----Original Message-----
From: Peiser, Benny [mailto:B.J.Peiser@livjm.ac.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2004 6:03 AM
To: cambridge-conference
Subject: CCNet: ATLANTIS, GLOBAL WARMING AND CONFIRMATION BIAS
CCNet 152/2004 - 23 November 2004
ATLANTIS, GLOBAL WARMING AND CONFIRMATION BIAS
----------------------------------------------
The Atlantis expedition team yesterday brushed off the revelation by a German
physicist that the underwater formations found off Cyprus last week are 100,000
old submarine volcanoes, and not the legendary lost city. American researcher
Robert Sarmast, who is leading the charge to find Atlantis, challenged the
German physicist to go to the particular hill that he has located and to prove
that it's an underwater volcano.
--Jean Christou, Cyprus Mail, 20 November 2004
The big legends wax and wane with the years. The Bermuda Triangle. Ancient
astronauts. The UFO encounters at Roswell. But Feder thinks he's seen an
increase in people's belief in the unbelievable. The professor often starts
new classes with a survey, asking students about their take on certain aspects
of history. Twenty years ago, about 30 percent of his students said that
Atlantis existed. But by 2000, almost half of the surveyed students were
believers. "I think that pattern directly reflects how many documentaries
on [pseudoscientific subjects] show up on television, especially cable TV,"
[Kenneth] Feder says.
--John Jurgensen, The Hartford Courant, 23
November 2004
The Maldives may not be quite the modern-day equivalent of Atlantis, but there
are plenty of people who are convinced that it faces the same watery fate. The
Maldives are Exhibit A in the catalogue of catastrophes which
the global warming doomsters have compiled. The equation is simple: global
warming will melt the Arctic ice cap and raise sea levels, so bye-bye Maldives,
hotly followed by low-lying areas of Bangladesh, the world's coastal cities
and much of the Home Counties. Millions of people die. Yet the Maldives pit
canary is resolutely refusing to keel over.
--Neil Collins, The Daily Telegraph, 22
November 2004
I believe Atlantis is a myth inspired by the partial flooding of a desert island
in the year of Plato's birth. Plato was born in 427BC, some five years into the
Peloponnesian War. In The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides records
that this year was characterised by frequent earthquakes which were accompanied
by huge waves at sea. He writes that a small Athenian island called Atalanta was
struck by such a wave, which swept away fortifications. At Orobiac in Euboea a
more powerful flood drowned many and left parts of the settlement submerged. Far
more probable than any drowned kingdom is that Plato was told of these floods as
a child, and subsequently drew on them as inspiration for his noble fantasy.
--David Jones, The Times, 23 November 2004
(1) ATLANTIS, GLOBAL WARMING AND CONFIRMATION BIAS
The Daily Telegraph, 22 November 2004
(2) THE HOAX DETECTIVE
The Hartford Courant, 23 November 2004
(3) RAISING A LEGEND: ATLANTIS, HAS BEEN FOUND - AGAIN AND AGAIN
TIME, 29 November 2004
(4) DID INUNDATION OF ATALANTA INSPIRE PLATO'S LEGEND OF ATLANTIS?
The Times, 23 November 2004
(5) ATLANTIS TEAM BRUSH OFF SCIENTIFIC SCEPTICS
Cyprus Mail, 20 November 2004
(6) NASA LAUNCHES COSMIC BLAST HUNTER
BBC News Online, 20 November 2004
(7) HOAX FEAR
Charles Cockell <csco@bas.ac.uk>
(8) IVANOV-MELOSH NO VOLCANISM
Hermann Burchard
(9) THE CHICKEN AND EGG OF GLOBAL WARMING
Nick Sault <Nick.Sault@noelleeminggroup.co.nz>
(10) AND FINALLY: MISANTHROPIC RANT OF THE WEEK: "THE VIRUS CALLED
MANKIND"
The Macon Telegraph, 19 November 2004
(11) WHAT IS MISANTHROPY?
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
======
(1) ATLANTIS, GLOBAL WARMING AND CONFIRMATION BIAS
The Daily Telegraph, 22 November 2004
http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/11/22/do2202.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2004/11/22/ixopinion.html
GLOBAL WARMING CAN BE BAD OR GOOD NEWS - IT DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE
By Neil Collins
Robert Sarmast is feeling pretty pleased with himself. He believes he's found
the lost city of Atlantis, that quasi-mythical island civilisation that
disappeared so mysteriously thousands of years ago. He's not the first to
believe he's found it, but he's the first to have done so in the mile-deep water
between Cyprus and Syria.
