January 2002 Warmest On Record For Whole World

January 2002 had the warmest global temperatures in modern records. Satellite photograph courtesy NASA.
January 2002 had the warmest global temperatures in modern records. Satellite photograph courtesy NASA.


February 13, 2002  Boulder, Colorado - Over the past three weeks, there have been several sobering headlines about the impact of global warming:

 

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United States Nuclear Power Plant Security – Is It Effective Against Terrorists?

"Government officials said intelligence suggested that al-Qaeda
members had been considering attacking U. S. nuclear power plants
with car or truck bombs, boats or aircraft."

- Seth Borenstein, The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 31, 2002

103 nuclear power plants in the states colored purple above supply about twenty percent of the electricity used in the United States. Some states have only one reactor. Others such as Pennsylvania have nine reactors, including Three Mile Island which is near the Harrisburg International Airport. Graphic © 2001 by the Nuclear Energy Institute.
103 nuclear power plants in the states colored purple above supply about twenty percent of the electricity used in the United States. Some states have only one reactor. Others such as Pennsylvania have nine reactors, including Three Mile Island which is near the Harrisburg International Airport. Graphic © 2001 by the Nuclear Energy Institute.

February 4, 2002  Middletown, Pennsylvania - President George Bush said in his January 29, 2002 State of the Union speech that "diagrams of American nuclear power plants" were found among terrorist manuals and other artifacts left by terrorists in Afghanistan. Earlier on January 16, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had issued an alert that a terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant could be imminent.

 

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Latest Satellite Data Shows Surprisingly Thicker Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica

Ross Ice Shelf in lower left quadrant of Antarctica map has been the source of Connecticut-sized icebergs dropping into the sea in recent years.
Ross Ice Shelf in lower left quadrant of Antarctica map has been the source of Connecticut-sized icebergs dropping into the sea in recent years.

January 30, 2002 Pasadena, California - The huge Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica is bigger than Texas and two-thirds of a mile thick. It has been the source of Rhode Island-sized icebergs in recent years in what was thought to be a continual slow melting in slippery mud at the bottom where the heavy ice layer pushes against the continental land mass. Since the last Ice Age ended ten thousand years ago, icy "rivers" have moved along that mud base and dumped Connecticut-sized icebergs into the sea in recent years.

 

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Update on 70,000-Year-Old Human Artifacts from Blombos Cave, South Africa

View of Indian Ocean and west of Blombos Cave entrance where yellow arrow points. Photograph courtesy National Science Foundation.
View of Indian Ocean and west of Blombos Cave entrance where yellow arrow points. Photograph courtesy National Science Foundation.
Blombos Cave is 200 miles east of Cape Town, South Africa on a hillside overlooking the Indian Ocean.
Blombos Cave is 200 miles east of Cape Town, South Africa on a hillside overlooking the Indian Ocean.

January 24, 2002 Blombos Cave, South Africa - On December 8, 2001, I first reported about the new archaeological evidence that "modern humans" lived in Blombos Cave, South Africa 70,000 years ago. (See: Earthfiles 12/8/01) This month the journal Science published a report by the lead anthropologist and discoverer, Christopher Henshilwood, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town.

 

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Global Warming Update – Could Increasing Carbon Dioxide Gas Be Transformed Into Limestone?

Industries and motor vehicles over the last century between 1900 and 2000 put 280 billion tons of carbon from carbon dioxide into the earth's atmosphere and oceans. That blanket of CO2 is warming the planet now and is expected to keep getting thicker and warmer throughout the next hundred years. The unpredictable consequence could be rapid global climate change and many plant and animal extinctions.
Industries and motor vehicles over the last century between 1900 and 2000 put 280 billion tons of carbon from carbon dioxide into the earth's atmosphere and oceans. That blanket of CO2 is warming the planet now and is expected to keep getting thicker and warmer throughout the next hundred years. The unpredictable consequence could be rapid global climate change and many plant and animal extinctions.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 18, 2001, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 18, 2001, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.


January 5, 2002 New York City, New York - In a Dreamland radio news report at the end of 2001, I talked with a Columbia University scientist about the risk of rapid global climate change as cars and industries put more and more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. (See Earthfiles 12/22/01.) Industries and motor vehicles over the last century between 1900 and 2000 put 280 billion tons of carbon from carbon dioxide into the earth's atmosphere and oceans. That blanket of CO2 is warming the planet now and is expected to keep getting thicker and warmer throughout the next hundred years. The unpredictable consequence could be rapid global climate change and many plant and animal extinctions.

