, and rough mountain tops.

People During the Ice Age

During the ice age the men would set a trap for their food. When an animal fell for the trap the men would go kill it. Then the men would work on cutting the mammoth into big chunks, and then carried the chunks of meat to their cave. There the women and children would cut the mammoth meat into pieces that they were able to cook. The ice age people lived 35,000 years ago.

During the ice age countries like the Britain, France, Spain and Germany were very cold. At the northern and southern part of the earth the sheets of ice were much colder than they are today. Nobody knows why the ice age started, or why it stopped after 25,000 years. All we know is that it came and went very slowly. So that is the reason why the people that lived at the time didn’t realize that it was getting colder and colder, nor did they know that they were becoming the ice age hunters. Most of the ice age hunters lived in the western, central part of Europe.

Because of all the ice the land was shaped much, much differently. The land looked bare because it was too cold for beech and oak trees to grow. There would be few fir trees here and there. No grass grew, just shrubs, bushes, and moss grass. In the northern parts of North America, Europe, and Asia there is still tundra.

The animals were different from today too. Back then there were woolly mammoth, woolly rhinos, cave bears, bison, wolves, horses, and herds of reindeer like modern day reindeer. Woolly mammoth, cave bear, and woolly rhino are now extinct. How do we know that they existed? Well the ice age people painted pictures of these animals on the sides of their caves, and the skeletons of the animals have been found in caves. There are cuts from the hunters’ knives in the bones and the knives were sitting beside them.

 

Just The Facts

• There were about 11 different ice ages.
• The ice ages were during the earth’s 4.6 billion years of history.
• The last ice age was called “The Great Ice Age” and was 11,000 years ago.
• During the “Great Ice Age” over a third of the earth was covered in ice. During the ice age the air had less carbon dioxide in it.
• Right now we are living in a mini ice age.
• There are two explanations of why the ice ages might have occurred: 1.The temperatures were much colder so it never rained, only snowed. 2. The earth changed its tilt away from the sun.

 

Warming to Cause Catastrophic Rise in Sea Level?

by Stefan Lovgren

National Geographic News

Most scientists agree that global warming presents the greatest threat to the environment.

There is little doubt that the Earth is heating up. In the last century the average temperature has climbed about 0.6 degrees Celsius (about 1 degree Fahrenheit) around the world.

From the melting of the ice cap on Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest peak, to the loss of coral reefs as oceans become warmer, the effects of global warming are often clear.

However, the biggest danger, many experts warn, is that global warming will cause sea levels to rise dramatically. Thermal expansion has already raised the oceans 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters). But that’s nothing compared to what would happen if, for example, Greenland’s massive ice sheet were to melt.

“The consequences would be catastrophic,” said Jonathan Overpeck, director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “Even with a small sea level rise, we’re going to destroy whole nations and their cultures that have existed for thousands of years.”

Overpeck and his colleagues have used computer models to create a series of maps that show how susceptible coastal cities and island countries are to the sea rising at different levels. The maps show that a 1-meter (3-foot) rise would swamp cities all along the U.S. eastern seaboard. A 6-meter (20-foot) sea level rise would submerge a large part of Florida.

Uncertainties

Just as the evidence is irrefutable that temperatures have risen in the last century, it’s also well established that carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has increased about 30 percent, enhancing the atmosphere’s ability to trap heat.

The exact link, if any, between the increase in carbon dioxide emissions and the higher temperatures is still under debate.

Most scientists believe that humans, by burning fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum, are largely to blame for the increase in carbon dioxide. But some scientists also point to natural causes, such as volcanic activity.

“Many uncertainties surround global warming,” said Ronald Stouffer at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey. “How much of it would still occur if humans were not modifying the climate in any way?”

The current rate of warning is unprecedented, however. It is apparently the fastest warming rate in millions of years, suggesting it probably is not a natural occurrence. And most scientists believe the rise in temperatures will in fact accelerate. The United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2001 that the average temperature is likely to increase by between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius (2.5 and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by the year 2100.