It's all frightfully exciting. Mr Sarmast, a 38-year-old architect from Los
Angeles, studied Plato, Sumerian scripts and biblical references before sending
deep-water sonar scanners into the area he thought most likely, and Bingo! The
images reveal the presence of "man-made" structures including a wall
and trenches, and evidence of two streams flowing from a hilltop. Few others can
see anything more than a few fuzzy pictures, but perhaps they don't have Mr
Sarmast's imagination to see beneath the mud of centuries.
Well, bully for him, you might say. After all, they sneered at Heinrich
Schliemann and his theory that Troy really existed, rather than being merely a
figment of Homer's imagination. Troy turned out to be real, so why not Atlantis?
Curiously, the curators of museums in Cyprus seem able to curb their enthusiasm.
Perhaps they can remember that Atlantis has been discovered before, off Ireland,
near Cadiz, Cuba, Devon...
In each one of those locations, some enthusiast had convinced himself that there
was strong evidence to support his theory. It's what is known as confirmation
bias. We are instinctively drawn to something we agree with, while we question
something we don't like much more carefully. Mr Sarmast has invested years in
the Atlantis question, and his sonar search is the culmination of the work. It
would be so disappointing to find nothing but mud that his brain would probably
just not accept it. A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest, as
Simon and Garfunkel used to sing.
The Maldives may not be quite the modern-day equivalent of Atlantis, but there
are plenty of people who are convinced that it faces the same watery fate.
Rising 8,000 feet from the ocean depths, the islands just (and only just) break
the surface, by about six feet. A sceptic might wonder why they exist as islands
at all, suspecting that it is more than mere chance that these submarine
mountains don't top out a few feet lower down, but that's another question.
The Maldives are Exhibit A in the catalogue of catastrophes which the global
warming doomsters have compiled. The equation is simple: global warming will
melt the Arctic ice cap and raise sea levels, so bye-bye Maldives, hotly
followed by low-lying areas of Bangladesh, the world's coastal cities and much
of the Home Counties. Millions of people die.
Yet the Maldives pit canary is resolutely refusing to keel over. According to
Nils Axel-Morner of Stockholm University, the sea level in the islands is not
rising, and the locals say it was higher 30 years ago. Longer-run data confirm
this. Detailed records for Tuvalu, another island on the danger list, show no
change in sea levels over the past 25 years. That global warming is happening is
beyond reasonable doubt, but those expecting to see dire consequences because of
rising sea levels have no evidence to support their view.
At least the doomsters have noticed that it makes no difference if the Arctic
melts, since it's already floating. They still find reasons to be miserable,
arguing that because snow reflects sunlight back into space, if it turns to
water, more heat will be absorbed, accelerating global warming. Well, maybe, but
this is little better than conjecture. It may be that more water means more
clouds, which are also strong reflectors of sunlight, leading to global cooling
and a new ice age - 30 years ago, plenty of eminent scientists were worrying
about this very effect.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose work underpins the Kyoto
accord, projects various "scenarios", but the assumptions do not stand
up to rigorous scientific analysis, and the extreme projections, the ones that
make the best headlines, are well into the world of fantasy. Besides, would it
be such bad news if the Arctic ice cap retreats? The answer's obvious if you're
a polar bear, but much less so if you're a commercial fisherman, although almost
as important. Ragnar Arnason, an economist at the University of Iceland, admits
that the net impact is hard to judge, but concludes that it would help the
commercially valuable species such as herring and cod. For the north Atlantic,
at least, "global warming appears to be good news rather than bad".
The net effect of global warming is impossible to calculate, either in magnitude
or direction, which is why America sensibly refuses to sign the Kyoto accord,
and the Russians have done so against the strong recommendation of President
Putin's chief economic adviser. Meeting the demands for lower CO2 emissions is
going to be a material brake on economic growth, and is unlikely to have any
noticeable impact on the world's climate. It is, in short, a waste of money. A
project to bring clean water to everyone in Africa would do far more to increase
the sum of human happiness than anything flowing from Kyoto, and could be done
for a fraction of the price.