 

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Lancet Medical Journal Publishes Near-Death Study of Cardiac Arrest Survivors

December 29, 2001 Arnhem, The Netherlands - The December 15th issue of The Lancet medical journal published results of a ten year study, "Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest." In the report, near-death experiences are defined as "the reported memory of all impressions during a special state of consciousness, including specific elements such as out-of-body experience, pleasant feelings and seeing a tunnel, a light, a being of light, deceased relatives, or a life review."

 

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Images from Cuban Deep Water Megalithic Site

Original high resolution sidescan sonar received by the EXPLORAMAR expedition in 2000 directed by Paulina Zelitsky and Paul Weinzweig, Owners, Advanced Digital Communications (ADC) of Victoria, British Columbia and Havana, Cuba. Image © 2000 by ADC and used with permission.
Original high resolution sidescan sonar received by the EXPLORAMAR expedition in 2000 directed by Paulina Zelitsky and Paul Weinzweig, Owners, Advanced Digital Communications (ADC) of Victoria, British Columbia and Havana, Cuba. Image © 2000 by ADC and used with permission.

December 28, 2001  Havana, Cuba - This past May, Reuters News Service carried an international story about the discovery of unusual structures at 2,200 feet below Cuba's western tip. The ocean engineer who found the structures is Paulina Zelitsky who is a partner with her husband, Paul Weinzweig, in a Canadian company called Advanced Digital Communications, or ADC, with offices in both Victoria, British Columbia and Havana, Cuba. Their specialty is deep ocean exploration. Paulina told Reuters that she had high resolution sidescan sonar images of "a huge land plateau with clear images of what appears to be manmade large-size architectural designs partly covered by sand. From above, the shapes resemble pyramids, roads and buildings."

 

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Scientists Warn That Climate and Earth Life Can Change Rapidly

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that despite pre-existing La Nina conditions, global temperatures were above average during 2001. This map shows warmer than average temperatures were widespread across much of the United States and most of Europe. Temperatures in the red areas were 1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1-3 degrees Centigrade) above average global annual temperatures between 1961 and 1990. The only cooler place was Australia where temperatures were between 1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1-3 degrees Centigrade) cooler than average. Map and graphic below courtesy of NOAA.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that despite pre-existing La Nina conditions, global temperatures were above average during 2001. This map shows warmer than average temperatures were widespread across much of the United States and most of Europe. Temperatures in the red areas were 1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1-3 degrees Centigrade) above average global annual temperatures between 1961 and 1990. The only cooler place was Australia where temperatures were between 1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1-3 degrees Centigrade) cooler than average. Map and graphic below courtesy of NOAA.
A shift to persistent global warming since the 1980s.
A shift to persistent global warming since the 1980s.

December 22, 2001  New York, New York - Recently the American Geophysical Union of scientists held its annual meeting in San Francisco. One of the presentations that made international news also appeared in a December National Academy of Sciences report. It warns that global warming, combined with increasing greenhouse gas pollution, could trigger a rapid climate change with unpredictable consequences. Scientists who have been studying the ice cores of Greenland and other regions of the world say the data indicates that climate changes in the past have included one sudden global temperature increase of 18 degrees Fahrenheit in only a decade or less.

 

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Will Our Universe End With Its Final Light Frozen in Time?

Artist David Aguilar's illustration of the universe's final light frozen unchanging in time after Dark Energy expansion exceeds the speed of light, courtesy the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 2001.
Artist David Aguilar's illustration of the universe's final light frozen unchanging in time after Dark Energy expansion exceeds the speed of light, courtesy the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 2001.
In contrast to the increasing dark void surrounding galaxies forecast for the end of the universe, here is the modern day Virgo Cluster of 2000 galaxies that still exerts tremendous gravitational influence on the Milky Way and other neighboring galaxies. Photograph courtesy Hubble Telescope.
In contrast to the increasing dark void surrounding galaxies forecast for the end of the universe, here is the modern day Virgo Cluster of 2000 galaxies that still exerts tremendous gravitational influence on the Milky Way and other neighboring galaxies. Photograph courtesy Hubble Telescope.

December 20, 2001  Cambridge, Massachusetts - In 1917, physicist Albert Einstein wrote his General Theory of Relativity in which the speed of light was considered the ultimate speed for anything in the universe. He thought back then that the universe was stationary, not expanding and not contracting. But since gravity pulls things together, Dr. Einstein needed to explain why ordinary matter in the universe didn't collapse on itself. His answer was a repulsive force that he called the "cosmological constant," a mysterious force that fills the vacuum of space balancing out gravity and keeping matter apart.

 

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