The climate change is likely to impact ecosystems, agriculture, and the spread of disease. An international study published in the science journal Nature earlier this year predicted that climate change could drive more than a million species towards extinction by the year 2050.

“Global warming is a serious threat to biodiversity,” said Jay Malcolm, a forestry professor at the University of Toronto. “As climates warm, more southerly species will begin appearing further north, and species that occur at lower altitudes will start showing up at higher altitudes … species will find themselves in habitats where they don’t belong.”

Underwater

Glaciers and sea ice in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres are already melting at a rapid pace, placing animals like polar bears at risk.

“Polar bears are entirely dependent on sea ice,” Malcolm said. “You lose sea ice, you lose polar bears.”

So far, the rise in sea level is because warmer water takes up more room than colder water, which makes sea levels go up, a process known as thermal expansion.

“The real question is what’s going to happen to Greenland and Antarctica,” Stouffer said. “That’s where the bulk of all the fresh water is tied up.”

A recent Nature study suggested that Greenland’s ice sheet will begin to melt if the temperature there rises by 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit). That is something many scientists think is likely to happen in another hundred years.

The complete melting of Greenland would raise sea levels by 7 meters (23 feet). But even a partial melting would cause a one-meter (three-foot) rise. Such a rise would have a devastating impact on low-lying island countries, such as the Indian Ocean’s Maldives, which would be entirely submerged.

Densely populated areas like the Nile Delta and parts of Bangladesh would become uninhabitable, potentially driving hundreds of millions of people from their land.

A one-meter sea level rise would wreak particular havoc on the Gulf Coast and eastern seaboard of the United States.

“No one will be free from this,” said Overpeck, whose maps show that every U.S. East Coast city from Boston to Miami would be swamped. A one-meter sea rise in New Orleans, Overpeck said, would mean “no more Mardi Gras.”

Other scientists emphasize that such doomsday scenarios may be hundreds of years in the future.

“You can’t say with any certainty that sea level rises are going to have a huge impact on society,” Stouffer said. “Who knows what the planet will look like 500 years from now?”

Future Generations

Most climate scientists, however, agree that global warming is a threat that has gone unchecked for too long.

“Is society aware of the seriousness of climate warning? I don’t think so,” said Marianne Douglas, a geology professor at the University of Toronto. “If we were, we’d all be leading our lives differently. We’d see a society that embraced alternative sources of energy, with less dependency on fossil fuels.”

Overpeck says passing on the problem of global warming to future generations is like ignoring a government budget deficit. “Except with the deficit, there are economic mechanisms that could be put in place to get out of the large deficit,” he said. “With sea level rise, there’s really no technological way to put the ice back on Greenland.”

Using computer models, scientists have created a series of maps that show areas susceptible to rises in sea level. The above map shows that a 6-meter (20-foot) rise would swamp Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, and the entire Florida coastline, in addition to parts of Orlando and other inland areas.

Measurements show that sea level has risen about 15 centimeters over the past century.

Climatologist Kevin Trenberth notes that while predictions for sea level have changed over the years, rising seas remain “a major problem on long-time scales…. Even if you stabilize temperature and greenhouse gases, sea level will continue to rise.”

Watery and grave

Low-lying atolls in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are already threatened. The first environmental refugees of the greenhouse century could come from a place like the Carteret (or Tulun) islands of Papua New Guinea.

The island’s 1,400 residents say the rising sea has polluted their gardens with salt water, and they may starve even before the sea inundates their homes. The residents have applied for relocation money, but the government says it lacks the cash.

Rising seas also endanger the Pacific nation of Tuvalu, which may sue the developed world that creates most greenhouse gas pollution. The David-and-Goliath lawsuit would be hard to win, but it could raise the profile of island flooding.

Even small sea rises could have enormous effects, Trenberth points out, since a storm surge at high tide can produce severe damage. The 1998 El Nino in California, he says, cause “a tremendous amount of erosion, houses toppling into ocean. It was a real indicator of the type of thing you would expect to see with rising sea level.”

In general, Trenberth says, sea level rise “is not a gradual process. It’s not that you wait and gradually the sea trickles up and covers your toes. … it happens in episodic fashion, for the most part you may be fine, but in a tropical storm, a whole island can be inundated. …Some of these nations could disappear overnight.”