Unfortunately, like Mr Sarmast, our politicians have looked at a fuzzy picture
and seen what they want to see in it. Unlike Mr Sarmast with his dreams of
Atlantis, their interpretation of doubtful data will damage us all. Perhaps the
last word should go to Dr Christian Hubscher of the Institute of Geophysics at
Hamburg University, who has studied the Mediterranean sea bed. He confirms that
there are indeed underwater hills and that the sea has been much lower. The
hills, he says, are extinct volcanoes, and the sea was lower six million years
ago. Even Plato didn't claim Atlantis was that old.
Copyright 2004, The Daily Telegraph
=============
(2) THE HOAX DETECTIVE
The Hartford Courant, 23 November 2004
http://www.ctnow.com/news/education/hc-atlantisman.artnov23top,1,3896975.story?coll=hc-big-headlines-breaking
By JOHN JURGENSEN, Courant Staff Writer
Have you heard?
The lost land of Atlantis has been discovered. Again.
In a press conference last week, a U.S. researcher named Robert Sarmast
announced that his six-day expedition had detected evidence of man-made
structures on the Mediterranean seabed off Cyprus. Not only had sonar scanners
picked up the ghostly contours of walls and trenches on a rectangular landmass,
he said, but these features matched the descriptions in the original account of
Atlantis.
In the years before he died in 347 B.C., the Greek philosopher Plato wrote about
Atlantis as a wildly advanced civilization that was wiped out in a flash 9,000
years before his time.
"We cannot yet provide tangible proof in the form of bricks and mortar, as
the artifacts are still buried under several meters of sediment," Sarmast
said in an accompanying press release, "but the circumstantial and other
evidence is now irrefutable."
When he read about this declaration on the BBC's website, Kenneth Feder didn't
even have to get out of his desk chair to dispute it.
An archaeologist who has taught at Central Connecticut State University for more
than 25 years, Feder rejects Sarmast's claim and the countless others that have
come before it with the same simple argument - namely, that Atlantis' only
location was in the imagination of the man who first described it.
But that rationale hasn't prevented Feder from using the myth for his own
purposes.
"My agenda is to use this stuff to teach what we really know about the
past," he says.
Feder, who lives in West Simsbury, focuses most of his own field work along the
Farmington River, unearthing evidence of the Indians and settlers who subsisted
there. But through the years, Feder has nurtured an expertise in historical
hooey on the side.
First published in 1990, his book "Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science
and Pseudoscience in Archaeology" is about to go into its fifth edition.
Last month he lectured on Atlantis at a gathering of skeptics in Italy. And he
holds forth on the watery mystery in a documentary scheduled for broadcast at 10
p.m. Wednesday on the National Geographic Channel program "Naked
Science."
Tucked in his stuffed campus office where the "Donner Party Cookbook"
sits on a shelf below a cartoon of a pre-human Homer Simpson, Feder says he
makes one demand of Atlantis enthusiasts.
"My rule is you can't even use the word Atlantis in a sentence unless you
can tell me you've read Plato."
The legend of the lost continent emerges in dialogues between Socrates and his
students that Plato wrote down. The point that many people miss, Feder says, is
that most of these instructive dialogues were fictional, like conversations
between characters in a play.
"Atlantis is a plot device. Plato has a very specific agenda in his mind,
and he needs Atlantis to prove what he's trying to say," Feder says.
The student Critias tells his teacher the "true" story of the powerful
but morally corrupt land of Atlantis, which goes to war with the weak but noble
Athens. The evil empire gets whipped in battle by its worthier opponent before
eventually getting swallowed in a cataclysm of floods and eruptions,
"That is the Atlantis story told by Plato," Feder says. "It's
`Star Wars' circa 350 B.C."
That's the line that a producer wanted Feder to use in a documentary a few years
ago. But there was a catch. Would Feder be willing to tailor his yarn to make
Atlantis seem real? Or at least leave its existence open-ended?
Feder refused and soon discovered that the "documentary film" was in
fact a glorified advertisement for the 2001 animated Disney movie
"Atlantis: The Lost Empire." Feder says several of his colleagues who
had signed on unwittingly later watched in horror as their drastically edited
words were spliced with cartoon scenes of underwater action.
But maybe that kind of appropriation explains why the legend still lingers.
Severed long ago from the context that a famous Greek gave it, Atlantis becomes
a ghost story, a lost treasure, a mysterious monster.
