GLOBAL WARMING? NONSENSE!!

[Pindz Profile Website]

Heavy snowfall, strong wind cause trouble on Czech roads, railway

15th October 2009

Prague - A snow calamity at night and a strong wind have caused problems in road and railway traffic in the Czech Republic, with snow and falling trees stopping tens of trains mainly in mountainous areas in north Bohemia and east Moravia.


In east Bohemia, hundreds of households have been left without electricity since the morning.
In the east Moravian area of Vsetin, at the Beskydy mountains foothills, roads are covered with a 30-cm layer of snow and blocked by fallen trees.
Road managers have declared a state of calamity. Firefighters recommend that drivers should better not go to the mountains.
Several roads have had to be closed for transport in Vsetin and other areas.
The snow continues falling.
The state of calamity has also been declared by the CEZ energy utility company in eight districts, mainly in east Bohemia, where heavy snow and wind gusts have caused defects on electric wires.
No injuries have been reported.
The mountain rescue services in Krkonose (Giant Mountains), east Bohemia, and Jeseniky, north Moravia, have declared the second degree of avalanche danger of the five-degree scale.
Ludvik Strejcek, from the Krkonose mountain service, told CTK they do not remember the avalanche danger to be ever declared so early in autumn.
The snow layer in the upper parts of the Krkonose (with the highest mountain Snezka, 1602m) reaches up to 60 cm. The wind reaches the speed over 140 kmph, i.e. hurricane.
The temperature stays a few degrees below zero.

Autor: ČTK http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/zpravy/snehov ... ?id=402846

[Marduk2012 Profile]

Well, fact is we´re currently only in a warm period of an ice-age ....it´s known as an interglacial.

Snowball Earth


The Snowball Earth hypothesis as it was originally proposed suggests that the Earth was entirely covered by ice during parts of the Cryogenian period, from 790 to 630 million years ago. It was developed to explain sedimentary deposits generally regarded as of glacial origin at seemingly tropical latitudes, and other enigmatic features of the Cryogenian geological record. The existence of a Snowball Earth remains controversial, and is contested by various scientists who dispute the geophysical feasibility of a completely frozen ocean, or the geological evidence on which the hypothesis is based. The initiation of a Snowball Earth event would involve some initial cooling mechanism, followed by runaway cooling due to increasing ice accumulation. The initial cooling could be facilitated by an equatorial continental distribution, which would increase the Earth's albedo near the equator, where most solar radiation is incident.

This arrangement would also allow rapid, unchecked weathering of continental rocks, a process that absorbs the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, resulting in further cooling. Alternatively, changes in solar energy output or perturbations of Earth's orbit could act as a trigger. However the initial cooling comes about, resultant ice accumulation would reflect solar energy back to space, further cooling the atmosphere and generating more ice cover. This feedback loop could eventually produce a frozen equator as cold as modern-day Antarctica. To break out of this icy condition either the level of solar energy incident on Earth would have to increase significantly, or huge quantities of greenhouse gases, emitted primarily by volcanic activity, would have to accumulate over millions of years. The eventual melting would perhaps take as little as 1,000 years.


One computer simulation of conditions during the Snowball Earth period.

There is a controversial theory that for millions of years the Earth was entirely smothered in ice, up to one kilometre thick. The temperature hovers around -40ºC everywhere, even in the tropics and the equator. If it did, then virtually nothing could survive this ferocious climate. There are some tantalising geological clues that show this theory may be true but the problem is, the clues and the Snowball Earth theory defy the laws of nature. For over fifty years a group of scientists has been trying to prove this incredible period of Earth history. Struggling against scepticism and disbelief, now finally the many mysteries have been solved and the scientific community is slowly coming around to the extraordinary idea not just of the dramatic freeze, but of an equally dramatic thaw. Scientists across the world are starting to believe that in the past the Earth froze over completely for ten million years... then warmed up rapidly about 600 million years ago. Almost all life was wiped out. But out of the freeze emerged the first complex creatures on Earth. Scientists now believe that the so-called Snowball Earth theory could hold the key to the evolution of complex life on this planet.

The discovery of this theory is a classic scientific detective story. For decades there had been a growing 'X-File' of geological anomalies haunting the scientific community. Telltale signs of past glaciation have been found in places that should have been much too hot - very near the equator. Even during the most severe ice age, scientists believed that the ice only reached as far down as Northern Europe and the middle of the USA. So what could these tropical deposits mean? Back in the 1960s one of the first climate modellers, Mikhail Budyko, stumbled on an ingenious answer. Through some simple mathematical formulae, he calculated that if the polar ice caps had spread past a crucial point, a runaway freezing process would have followed, eventually freezing over the whole of the planet. The idea fascinated scientists, but no one thought his runaway glaciation was anything more than a theoretical result. Surely it had never actually happened on planet Earth?

The idea foundered because according to the model, once the Earth was frozen there was no way out - the Earth would remain frozen forever. The big freeze would wipe out all life; we would not exist today. It seemed patently absurd. But then came a series of insights and inspirations from a geologist in California, Joe Kirschvink, who came up with a brilliant solution - that volcanoes, protruding above the frozen landscape, would have carried on pumping out carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas, even though the world had entered the deep freeze. On Snowball Earth there was no rain to wash this carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Instead it would have built up to higher and higher concentrations - until eventually it sparked off not just global warming but global meltdown.


Shows the pattern of temperature and ice volume changes associated with recent glacials and interglacials

From the baking landscape of Africa to ice-covered Antarctica, Horizon follows the tale of a theory which, if true, would have huge implications. Because scientists now believe this cycle of freezing and frying may have created the unique conditions needed for the evolution of complex life, including our own. Survival of life through frozen periods: A tremendous glaciation would curtail plant life on Earth, thus letting the atmospheric oxygen be drastically depleted and perhaps even disappear, and thus allow non-oxidized iron-rich rocks to form.

However, organisms and ecosystems, as far as it can be determined by the fossil record, do not appear to have undergone the significant change that would be expected by a mass extinction. Even if life were to cling on in all the ecological refuges listed above, the post-Snowball biota would have a noticeably different diversity and composition. This change in diversity and composition has not yet been observed. In fact, the organisms which ought to be most susceptible to climatic variation emerge unscathed from the Snowball Earth.