American and Chinese scientists are flabbergasted after discovering a giant 298-million-year-old forest buried intact under a coal mine near Wuda, in Inner Mongolia, China.
They are calling it the Pompeii of the Permian period because, like the ancient Roman city, it was covered and preserved by volcanic ash.
Like Pompeii, this swamp forest is so perfectly maintained that scientists know where every plant originally was. This has allowed them to map it and to create the images above. This extraordinary finding “is like Pompeii”, according to University of Pennsylvania paleobotanist Hermann Pfefferkorn, who characterized it as “a time capsule.”
It’s marvelously preserved. We can stand there and find a branch with the leaves attached, and then we find the next branch and the next branch and the next branch. And then we find the stump from the same tree. That’s really exciting.
They are in fact finding entire trees and plants exactly as they were at the time of the volcanic eruption, just like archeologists in Pompeii found humans, animals and buildings at the base of Mount Vesuvius, near Naples, in the Italian region of Campania. Except Pompeei was buried in AD 79 and this forest was covered in ash 298 million years ago, during the Permian period.
The official position of the American Physical Society (APS) supports the theory that man’s actions have inexorably led to the warming of the planet, through increased emissions of carbon dioxide…
“The claim … is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period,” his email message said.
One of the reasons is the use of power saving bulbs.
But something shocking is happening to demand for electricity in the Age of the Gadget: It’s leveling off.
Over the next decade, experts expect residential power use to fall, reversing an upward trend that has been almost uninterrupted since Thomas Edison invented the modern light bulb.
In part it’s because Edison’s light bulb is being replaced by more efficient types of lighting, and electric devices of all kinds are getting much more efficient. But there are other factors.
New homes are being built to use less juice, and government subsidies for home energy savings programs are helping older homes use less power. In the short term, the tough economy and a weak housing market are prompting people to cut their usage.
As a result, many families can expect their monthly bills to remain in check, even if power prices rise. For utility executives, who can no longer bank on ever-growing demand, a major shift is under way: They’re finding ways to profit when people use less power.
This is the easiest ,economical and non polluting system,not to speak of easing traffic congestion.
In the Chinese city of Hangzhoul Bike sharing system is a massive hit. In the city of nearly 7 million, the bike-share system — started in 2008 — has more than 50,000 bikes. Here’s more on this world-class bike-sharing system from Streetfilms:
Hangzhou’s 2,050 bike-share stations are spaced less than a thousand feet from each other in the city center, and on an average day riders make 240,000 trips using the system. Its popularity and success have set a new standard for bike-sharing in Asia. And the city is far from finished. The Hangzhou Bicycle Company plans to expand the bike-share system to 175,000 bikes by 2020!.
Two authorities provide us with analysis of long-term surface temperature trends. Both agree on the global temperature trend until 1998, at which time a sharp divergence occurred. The UK Meteorological Office‘s Hadley Center for Climate Studies Had-Crut datashows worldwide temperatures declining since 1998. According to Hadley’s data, the earth is not much warmer now than it was than it was in 1878 or 1941.
By contrast, NASA data shows worldwide temperatures increasing at a record pace – and nearly a full degree warmer than 1880.
The other two widely used global temperature data sources are from earth-orbiting satellitesUAH (University of Alabama at Huntsville) and RSS (Remote Sensing Systems.) Both show decreasing temperatures over the last decade, with present temperatures barely above the 30 year average.
How can scientists who report measurements of the earth’s temperature within one one-hundredth of a degree be unable to concur if the temperature is going up or down over a ten year period? Something appears to be inconsistent with the NASA data – but what is it?
One clue we can see is that NASA has been reworking recent temperatures upwards and older temperatures downwards – which creates a greater slope and the appearance of warming. Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre has been tracking the changes closely on hisClimate Audit site, and reports that NASA is Rewriting History, Time and Time Again. The recent changes can be seen by comparing the NASA 1999 and 2007 US temperature graphs. Below is the 1999 version, and below that is the reworked 2007 version.
The base chart tracks Total Public and Private US Debt as a percentage of GDP (black line) from 1870 through 2009. Notice how it slowly increases from 1880 to 1930 and then peaks sharply in the early 1930′s, declines through the 1950′s and then rises steadily through 2009.
NASA GISS data for the US Annual 5 year Mean Temperature Anomaly from 1880 to the present is superimposed (red line), and fits remarkably well. It is a bit noisier, but it too increases from 1880 to 1930 and then peaks sharply in the early 1930′s. It then declines through 1970, and then rises steadily through 2010.
One conclusion is that NASA might have erred in Statistical analysis or the Thermometers have been wrong.
It is not probable that all the thermometers had gone wrong simultaneously.
(Again arriving at a Global Mean Temperature sounds rather funny. Can you take Greenland temperature and Tropical temperature and arrive at a mean?Scientists give convoluted explanation for this;but to me it does not look common sense at all . Again, who kept records of Global temperatures in the 19th Century?)
And if CO2 is responsible for raise in temperature,why it did not cause raise in temperature from 1940-1970?
The fact is that Global warming is an unwanted Scare perpetrated by a Group for reasons well-known to them.
Facts do not confirm global warming.
MEXICO CITY, February 18, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An eminent Mexican geophysicist says that despite predictions of global warming based on computer models, the world may be on the verge of an eighty-year cold period similar to the “little ice age” experienced by Europe from 1300 to 1800 A.D..
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