"For a lot of people, this would just be really cool if it were true,"
Feder says. "It would be really cool if Bigfoot were real. I don't really
know that it is or isn't, but it's cool to tell stories about it at 2 in the
morning."
The big legends wax and wane with the years. The Bermuda Triangle. Ancient
astronauts. The UFO encounters at Roswell. But Feder thinks he's seen an
increase in people's belief in the unbelievable.
The professor often starts new classes with a survey, asking students about
their take on certain aspects of history. Twenty years ago, about 30 percent of
his students said that Atlantis existed. But by 2000, almost half of the
surveyed students were believers.
"I think that pattern directly reflects how many documentaries on
[pseudoscientific subjects] show up on television, especially cable TV,"
Feder says.
Whether the media drives public interest or vice versa, it's obvious that
legends like Atlantis will always hold cultural currency.
Perhaps that's why Robert Sarmast, who gave up a career in architecture to
pursue Atlantis, rushed to announce his findings to the international press
instead of trying to publish them in a peer-reviewed journal, the only way to
secure credibility in the scientific community.
"I'm going to assume that the guy's honest and sincere and he really thinks
there's this connection," Feder says of Sarmast. "But for anyone
looking at it from the outside, there just isn't enough information."
But the mere mention of Atlantis is enough to tingle the curiosity of even the
staunchest skeptics.
"If this guy simply said, `Oh, we found some interesting artifacts and
features off the coast of Cyprus,' you wouldn't be here asking me about
it."
Copyright © 2004 by The Hartford Courant
==========
(3) RAISING A LEGEND: ATLANTIS, HAS BEEN FOUND - AGAIN AND AGAIN
TIME, 29 November 2004
http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901041129-785322,00.html
Sunday, Nov. 21, 2004
The utopian civilization that sank beneath the waves more than 11,000 years ago
(or so the legend goes) has spawned hundreds of books, placing it everywhere
from Bolivia to Sweden to the Sahara. Here are five theories that have surfaced
*this year*:
NOVEMBER
American architect turned mythologist Robert Sarmast announced last week that
Atlantis lies off the southeast coast of Cyprus. Sarmast says sonar scans taken
earlier this month show man-made structures on the seabed, and that the area
matches many of the details of the site given by Plato.
OCTOBER
Maverick Russian astrophysicist Alexander Chechelnitsky asserted that the lost
continent was situated in Alaska's Yukon River valley, and that the change in
the earth's axis - and the repositioning of the North Pole - brought about its
cataclysmic end. Refreshingly undogmatic for an Atlantis hunter, he is quoted as
saying: "I don't have any concrete scientific proof for my theory. But I
believe in it."
JUNE
German physicist Rainer Kühne argued - based on satellite images that he says
show ancient ruins - that Atlantis lies under what are now salt marshes near the
southern Spanish city of Cádiz.
SEPTEMBER
Swedish geographer Ulf Erlingsson argued in a new book that Atlantis is in fact
Ireland, and the legend was inspired by the fate of the Dogger Bank, which sank
into the North Sea in 6,100 B.C.
SPRING 2005
A diving expedition led by French archaeologist Jacques Collina-Girard will try
to prove that Atlantis lies just west of the Straits of Gibraltar. His team
believes Plato exaggerated the city's splendors, and will look for signs of
prehistoric civilization rather than temples of gold.
Copyright 2004, TIME
=============
(4) DID INUNDATION OF ATALANTA INSPIRE PLATO'S LEGEND OF ATLANTIS?
The Times, 23 November 2004
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,59-1370598,00.html
From Mr David Jones
Sir, You report (November 16) yet another "discovery" of Atlantis.
I believe Atlantis is a myth inspired by the partial flooding of a desert
island in the year of Plato's birth.
Plato was born in 427BC, some five years into the Peloponnesian War. In
The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides records that this year was
characterised by frequent earthquakes which were accompanied by huge waves
at sea.
He writes that a small Athenian island called Atalanta was struck by such
a wave, which swept away fortifications. At Orobiac in Euboea a more
powerful flood drowned many and left parts of the settlement submerged.
Far more probable than any drowned kingdom is that Plato was told of these
floods as a child, and subsequently drew on them as inspiration for his
noble fantasy.