The unfrozen continent

Because so much water is stored in Antarctica, concern over rising sea levels inevitably causes a glance to the south, and the news has been ominous. Last March, a section of ice as big as Rhode Island broke away and disintegrated, stunning glaciologists.

Estimates for sea-level rise show the effects of various scenarios for economic and technological development. Courtesy IPCC Climate Change 2001, Technical Summary, Working Group I, 2001, p. 74.

By itself, this breakup will not raise sea level, since floating ice does not raise sea level when it melts. However, ice surrounding the continent helps restrain ice in the interior, which may flow more quickly toward the ocean.

A big melting in Antarctica could cause a huge rise in sea level, but since other parts of the continent are cooling, the overall message is confusing.

Greenland’s white cap

We’ve just gotten disturbing evidence from Greenland. About 10 percent of Earth’s fresh water is locked in a giant icecap there. This June, NASA scientists reported that the icecap is rapidly melting.

Because ice conducts little heat, experts had expected the icecap to respond slowly to warming. But meltwater from the surface is seeping through cracks and lubricating the rock below.

“Previous models suggested that it might take hundreds, even thousands of years for changes in an ice sheet’s surface to be felt at the base,” NASA glaciologist H. Jay Zwally told the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. “This shows that summer melting can accelerate the ice flow in a matter of weeks”

 

Important Question

1. Only in America……can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance.
2. Only in America……are there handicap parking places in front of a skating rink.
3. Only in America……do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.
4. Only in America……do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke.
5. Only in America……do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.
6. Only in America……do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.
7. Only in America……do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won’t miss a call from someone we didn’t want to talk to in the first place.
8. Only in America……do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.
9. Only in America……do we use the word ‘politics’ to describe the process so well: ‘Poli’ in Latin meaning ‘many’ and ‘tics’ meaning ‘bloodsucking creatures’.
10. Only in America……do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.

 

EVER WONDER …….

Why the sun lightens our hair, but darkens our skin?

Why women can’t put on mascara with their mouth closed?

Why don’t you ever see the headline “Psychic Wins Lottery”?

Why is “abbreviated” such a long word?

Why is it that doctors call what they do “practice”?

Why is it that to stop Windows 98, you have to click on “Start”?

Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor, and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?

Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?

Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?

Why isn’t there mouse-flavored cat food?

When dog food is new and improved tasting, who tests it?

Why didn’t Noah swat those 2 mosquitoes?

Why do they sterilize the needle for lethal injections?

You know that indestructible black box that is used on airplanes? Why don’t they make the whole plane out of that stuff?!

Why don’t sheep shrink when it rains?

Why are they called apartments when they are all stuck together?

If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?

If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the terminal?

 

Things You Should’ve Learned By Middle Age

1. If you’re too open-minded; your brains will fall out.
2. Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
3. Going to church makes you a Christian, like standing in a garage makes you a mechanic.
4. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
5. If you must choose between two evils; pick the one you’ve never tried before.
6. The best way to do housework is to sweep the room with a glance.
7. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
8. It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
9. For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
10. If you look like your passport picture; you probably need the trip.
11. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
12. A conscience is what hurts when all of your other parts feel good.
13. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.
14. Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.
15. No man has ever been shot while doing the dishes.
16. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.
17. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.
18. Opportunities always look bigger going away than coming towards you.
19. Junk is something you’ve kept for years only to throw away three weeks before you need it.
20. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.
21. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

 

Examples of typical email frauds

Example No 1

From : <information_vital@virgilio.it>

Reply-To : <information_vital@virgilio.it>

Sent : Tuesday, May 2, 2006 7:33 AM

Subject : Ticket No: 007802199001

Ticket No: 007802199001

RE: WINNING FINAL NOTIFICATION

LOTTO NL

INTERNATIONAL PRIZE AWARD DEPT.

