One of the authors that has had the most profound affects on my spiritual beliefs is Michael Newton and his work on life between lives. Here is a 1996 interview with him that is just amazing:
Monday, August 23, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
MYSTERIES ABOUND IN WTC SHIP REMAINS
MYSTERIES ABOUND IN WTC SHIP REMAINS
Analysis by James Williams
Thu Aug 12, 2010 11:12 AM ET
This is an honest-to-goodness historical mystery and we're going to follow it until the end.
We’ll likely pay the lab a visit -- with video camera in tow -- once the heavy lifting gets underway. In the meantime, I’ll report back with any further developments as Patricia and her crew try to learn the back story of this ship. I’ll also be reaching out to *you* though various social media means to see if we can answer any questions you might have directly.
And while dead men may tell no tales, here's just a taste of what long-forgotten ship timbers can tell us:
For more on the timbers' arrival, here's a good recounting a la washingtonpost.com.
Analysis by James Williams
Thu Aug 12, 2010 11:12 AM ET
On July 12 the remains of an 18th-century ship were found buried 20 feet below street level at the site of the World Trade Center in New York City. The question is -- how did they get there?
Nobody knows for sure -- yet. And even though there are timbers from the front half of the ship, nobody can identify what kind of ship it is because, among other mysteries, it’s not a design we’ve seen before.
Yesterday I spoke with Patricia Samford, Director of the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab, where the wood is now being prepared for scientific study. She said at the moment they’re cleaning and prepping the ship's partial skeleton (partial, because the back half of the ship is missing) ahead of a slew of scientific analysis.
They're no stranger to this kind of work. They've worked with the USS Monitor, the CSS Alabama, Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge and they'll probably help with anything found in the USS Scorpion dig site in Maryland's Patuxent River.
And while dead men may tell no tales, here's just a taste of what long-forgotten ship timbers can tell us:
- Where the Trees Came From: Since the wood itself can be identified by geography, they can tell where in the U.S. the wood was grown.
- When The Tree Was Cut Down: Once they know where the wood came from, they can compare tree rings from other wood samples from that area and identify what year the tree was cut down.
- Where The Ship Sailed: Specific species of woodworms live in specific areas of the ocean. Ships can pick them up like passport stamps as they enter various ports. By looking at what types of woodworms left traces in the ship timbers, one can figure out which ports the ship visited long ago.
For more on the timbers' arrival, here's a good recounting a la washingtonpost.com.
Photos: Douglas Mackey
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Weird Weather
It doesn't seem that long ago that everyone was claiming that global warming was disproved because of the huge snow storms that the US had. Although many scientists since then have pointed out that those snow storms were actually caused by global warming because there is more moisture in the atmosphere; so rather than disprove, the snowstorms actually put an exclamation mark on global warming...or climate change.
Now it is a few short months since those claims of global warming being a hoax, and the US is in the grip of some extremely hot weather. Not a peep from the naysayers now. But that is not the type of stuff that I interesting. If you follow the science, you know that we will have hot weather. You know that we will have large snowstorms.
But then there are stories about things that are truly extreme. First is a story about snow in Brazil. If you look at the picture in the story you'll see palm trees line the snow covered street. Second is a story about wild fires in Moscow because it is so hot over there. And finally, the story of an ice sheet that broke off in Greenland that is the size of Manhattan. These stories, my friends, these stories are the canaries in the coal mine.
The biggest Arctic “ice island” to form in nearly 50 years — a 250-square-kilometre behemoth described as four times the size of Manhattan — has been discovered after a Canadian scientist scanning satellite images of northwest Greenland spotted a giant break in the famed Petermann Glacier.
About one-quarter of Petermann’s 70-kilometre-long floating ice shelf has split from the main glacier and is now drifting in a fiord toward open water. It will eventually track a route south, toward Canadian shipping lanes along the Baffin Island and Newfoundland coasts, as do most icebergs calved from Greenland’s shoreline glaciers — including the one that struck and sank the Titanic in 1912.
Environment Canada’s Trudy Wohlleben, a researcher with the Canadian Ice Service, reported the birth of the colossal ice island on Thursday to a U.S. expert conducting a study on ice movement in Nares Strait — the narrow sea passage between Greenland and Canada’s Ellesmere Island.
University of Delaware researcher Andreas Muenchow confirmed and announced the discovery on Friday, describing the ice island’s thickness of more than 200 metres in some places as “half the height of the Empire State Building.”
The new ice island dwarfs a 29-square-kilometre one that broke away from the Petermann Glacier in 2008 and forced the Canadian Ice Service to closely monitor its movement last summer near shipping routes at the south end of Baffin Island.
The threat subsided after the ice island broke into smaller pieces that drifted throughout the waters of the Eastern Canadian Arctic.
At the time, however, experts had detected a large crack in the Petermann Glacier that they suspected might produce a much, much bigger ice island — a prediction now proven correct.
“The fresh water stored in this ice island could keep the Delaware or Hudson rivers flowing for more than two years,” Muenchow said in a statement. “It could also keep all U.S. public tap water flowing for 120 days.”