Yours faithfully,
DAVID JONES,
Flat 2,
1 Menai Place, E3 2BF.
pookie6718@hotmail.com
November 20.
EDITOR'S NOTE: I have attached the relevant paragraph from Thucydides' The
History Of The Peloponnesian War (Book III, Chapter XI) http://www.blackmask.com/olbooks/peloponnesian.htm#axi
[...] The next summer the Peloponnesians and their allies set out to invade
Attica under the command of Agis, son of Archidamus, and went as far as the
Isthmus, but numerous earthquakes occurring, turned back again without the
invasion taking place. About the same time that these earthquakes were so
common, the sea at Orobiae, in Euboea, retiring from the then line of coast,
returned in a huge wave and invaded a great part of the town, and retreated
leaving some of it still under water; so that what was once land is now sea;
such of the inhabitants perishing as could not run up to the higher ground in
time. A similar inundation also occurred at Atalanta, the island off the
Opuntian Locrian coast, carrying away part of the Athenian fort and wrecking one
of two ships which were drawn up on the beach....
=============
(5) ATLANTIS TEAM BRUSH OFF SCIENTIFIC SCEPTICS
Cyprus Mail, 20 November 2004
http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/main.php?id=17001&cat_id=1
By Jean Christou
THE Atlantis expedition team yesterday brushed off the revelation by a German
physicist that the underwater formations found off Cyprus last week are 100,000
old submarine volcanoes, and not the legendary lost city.
American researcher Robert Sarmast, who is leading the charge to find Atlantis,
challenged the German physicist to go to the particular hill that he has located
and to prove that it's an underwater volcano.
In an interview in Wednesday's edition of the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, physicist Christian Huebscher said he and two Dutch colleagues had
already sailed in a boat to the same area where Sarmast says he has found
Atlantis. They identified the phenomenon as 100,000-year-old volcanoes that
spewed mud, the paper said.
The volcanoes were formed when the mud, which lies under the salt layers,
penetrates through fractures and breaks into the salt layers and bulges the
bottom of the sea floor. Similar volcanoes can be found on the bottom of many
oceans, the newspaper said.
Sarmast told the Cyprus Mail yesterday: "I did see the article. They went
to the area and said they found some underwater volcanoes. There are underwater
volcanoes so this is not a big surprise," Sarmast said. "But what we
have found is a tabletop mountain... I challenge them to prove that this is a
volcano."
Sarmast, the author of Discovery of Atlantis: The Startling Case for the Island
of Cyprus, announced on Sunday that he and his team had located man-made
structures in the area they had earmarked as the site of the underwater lost
city.
He said two walls three kilometres long had been located and that the Acropolis
Hill was 2.5 miles long and half a kilometer wide.
Sarmast bases his theory that Cyprus is Atlantis on Plato's writings Timaeus and
Crititias, saying that almost every clue in Plato's description of the legendary
continent perfectly correlates with scientific data which he has accumulated.
Currently, his team is putting together the sonar side-scans taken during last
week's secret expedition, which should be ready within 10 days. Sarmast said he
hoped to have a second expedition up and running before too long, which will
utilise submarine technology capable of shifting 30-50 metres of sediment a day.
The second expedition will cost in the region of $250,000.
Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2004
===============
(6) NASA LAUNCHES COSMIC BLAST HUNTER
BBC News Online, 20 November 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/4022683.stm
A new space observatory has been launched to hunt down and study the most
powerful explosions seen in the Universe since the Big Bang itself.
The Swift satellite will detect and analyse gamma-ray bursts - very intense but
fleeting flashes of radiation.
Scientists think they may signal the birth of black holes which are created when
giant stars fall in on themselves.
Swift - a combined US, UK and Italian mission - was launched on a Delta rocket
from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The $250m observatory carries three instruments which work together.
The Burst Alert Telescope has been built by the US space agency's (Nasa) Goddard
research centre to detect and locate a gamma-ray burst over a wide portion of
the sky.
The information it provides will be used to swivel Swift directly at the burst
position.
Quick response
It can then study the event with its X-ray Telescope (XRT), built by Penn State
University, the University of Leicester and the Osservatorio Astronomico di
Brera; and its UltraViolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT), made by Penn State and
University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory.
The gamma-ray event itself may last only a few seconds - although the afterglow
that frequently follows a burst continues to emit X-rays, optical light and
radio waves for hours or weeks afterwards.
