Cold Shocks

Per an ongoing literary project, we submit the following historical correspondences:

The current Holocene Interglacial began c. 14,400 YBP (years-before-present), i.e. about BC 12,400. This coincided with the close approach --orbital perihelion-- of the Sun's obscure brown-dwarf binary companion, a Jupiter-size object in eccentric 3,600-year orbit perpendicular to the solar system's plane-of-the-ecliptic. This "Dark Destroyer," so called by ancient Sumer's "portent astronomers," next intercepted the solar system c. 10,800 YBP (BC 8800). In this case, rather than ending an Ice Age (probably by cooling oceans to reduce evaporation inland) the Destroyer precipitated a 1,500-year post-glacial "cold shock," the Younger Dryas-- not a climatic but an extra-solar event due to comet/meteor impacts per disruptions of the solar system's enveloping Oort Cloud.

From 10,800 YBP, this Younger Dryas reset the Holocene's interglacial clock to zero as of 12,300 YBP (BC 10,300). Given an interglacial period's median 12,250-year duration [min. 11,500 years plus max. 13,000 years, i.e. total 24,500 divided by two], the Holocene epoch was accordingly due to end about AD 1950 [12,250-12,300 = -50 years from AD 2000 (present)].

Combining astronomical cycles with climatological patterns, we find that AD 1950 correlates with the Destroyer's projected re-appearance c. AD 2000 [four 3,600-year cycles equal 14,400 YBP, so that the present represents a turning-point]. This implies that a cyclical termination of the Holocene Interglacial from c. AD 1950, i.e. impending re-glaciation, may be amplified by astronomical disruptions involving cloud-cover, geophysical events, impacts, as in BC 8800 (10,800 YBP).

Should this occur, an abrupt glacial "cold shock" could persist for nigh 100,000 years. No-one then or now will have anything to say about it.

Climate Cultists

On January 14, 2009 (Wednesday), Professor Roger Pielke, Jr. of MIT awarded his "bone-headed move-of-the-year" trophy to GISS/NASA's notorious climate cultist Dr. James E. Hansen of Columbia University. As cited in ICECAP, after consecutively forecasting that 2006, 2007, 2008 would register as "warmest years on record," Dr. Hansen has now --despite mountainous evidence-- plumped for the same ludicrous scenario in 2009: "It seems ... that a new global temperature record will be set ... despite the moderate negative effect of reduced solar irradiance."

Hansen's evidence? Absent any valid long- or short-term data whatsoever, Team GISS [for Goddard Institute of Space Science] has apparently begun "manually adjusting" satellite reports without acknowledgement or scientific rationale. This means that Dr. James E. Hansen et al. are cheats, engaging in purposeful fraud to promote alarmist scenarios for partisan political gain (grant monies). By no coincidence, fellow warmists at the American Meteorological Society (AMS) have just bestowed on Hansen their Rossby Research Medal "for outstanding contributions to climate modeling ... in the public arena."

As Pielke and other disenchanted colleagues note, such recognition grimly subverts all aspects of the scientific enterprise. Hansen's spurious Rossby Medal not only "encourages manipulating data to keep the warmist hoax alive ... (with its) grant gravy-train" but marks "another sad ... embarrassment for the once-great (American Meteorological Ssociety), which has lost its way."

Welcome to Yellowstone

Over last Christmas weekend --December 27 - 28, 2008-- more than 250 minor earthquakes "rattled the Yellowstone super-volcano" in central Utah. Though such "seismic swarms" are not uncommon, geophysicists at the University of Utah report that quakes up to 3.9 on the (logarithmic) Richter Scale may portend escalating tectonic activity over wider areas.

"Quakes this powerful, of this extent, bear watching," said Prof. Roger Smith of the Yellowstone Seismic Network, which monitors volcanic activity throughout the State. "Let's hope this isn't a precursor of a much larger-scale eruption... but we haven't logged such frequent, high-level tremblors in many years."

In passing, Professor Smith noted that Yellowstone's last major eruption some 640,000 years ago coincided with a cyclical reversal of Earth's geomagnetic field. For whatever reason, such periodic occurrences tend to engender cataclysmic volcanism, extremely lethal though short-lived. Should Utah's underlying magmatic plume blast skyward, the entire western United States would be at risk.

By the statistical Principle of Mediocrity, extremes at any given time will be unlikely. But in cyclical context, recurrent catastrophes become all too predictable. Regular as Old Faithful, Yellowstone's super-volcano apparently erupts on average every 640,000 years. Since the mid-1960s, geophysicists have known by deep-ocean plate-tectonics that regular magnetic reversals follow this same pattern. All anyone can do is watch, and vacate premises in haste at any sign of imminent disaster.

As we recite elsewhere, numerous low-key, unrelated indicators may possibly be reinforcing each other preparatory to upheavals not seen since Indonesia's Toba Eruption reduced humanity to about 1,000 breeding pairs in Africa some 72,000 years ago. Can't Earth just hold fire 'til (say) 2075 - 2100, when we'll have moved off-planet so that Ice Time, meteor strikes, massive Yellowstone convulsions need not return us permanently to Old Stone Age venues?

Hills and Hills

Confederate General A.P. Hill, 1825 - 1865, is not to be confused with railroad magnate James J. Hill, 1838 - 1916. A West Pointer in ante bellum days (1847), Ambrose Powell Hill rose from the ranks to command the Confederacy's famous Light Division. "Resplendent in red battle-shirt," he led the charge which saved Lee's Army of Northern Virginia from defeat at Sharpsburg. Though illness prevented Hill from attaining full potential, he battled to the end, killed a week before Appomattox while commanding one-third of Lee's remaining forces. Dying, both Lee and Stonewall Jackson called on A.P. Hill.

Canadian born James J. Hill proved a visionary of another sort. Accidental loss of an eye precluded a career in medicine, plus active service in the Civil War. But in his early twenties, based in St. Paul, Minnesota, Hill not only organized the First Minnesota Volunteers but applied himself as agent for the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad to learn every aspect of military commissariats from taking bids to warehousing. Ambitious and knowledgeable by war's end, Hill first partnered with Hudson Bay Company officials, then used financial contacts at the Bank of Montreal to acquire the St. Paul & Pacific at a steep discount in the Panic of 1873. Pressing hard, Hill laid a mile of track each day to win a $2-million Minnesota Land Grant for expanding railway links on schedule. Two virgin-harvest seasons followed, enabling him to promote mass-immigration from Norway and Sweden with the promise of fertile farmland at $2.50 - $5.00 per acre along his right-of-way.

From surveying to materials and construction, James J. Hill personally oversaw every aspect of his operations. By 1882 he had advised the Canadian Pacific Railroad on routes to the Northwest, and dealt with J.P. Morgan to tap Wall Street capital. Pushing hard as ever, Hill's Great Northern Railway mobilized 8,000 workers and 3,300 four-horse teams to reach Puget Sound in 1893. Despite legal difficulties, another panic that same year enabled him to absorb competitors, always pricing goods and services near cost. Together, he and Morgan fended off raids by E.J. Harriman, imported 6,000,000 Northern European immigrants in just two years, and began exporting American cotton products from Seattle to China and Japan.

Still battling Harriman, Hill retired to St. Paul during the Panic of 1907, dying in 1916 at age 79. Every train and steamship of his Great Northern empire halted for five minutes; as his New York Times obituary stated, "Greatness became him, and was a condition of his errand here."