To give some Canadian comparisons, the free-floating block of ice is considerably larger than B.C.’s Saltspring Island, about half as big as the Island of Montreal and almost the exact size of Newfoundland’s Fogo Island.
“In Nares Strait, the ice island will encounter real islands that are all much smaller in size,” Muenchow stated. “The newly-born ice island may become land-fast, block the channel, or it may break into smaller pieces as it is propelled south by the prevailing ocean currents. From there, it will likely follow along the coasts of Baffin Island and Labrador, to reach the Atlantic within the next two years.”
Muenchow said the last time the Arctic produced an ice island larger than this one was in 1962, when a 400-sq.-km piece of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf broke away from north coast of Ellesmere Island.
Earlier this summer, the Jakobshavn Glacier — its ocean outlet located near the town of Ilulissat on Greenland’s west coast —lost a seven-square-kilometre section of its leading edge.
The collapse of several Arctic ice shelves in recent years has kept the Canadian Ice Service on alert for possible threats to ships and oil exploration activity.
In 2005, a 66-square-kilometre chunk of the Ayles Ice Shelf on Ellesmere Island’s northern coast broke free and began drifting south. Federal scientists kept a close watch on the resulting Ayles Ice Island as it tracked a worrisome route toward the Beaufort Sea, a relatively busy region in summer for shipping and oil-and-gas exploration.
But in August 2007, the five-by-15-kilometre slab turned down a dead-end channel between Meighen and Axel Heiberg islands, where it was expected to slowly break up over years and become an anonymous part of the Arctic pack ice.
In 2008, the Ellesmere Island ice shelves experienced unprecedented losses totalling about 200 square kilometres, sending more huge ice chunks drifting through Canada’s Arctic waters.
One of the country’s five remaining Arctic ice shelves — the 4,500-year-old, 50-square-kilometre Markham Ice Shelf — broke completely away from Ellesmere and drifted into the Arctic Ocean, a particularly dramatic sign of how rising temperatures and retreating sea ice were creating what one top scientist called “irreversible” changes to the country’s polar frontier.
Now it is a few short months since those claims of global warming being a hoax, and the US is in the grip of some extremely hot weather. Not a peep from the naysayers now. But that is not the type of stuff that I interesting. If you follow the science, you know that we will have hot weather. You know that we will have large snowstorms.
But then there are stories about things that are truly extreme. First is a story about snow in Brazil. If you look at the picture in the story you'll see palm trees line the snow covered street. Second is a story about wild fires in Moscow because it is so hot over there. And finally, the story of an ice sheet that broke off in Greenland that is the size of Manhattan. These stories, my friends, these stories are the canaries in the coal mine.
Snow in Brazil, below zero Celsius in the River Plate and tropical fish frozen
For a second day running it snowed Wednesday in Southern Brazil and in twelve of Argentina’s 24 provinces including parts of Buenos Aires as a consequence of the polar front covering most of the continent’s southern cone with zero and below zero temperatures.
Light snow storms in Brazil were concentrated in areas of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. O Globo network aired snow flakes falling in early morning, cars covered with a thin white coating and some roads dangerously slippery because of ice.
In Argentina the phenomenon extended to Northern provinces, geographically sub-tropical while in the Patagonia and along the Andes snow reached over a metre deep, isolating villages and causing yet undisclosed losses to crops and livestock.
The extreme cold weather is expected to peak Thursday dawn with below zero temperatures and even lower with the wind chill factor.
After a harsh weekend, Argentina’s National Weather Forecast Service announced the cold weather is expected to stay until Thursday although it could again reach a freezing peak over the coming week-end.
 |
| Brazilians associated to sun and beaches enjoy the unexpected snow |
On Wednesday a northbound cold front hit the Patagonia and central Argentine regions. In Patagonia, minimum temperatures went as low as minus 10 Celsius with even lower numbers in snowy regions, while maximum temps were in the range of zero to 7 Celsius.
Because of the freezing temperatures power consumption set new records both in Argentina and Uruguay. According to Argentina’s Planning ministry, electricity demand reached 20.669 MW at 20:15 hours when most Argentine families are home back from work. Although residential demand was satisfied, hundreds of industries suffered an anticipated blackout.
In Uruguay the power record consumption was reached on Wednesday at 20:45. The lowest temperatures were registered in the north and west of the country: minus 7 Celsius.
In related news, reports from landlocked Bolivia indicate that to the east of the country in tropical areas temperatures plummeted to zero causing “millions of dead fish” in rivers that normally flow in an environment of 20 Celsius.
Santa Cruz governor Ruben Costas said the province was suffering a “major environmental catastrophe” and warned the population not to make use of water from rivers (because of the dead fauna and flora) promising to send drinking water in municipal trucks.
“The last time something of this magnitude happened was 47 years ago”, said governor Costas.
 |
| acquired August 10, 2010 |
Russia’s wildfires continued to rage on August 9, 2010, producing thick smoke that blanketed much of western Russia. The fire activity and the smoke seemed to be concentrated in two areas, divided by the Volga River. In this true-color image, the most intense fires in the western cluster appear to be south and east of Moscow. Distinct plumes of smoke can be seen rising from several fires immediately southeast of the capital. These fires and others in the region envelop the city in choking smoke, completely obscuring the city from view. Moscow’s approximate location is marked in the image.
