Thunderbolts.info <../../../aroleforyou.htm> home <../../../home.htm> • picture of the day <../../00current.htm> • thunderblogs <../../../thunderblogs/index.htm> • predictions <../../../predictions.htm> • resources <../../../resources.htm> • forum <../../../thunderbolts_forum.htm> • updates <../../../progress.htm> • contact us • support us picture of the day chronological archive <../../00archive.htm> subject archive <../../00subjectx.htm> Port Phillip Bay from the Challenger Space Shuttle. Credit: Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center The 'Little Ice Age' on Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay May 04, 2011 *Imagine the yachts of Mornington harbour locked up in meters of thick ice.* Picture our pride and joy, maxi yacht /Wild Thing/, with its tackle caked in icicles and skipper Grant Warrington clad in fur skins. Imagine yourself down at the Portsea headlands, looking across at the ice blocking the passage of massive container ships trying to get into the once thriving Melbourne Docklands. 'Impossible!' you say, but research has shown that just such a scenario probably occurred in Victoria and only a few short centuries ago. What happened? The 'Little Ice Age' period is a scientific reconstruction that includes the time from 1300 AD to approximately 1820 AD when there was a dramatic and erratic climate deterioration. The Little Ice Age is classified into four periods: the Wolf, Sporer, Maunder, and Dalton Minima respectively. They were interspaced with relatively stable periods before. These deteriorations were not only cooler and wetter on average but vastly more erratic. Such erratic climate extremes are prime ingredients for famine, plague, and the abandonment of human settlements. They followed a period known as the 'Medieval warm maximum', which lasted from 900 AD to around 1300 AD That time was much hotter than the present. It was a prosperous era that saw the expansion of the Viking tribes into Iceland, Greenland, Vinland (America), and Russia. Grape vines were grown in warm meadows in what are now cold snowy countries, while great herds of sheep and cattle roamed their now inhospitable coastlines. However, the Little Ice Age was a global phenomenon. In the Southern Hemisphere, the expansion of the Polynesian peoples occurred From New Zealand to Hawaii and Tahiti. These bold sea peoples resettled the Pacific. Then, dramatically, the first trough of the Little Ice Age hit with terrible, tragic severity. Erratic minima periods saw the formation of thick sea ice 10 kilometers into the English channel. Major rivers, such as the Thames in London, were frozen for much of the year. Perhaps the River Murray followed suit. The world was hit with particularly severe storms such as the one that wrecked the Spanish Armada in 1588 AD. Glaciers destroyed many prosperous villages. High rainfall and much colder climates were recorded in unstable sequences. Not coincidentally, the opening thrusts of the Little Ice Age saw a period of major plagues and famines that ravaged Europe and the rest of the world. It was a global phenomenon. The causes were probably the underlying forces that drive weather systems, which Plimer argues are largely due to the influence of sunspot minima. Coronal mass ejections are likely to be another related contributor. These periods of high cosmic ray bombardment cause increased positive ion concentration in Earth's atmosphere. Fred Soyka claims this causes bacteria to become highly virulent and invasive. Black Death, Plague, and other relentless infections follow. The plagues and famines attending the Little Ice Age were devastating. Estimates record that the population of the Mediterranean basin was reduced to a third. For instance, the plague of 1347 AD depopulated Europe so badly that it took two hundred and fifty years for it to return to its pre-plague population. A similar scenario might easily have occurred in the Aboriginal population before white settlement. Archaeologist Hiscock reports that around the 1750s there was significant depopulation of tribes in Australia due to epidemics. This may have been encouraged by the last phase of the Little Ice Age, the Dalton minimum. The Viking settlement of Greenland became ice bound and the population perished. In Iceland, the population was greatly reduced and became stunted physiologically. Agriculture and fishing had to be largely abandoned. Did similar shocks occur in Australia? Proof that the Little Ice Age occurred in Australia is forthcoming from many sources. Reconstruction of sea temperatures from Coral cores (Handy et al.), stalagmite isotopic oxygen ratios (Wilson et al.), and Glacial studies in New Zealand (Winkler) confirmed that the Southern hemisphere mimicked the erratic temperature changes of the United States and Europe. So where does this lead us? First, as Professor Ian Plimer concludes, the Little Ice Age was in no way due to the hand of mankind. Of equal importance, many scientists contend that the earlier Medieval and Roman warming's were much hotter than our modern warm period despite lower carbon dioxide levels. How can we possibly contend that our modern warming is due to mankind and his unwelcome industrial pollution? Fumes and effluent may be obnoxious but they do not cause climate change. The issue is aesthetics not a proven greenhouse effect. Is a proposed Carbon tax a childish waste of time? Do we really think we can control the weather? Peter Mungo Jupp For more on the Little Ice Age visit: www.ancientdestructions.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ * New DVD* The Lightning-Scarred Planet Mars A video documentary that could change everything you thought you knew about ancient times and symbols. In this second episode of Symbols of an Alien Sky, David Talbott takes the viewer on an odyssey across the surface of Mars. Exploring feature after feature of the planet, he finds that only electric arcs could produce the observed patterns. The high resolution images reveal massive channels and gouges, great mounds, and crater chains, none finding an explanation in traditional geology, but all matching the scars from electric discharge experiments in the laboratory. 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VIDEO (FREE viewing) /Thunderbolts of the Gods/ PREDICTIONS Follow the stunning success <../../../predictions.htm> of the Electric Universe in predicting the 'surprises' of the space age. MULTIMEDIA Our multimedia page <../../../online_videos.htm> explores many diverse topics, including a few not covered by the Thunderbolts Project. OUR VISITORS: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Authors David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill introduce the reader to an age of planetary instability and earthshaking electrical events in ancient times. If their hypothesis is correct, it could not fail to alter many paths of scientific investigation. More info Professor of engineering Donald Scott systematically unravels the myths of the "Big Bang" cosmology, and he does so without resorting to black holes, dark matter, dark energy, neutron stars, magnetic "reconnection", or any other fictions needed to prop up a failed theory. More info In language designed for scientists and non-scientists alike, authors Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott show that even the greatest surprises of the space age are predictable patterns in an electric universe. More info ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Disclaimer* The opinions expressed in the Thunderbolts Picture Of the Day are those of the authors of the material, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Thunderbolts Project. The linking to material off-site in no way endorses such material and the Thunderbolts Project has no control of nor takes any responsibility for any content on linked sites. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *EXECUTIVE EDITORS:* David Talbott, Wallace Thornhill *MANAGING EDITORS:* Steve Smith *CONTRIBUTING EDITORS:* Mel Acheson, Michael Armstrong, Dwardu Cardona, Ev Cochrane, C.J. 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