Scientists have struggled to explain the power of these cataclysmic events. They
pack more energy into their fleeting appearance than our Sun will release in its
entire lifetime.
"The only way we can think of to produce such high luminosities is by
making a black hole and that is our current best estimate of how these gamma-ray
bursts are actually formed," said Professor Keith Mason, from the Mullard
Space Science Laboratory and UK lead investigator for the UVOT on Swift.
Superfast jet
Theory suggests a giant short-lived star can experience a catastrophic collapse
when the nuclear reactions in its core can no longer support its mass.
This type of star implodes, creating a black hole at its centre and sucking in
all the material around it.
"This material spirals down into the black hole very quickly,"
Professor Mason told BBC News. "One of the consequences of this is that a
high velocity jet is formed.
"This jet is travelling at very close to the speed of light, and it punches
its way out through the star, producing shocks which produce gamma-rays, which
produce X-rays, which produce the flash that we see."
Scientists also think the bursts can form when two neutron stars collide.
However, they are keeping their minds open to the possibility that other,
hitherto unimagined, phenomena might cause the giant blasts.
Most are extremely distant, and scientists hope they can be used to peer back in
time to understand the nature of the very first stars to shine in the Universe.
They will be keen to know, too, if the sorts of stars that give rise to
gamma-ray bursts could exist nearby in our galaxy.
No Hope
"If an event were to occur relatively close to our position in our galaxy,
the energy emission is so intense that you could envisage massive doses of
gamma-ray radiation reaching the Earth's surface," said Professor Alan
Wells, from the University of Leicester and UK lead investigator for the XRT.
"That would be very damaging to life as we know it and have a very serious
effect on the preservation of the atmosphere around the Earth," he told the
BBC.
"Even if we survived that, the expectation is that following the gamma-rays
there would be very high-energy particles - cosmic rays - which would arrive
over a period of weeks and even months from which, to be honest, there is no
escape," added Dr Nial Tanviar, from the University of Hertfordshire, who
will use Swift data.
"These particles can penetrate quite deep underwater and into the ground,
and so you can see how life on Earth would be in pretty serious trouble."
Gamma-ray bursts were first observed during the Cold War, when Western
researchers thought that they might be the product of Soviet nuclear tests on
the Moon or on other planets.
Swift will join four other satellites connected to a largely automated system
that relays alerts on gamma-ray bursts in real time to scientists worldwide.
This network will distribute Swift alerts via e-mail to scientists and to
robotic telescopes.
Swift is a Nasa-led mission. "We expect to detect and analyse over 100
gamma-ray bursts a year," said Dr Neil Gehrels, Swift's Principal
Investigator at Goddard.
"Swift will lead to a windfall of discovery on these most powerful
explosions in the Universe."
© BBC MMIV
========= LETTERS ==========
(7) ASTEROID HOAX FEAR
Charles Cockell <csco@bas.ac.uk>
Benny,
I remember a school teacher explaining what would happen to us if a nuclear
weapon was detonated near our parents house. I was fascinated, terrified and
took an interest in science from then on. There's nothing like putting some good
healthy fear of death into young children to get them interested in the real
world. Maybe one of those Manchester children will one day lead a major
planetary defence initiative and save civilisation thanks to that teacher.
Charles
__________________________
Charles Cockell
British Antarctic Survey,
High Cross,
Madingley Road,
Cambridge.
CB3 0ET. UK
Tel : + 44 1223 221560
e-mail : csco@bas.ac.uk
===============
(8) IVANOV-MELOSH NO VOLCANISM
Hermann Burchard
Dear Benny,
as reported in DIE WELT, Ivanov and Melosh have done a new simulation
purporting to prove a 20 km impactor creating a 150 km crater could not
cause volcanism nor fracture the crust. Quite apart from questions, as
how thick a crust was considered (there is evidence that Chicxulub was at
the cratonal margin, as was Yellowstone's hypothetical impact originator
in NW Nevada, where crust is thinner), the WELT headline "Meteorite
Impacts Don't Cause Volcanic Eruptions" is another case of sloppy science
reporting, as the much larger Siva crater and W Sibirian Basin terrestrial
mare are not considered by Ivanov-Melosh.