East of the Volga River, the fires are concentrated in and near the Ural Mountains. These fires are also visible by the plumes of smoke they are emitting.
On the morning of August 9, 557 wildfires burned in Russia, reported BBC News. Smoke from the fires releases carbon monoxide, fine particles, and ozone-producing chemicals into the atmosphere. Carbon monoxide levels were twice the accepted level in Moscow on August 9, said BBC News.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’sTerra satellite captured this image on August 9, 2010. The image is a composite of three separate satellite overpasses. A diagonal line marks the boundary between each successive overpass. The large image is the highest-resolution version of the image, but the image is available inadditional resolutions from the MODIS Rapid Response Team.
References
- BBC News. Death rate doubles in Moscow as heatwave continues. Accessed August 9, 2010.
- CNN. (2010, August 9). Heat and smog double death rate in Moscow. Accessed August 9, 2010.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Holli Riebeek.
- Instrument:
- Terra - MODIS
 |
A lake of meltwater on the surface of the Petermann Glacier in this July 6, 2009 handout photo.Photograph by: Greenpeace, Reuters |
The biggest Arctic “ice island” to form in nearly 50 years — a 250-square-kilometre behemoth described as four times the size of Manhattan — has been discovered after a Canadian scientist scanning satellite images of northwest Greenland spotted a giant break in the famed Petermann Glacier.
About one-quarter of Petermann’s 70-kilometre-long floating ice shelf has split from the main glacier and is now drifting in a fiord toward open water. It will eventually track a route south, toward Canadian shipping lanes along the Baffin Island and Newfoundland coasts, as do most icebergs calved from Greenland’s shoreline glaciers — including the one that struck and sank the Titanic in 1912.
Environment Canada’s Trudy Wohlleben, a researcher with the Canadian Ice Service, reported the birth of the colossal ice island on Thursday to a U.S. expert conducting a study on ice movement in Nares Strait — the narrow sea passage between Greenland and Canada’s Ellesmere Island.
University of Delaware researcher Andreas Muenchow confirmed and announced the discovery on Friday, describing the ice island’s thickness of more than 200 metres in some places as “half the height of the Empire State Building.”
The new ice island dwarfs a 29-square-kilometre one that broke away from the Petermann Glacier in 2008 and forced the Canadian Ice Service to closely monitor its movement last summer near shipping routes at the south end of Baffin Island.
The threat subsided after the ice island broke into smaller pieces that drifted throughout the waters of the Eastern Canadian Arctic.
At the time, however, experts had detected a large crack in the Petermann Glacier that they suspected might produce a much, much bigger ice island — a prediction now proven correct.
“The fresh water stored in this ice island could keep the Delaware or Hudson rivers flowing for more than two years,” Muenchow said in a statement. “It could also keep all U.S. public tap water flowing for 120 days.”
To give some Canadian comparisons, the free-floating block of ice is considerably larger than B.C.’s Saltspring Island, about half as big as the Island of Montreal and almost the exact size of Newfoundland’s Fogo Island.
“In Nares Strait, the ice island will encounter real islands that are all much smaller in size,” Muenchow stated. “The newly-born ice island may become land-fast, block the channel, or it may break into smaller pieces as it is propelled south by the prevailing ocean currents. From there, it will likely follow along the coasts of Baffin Island and Labrador, to reach the Atlantic within the next two years.”
Muenchow said the last time the Arctic produced an ice island larger than this one was in 1962, when a 400-sq.-km piece of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf broke away from north coast of Ellesmere Island.
Earlier this summer, the Jakobshavn Glacier — its ocean outlet located near the town of Ilulissat on Greenland’s west coast —lost a seven-square-kilometre section of its leading edge.
The collapse of several Arctic ice shelves in recent years has kept the Canadian Ice Service on alert for possible threats to ships and oil exploration activity.
In 2005, a 66-square-kilometre chunk of the Ayles Ice Shelf on Ellesmere Island’s northern coast broke free and began drifting south. Federal scientists kept a close watch on the resulting Ayles Ice Island as it tracked a worrisome route toward the Beaufort Sea, a relatively busy region in summer for shipping and oil-and-gas exploration.
But in August 2007, the five-by-15-kilometre slab turned down a dead-end channel between Meighen and Axel Heiberg islands, where it was expected to slowly break up over years and become an anonymous part of the Arctic pack ice.
In 2008, the Ellesmere Island ice shelves experienced unprecedented losses totalling about 200 square kilometres, sending more huge ice chunks drifting through Canada’s Arctic waters.
One of the country’s five remaining Arctic ice shelves — the 4,500-year-old, 50-square-kilometre Markham Ice Shelf — broke completely away from Ellesmere and drifted into the Arctic Ocean, a particularly dramatic sign of how rising temperatures and retreating sea ice were creating what one top scientist called “irreversible” changes to the country’s polar frontier.
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