Sir/Madam,

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

We happily announce to you the draw (#360) of the LOTTO NL INTERNATIONAL LOTTERY PROGRAMM, held on monday 1st of march 2006. It is yet to be unclaimed and you are getting the final NOTIFICATION as regards this.Your e-mail address attached to ticket number: 363775668993 7659 with Serial number 4571/06drew the lucky numbers:4-8-16-32-42-52(bonus no.50), which subsequently won you the lottery in the 3rd category i.e match 5 plus bonus.

You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of 2.450,000 (Two million four hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling) in cash credited to file KTU/7034818304/06. This is from a total cash prize of 10,000,000 shared amongst the (5) lucky winners in this category i.e. Match 5 plus bonus. All participants for the online version were selected randomly from World Wide Web sites through computer draw system and extracted from over 100,000 unions, associations, and corporate bodies that are listed online. This  promotion takes place weekly.Please note that your lucky winning number falls within our European booklet representative office in Europe as indicated in your play coupon. In view of this, your 2.450,000 (Two million four hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling) will be released to you by any of oupayment offices in Europe.

Our European agent will immediately commence the process to facilitate the release of your funds as soon as you contact her. For security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning information confidential till your claim is processed and your money remitted to you in whatever manner you deem fit to claim your prize.

This is part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program.

Please be warned.To file for your claim, please contact our fiduciary agent:

Mr. Wim Molly

Tel:+31-616-557-921

Fax: ++31-847-136-657

Email:

dgclaimoffice1@netscape.net

1. FULL NAMES:_______________________________________________________

2.NATIONALITY:_______________________________________________________

3. AGE________________________________________
4. SEX:_________________________
5. MARITAL STATUS:_____________________________________

6.CONTACT ADDRESS:_____________________________________________

7.TELEPHONE NUMBER:___________________

8.OCCUPATION:_________________________________

9.BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF COMPANY/INDIVIDUAL:_______________________________________

10.WINNING E-MAIL ADDRESS:________________________________

11.WINNING NUMBER:_________________________________________

12TOTAL AMOUNT WON:_________________________________________

 

Endeavour to email/fax him your full names, winning numbers, email address, telephone and fax numbers immediately.

 

Congratulations from me and members of staff of LOTTO NL LOTTERY.

Yours faithfully,

Mary Evens

Online coordinator for

LOTTO NL LOTTERY

Sweepstakes International Program.

 

EXAMPLE No. 2

From: Ernest Kemp <gvva@boskma.nl>

To: <brianharring@yahoo.com>

Subject: practical

Sent: Friday, April 28, 2006 10:11 PM

News was released.

Cyberhand Technologies International Starts Construction on Sound Activated Anti-Personnel

Fighting Robot Prototype. Go to yahoo financial and read it now…

Cyberhand Technologies International, Inc

CYHD,

Michael Burke, CEO of Cyberhand Technologies said, “Bexcause of the potential collateral damage caused by some of today’s weapons and missiles in enemy urban environments, we believe that our products will reduce the chances of injuring or killing innocent people in surrounding areas in which we strike.”

About Cyberhand Technologies International Inc.

Cyberhand Technologies International Inc. focuses on Aerospace Weapons Systems that provide the world’s fastest controllers and most accurate target acquisition, generating the best field results, as well as innovative wireless ergonomic products  for private and military purposes.

Do your research now and start watching  CYHD like a hawk!

Information within this report contains forward looking statements within the meaning of Section 27a of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21b of the SEC Act of 1934.

Statements that involve discussions with projections of future events are not statements of historical fact and may be forward looking statements. Don’t rely on them to make a decision.

The Company is not a reporting company registered under the Exchange Act of 1934. We have received two million free trading shares and twenty five thousand dollars c ash from a third party not an officer, director or affiliate shareholder. We intend to sell our shares now which could cause the shares to go down, resulting in losses for you.. This company has an accumulated deficit, nominal cash and no revenues in its most recent quarter with the float current increasing. The company may need financing to continue as a going concern. A failure to finance could cause the company to go out of business.

Read the Company’s Annual Report and Information Statement before you invest. This report shall not be construed as any kind of investment advise or solicitation.

You can lose all your money by investing in this stock.