The Siva crater, BTW, was talked down by Astrobiology Magazine (CCNet this
month) in typical drip-drip-drip fashion: one long negative paragraph
between any two remarks allowed Chatterjee, who with collaborators
Donofrio et al recently reported classical impact signatures underneath
Deccan flood basalts (GSA abstract Nov 2003, CCNet lately), an item not
mentioned by Astrobiology magazine. Incidentally, expert geologists can
recognize shocked quartz but will overlook an ultra-high pressure eclogite
band running the entire length of the Ural Mountains, showing exhumation
and rejuvenation at 250 M yrs BP just when Sibirian volcanism commenced.
Cheers,
Hermann
===============
(9) THE CHICKEN AND EGG OF GLOBAL WARMING
Nick Sault <Nick.Sault@noelleeminggroup.co.nz>
Hi Benny
Statistically, nobody can deny the association between the industrial revolution
and global warming. Logically, it is either plain coincidence or the two
phenomena are related. OK, so far. But if the two are related,
people only consider one side of the cause and effect equation; that the
industrial revolution is responsible for global warming. Nobody seems to
have suggested the exact opposite cause and effect; that the climate change is
instrumental in the rise of our techno-civilisation.
This would seem to be an idea with some foundation, as civilisations in the past
have waxed and waned on the vagaries of the climate. The great Kingdoms of Egypt
thrived and died on vast changes in the North African climate and the seasonal
flooding of the Nile. CCNet contributors have discussed the climate
changes that occurred during the decline of the Roman Empire, and though it is
questionable that a meteorite was culprit as some have suggested, something
dramatic happened to cause the mass migration from Asia into Europe. One
only has to look at the changes in the centres of Aryan civilisation over the
last 6000 years to see that the great centres of progress and learning have
moved about 20 degrees north.
To me it is obvious that our civilisation is only here only by the grace of the
current inter-glacial conditions. It is no more or less significant than
the macro-cosmic equivalent that suggests that all life on Earth owes its
existence to the nice climate the sun enjoys in its quiet corner of the
galaxy. In both cases, "quiet" is only relative, and one can
expect variations that, though tiny on a universal scale, are quite significant
to soft-bodied, water-based organisms.
It is not without foundation that when times are good and life's essentials do
not have to be won with toil, sweat and tears, then more minds can turn to
thoughts and ideas that are not directly concerned with survival. It has
been noted that during the great pyramid building epoch of the Egyptian Old
Kingdom, the Nile harvests were so plentiful that essential labour occupied just
a few short months of the year, during which huge stores of grain were stored
away. For the remainder of the year the ancient Egyptians could dedicate
their lives to seemingly useless pursuits, like hewing and hefting great stones
to build mountains for their Kings. In millennia to come, our descendants
may come to look on the Apollo program in the same way.
In our case, we have the means to recognise and cope with climate change.
Back when your society depended upon the seasonal flooding of a river, when the
floods failed, so did your society. Now our society is more global, and
though climate change will cause some international friction as climate zones
slowly move, agriculture and industry will relocate to compensate.
It is utter nonsense to think that our civilisation will end due to a few
degrees of global warming. At the same time it is utter head-burying
nonsense to ignore the fact that the climate has always had dramatic changes on
a millennial timescale, and sometimes even a centennial timescale. We have
to wake up to the fact that we have a millennial civilisation, and that climate
change is inevitable. Unless we want to go the way of all the other
civilisations that have fallen victim to climate change, we have to embrace it
and use it, rather than trying to conjure up futile means to defeat it with
methods (for example, reduction in industrial output) that will disadvantage our
ability to embrace it.
Regards
Nick Sault
nick@e-writers.org
==========
(10) AND FINALLY: MISANTHROPIC RANT OF THE WEEK: "THE VIRUS CALLED
MANKIND"
The Macon Telegraph, 19 November 2004
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/opinion/10216983.htm
"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came
to me when I tried to classify your species. I've realized that you are not
actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural
equilibrium with the surrounding environment. But you humans do not. You move to
an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed
and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another
organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A
virus."
-Agent Smith, from "The Matrix"
Scientists believe that there have been five major extinction events in the
earth's past. A major extinction event occurs when sudden, severe changes to the
physical environment cause the extinction of a large number of species in a
relatively short period of time.
The most recent of these mass extinctions, which occurred about 65 million years
ago, killed off the last of the dinosaurs and is believed to have been caused by
sudden climate changes that beset the planet after it was struck by one or more
large meteorites.
It now appears that we may be in the midst of the sixth major extinction event,
and this one isn't being caused by anything extraterrestrial. It looks as if
humanity, with its insatiable desire to breed, dominate and consume, is in the
process of changing the planet so dramatically that we may eventually prove more
lethal to other forms of life than any of the previous large-scale extinction
events.
The trouble started for non-human life forms almost as soon as we figured out
how to sharpen sticks to make weapons and bang rocks together to make fire. Even
in his most primitive state, man has a way of remaking his habitat to suit his
purposes. Game species are hunted to extinction. Vegetation that is useful to
man is cultivated and what is not is cleared away.
Still, the footprint primitive people left on their ecosystem was extremely
light compared to the havoc we began to wreak with the onset of
industrialization. As more and more landscapes are leveled and covered with
concrete and fossil fuels are burned on a large scale to power our great
machines, the changes to the global ecosystem and the resulting rate of
extinction for other species have increased exponentially.
Although the extinction of species is considered a natural part of the
evolutionary process, the current rate of extinction is without precedent.
Scientists estimate that a distinct species disappears about every 20 minutes,
and half of the life forms in existence today could be just a memory in the next
200 to 300 years.
We have hit the earth like a giant asteroid, or, as Agent Smith said, like a
virus. Life managed to survive the previous extinction events and eventually
made a strong comeback. But in those cases, the events that led to the
extinction dissipated over time. Earth had time to recover and rejuvenate before
the next calamity struck.
But there is no relief in sight from the virus called man. Barring a change of
heart and a reordering of priorities on our part, the carnage seems destined to
last until we make the environment inhospitable even to ourselves.
Perhaps by then we will have sufficiently mastered space travel so that we can
leave this world and seek out a new one to swarm over and consume, locust-like,
in our quest for survival on our terms.
If you'd like to learn more about mankind and mass extinction, or if you just
feel like getting good and depressed, you can find more information at
www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/eldredge2.html#Primer.
Copyright 2004, The Macon Telegraph
=========
(11) WHAT IS MISANTHROPY?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misanthropy
Misanthropy is a general dislike of the human race. It is not dislike of
individual human beings, but rather dislike of the features shared by all
humanity throughout place and time, including oneself.
Misanthropy has been ascribed to a number of writers of satire, such as William
S. Gilbert ("I hate my fellow-man"), but such identifications must be
closely scrutinized because a critical or darkly humorous outlook toward mankind
may be mistaken for genuine misanthropy. Jonathan Swift is widely accused of
misanthropy (see A Tale of a Tub and, most especially, Book IV of Gulliver's
Travels).
Another example of mistaken misanthropy is Jean-Paul Sartre's quote "Hell
is other people." On the face of it, this looks deeply misanthropic, but
actually Sartre was making an observation about the tendency of human beings to
lack self-knowledge. We tend to project our worst fears, and our most deeply
disliked personal characteristics, onto other people, rather than look inside
and face them within ourselves. Thus, when we look at other people we often see
the worst of what is in our own personality.
It is important to distinguish between philosophical pessimism and misanthropy.
Immanuel Kant said that "Of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight
thing can ever be made," and yet this was not an expression of the
uselessness of mankind itself. Similarly, Samuel Beckett once remarked that
"Hell must be like... reminiscing about the good old days when we wished we
were dead." - a statement that may, perhaps, be seen as utterly bleak and
hopeless, but not as anti-human or expressive of any hatred of mankind.
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, on the other hand, was almost
certainly as famously misanthropic as his reputation. He wrote that "human
existence must be a kind of error." More specifically, he has also been
accused of misogyny. Martin Heidegger also showed misanthropy in his concern of
the "they" - the tendency of people to conform to one view, which
no-one has really thought through, but is just followed because, "they say
so". In recent times, Anton LaVey and his brand of Satanism have voiced
militant misanthropy - going so far as to advocate sterilisation of parts of the
population and ghettoising "lower forms of human life".
In extreme cases, misanthropy has led to serial killings. Murderer of at least
21 people, Carl Panzram said "I hate all the fucking human race. I get a
kick out of murdering people" while in a Washington DC jail in 1922.
Regardless of the validity of a misanthropic worldview, those with strongly-held
misanthropy often suffer from low self-esteem, depression, and even suicidal
tendencies.
Copyright 2004, Wikipedia
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