Younger Dryas Boundary Event

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Younger Dryas Boundary Event

Postby Phillip » Sun 14 Oct 2012 10:33 am

Just to get a new thread going here are the basic bones. Firestone et al (too many names to reproduce quickly) came out with their theory several years ago that some kind of cosmic object struck the Earth or burnt up in the atmosphere at the beginning of the Younger Dryas Event and this caused global temperatures to plunge dramatically. Various people, in particular climate scientists, were not impressed and have remained largely outside the debate. This is due to the fact it complicates what they are striving to achieve, that modern global warming is a result of fossil fuel emissions. Anything that might interupt the flow of the dialogue is seen as unwanted and subsequently they are unenthusiastic. Hence, the YDB event has barely touched the radar of the mainstream - just a couple of news flashes. This is especially true in the UK where the debate is muted.
The main criticism of the theory is that the Younger Dryas was a very long event lasting up to 1300 years (although the length does vary from scientist to scientist, between 900 and 1300 years). Therefore, it was a lengthy period and led to the obvious point of criticism, how could a cosmic object have such a lengthy effect - to wit, the consensus view that it was all to do with the ocean circulation system switching into a negative mode seemed much more likely. However, Wally Broecker, the main proponent of the ocean circulation model is himself not so sure and has toned down his criticism. In addition, Bill Napier came out with a paper a couple of years ago, at the height of the furore, with mainstream misrepresenting the details of the YDB event and in a nutshell said that the Earth may have entered a particularly dense Taurid stream (which has now widely dispersed). Obviously, if the orbit of the Earth did encounter such a stream of cometary material the question might be asked, how long would it take the atmosphere to lose all the dust and debris it had collected - could it possibly have lingered for as long as 1300 years?
The history and most of the papers involved in the YDB event controversy, on both sides, are available at George Howard's web site http://cosmictusk.com and you can read them for free - including the important Napier paper. They are available on the LH side of the menu. It is therefore advisable for anyone wanting to dip their fingers into this debate to familiarise themselves with the various arguments. George Howard doesn't actually debate the issue but posts an occasional update at the web site. He is running a business so he is a fairly busy person and is often slow to respond. He is however very friendly to SIS - but not necessarily a Velikovskian. Other contributors at the site (comments section) are not always worth reading but a couple of the names are familiar from Benny Peiser's CCNeT debate on the 1995 SIS conference where catastrophism was largely discussed.
Now, ignoring for the moment the merits or otherwise of catastrophism versus a purely terrestrial explanation for the Younger Dryas cooling event we need to bear in mind that it is not a one off. There are seven earlier events that closely resemble the Younger Dryas, penetrating deeply within the last Ice Age (as it is defined in the consensus model, some 100,000 years in duration). The earliest event is around 70,000 years ago - which is very near where a super volcano is supposed to have blown and plunged the world into a similar cold epoch - colder than it had been in that part of the Ice Age. This was followed by a succession of other cooling episodes ending in the Oldest Dryas Event which brought the Ice Age to an end around 17000BC (a rough figure without checking the current opinion on this). Therefore, if Bill Napier's argument is valid do we assume the Earth has encountered a succession of heavy Taurid streams - does this even fit into the Clube and Napier model? In Napier's favour we have several short cooling episodes in the Holocene (post Younger Dryas) wherefore the continuing break-up of the hypothetical comet was ongoing and according to the Clube and Napier model was still causing periodic problems for humans on the surface of the Earth as recently as the Little Ice Age (when the atmosphere accumulated, they suggested, periodic bouts of cometary dust as the orbit of the Earth weaved its way through the now dispersed elements of one of the Taurid streams. Orthodox opinion has recently put these things down to solar changes - a lack of sun spots during at least one part of the Little Ice Age, the point at which it was coldest. Previously the Sun was thought to be constant, as far as temperatures on Earth were concerned, but as Lawrence can explain to us the Chinese and Koreans, among others, had noticed such correlations prior to modern western science. Now, we are all aware of Moe Mandelkehr's articles in SIS journals (sadly he has now died so can't take part in the debate) and his correlation of the Taurid stream with the events between 2300 and 2000BC. We can further speculate something similar happened (orthodox dates and no point here in raising the scientific dating issue as that would be a separate subject) around 3100BC and 6200-6000BC, so these two periods are open to discussion in this forum debate as they are essential in the grander scheme devised by Clube and Napier, ongoing streams of Taurid dust with an origin in a comet that was breaking up and gradually getting smaller and smaller - or split into various segments. Also part of the debate might be the identification of the comet and parts thereof in perceived mythology, such as Set and Horus etc. The theory is most attractive as it explains the origin of religions - or myths that developed into religions. We also know the Ice Age painters of caves in Europe were very interested in the Pleiades and generally the Taurus constellation. Therefore we can proceed with several strands that might appeal to different people
Phillip
 
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Re: Younger Dryas Boundary Event

Postby Trevor » Mon 22 Oct 2012 6:47 pm

Phillip's post raised so many important issues that it seems no-one, including myself, knew quite how to respond. Contrary to what had been generally supposed in Velikovsky's time, there have, without question, been a number of major catastrophic events on Earth during the past 100,000 years. The Toba super-eruption, conventionally dated to around 75,000 years ago, undoubtedly occurred. The only questions relate to the precise date, and whether it was the prime cause of a return to glacial conditions and a bottleneck in human evolution.

Phillip referred to issues concerning a later event, the start of the Younger Dryas glacial, but what about the abrupt warming at the end of the Younger Dryas? Could this have simply resulted from the clearing of atmospheric dust, or was there a totally different cause? As may be seen by going to the web-site of the Quantavolution Conference held in Naxos in 2012 and downloading the Powerpoint presentation by Emilio Spedicato, Emilio argued that the close passage of a planetary-sized body at that time caused the dramatic rise in temperatures, as well as the destruction of Atlantis and the capture by the Earth of its Moon. Alternatively, in a book published last month, entitled The Role of Solar Outbursts in Our Past and Future, Robert Schoch argued that the rise in temperatures at the end of the Younger Dryas had most likely been caused by an outburst of energy from the Sun or some other cosmic body.

Similarly, Lonnie Thompson has argued that dramatic climate change at around 3150 BC was caused by a major fluctuation in solar output. On the other hand, British engineers Alan Bond and Mark Hempsell have recently claimed, in a book published in 2008, that, according to a Mesopotamian inscription, catastrophic events at this time could have been caused by the explosion of an asteroid over the region now known as Austria. In a National Geographic programme devoted to the ideas of Thompson and Bond & Hempsell, the latter pair suggested the explosion of the asteroid over Austria was the likely cause of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire falling from above.

Velikovsky associated the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah with the catastrophes at the end of the Early Bronze Age, around 2300 BC, which he believed had been caused by interactions between Jupiter and the Earth. Moe Mandelkehr, as pointed out by Phillip, attributed this catastrophic episode to an encounter of the Earth with the Taurid complex.

The Saturnists have developed Velikovsly's ideas about earlier interactions between the Earth and Saturn, but are there any present-day Jovians, developing his ideas about interactions between the Earth and Jupiter? That's one of several lines that might be taken forward for discussion.
Trevor
 
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Re: Younger Dryas Boundary Event

Postby Peter » Wed 24 Oct 2012 4:39 pm

Re Younger Dryas Boundary Event

With reference to Trevor’s last paragraph I believe that I qualify as a Saturnist, because in my World Ages paper, published in Workshop 2011:1, I said that I thought that “in the beginning” the Earth was in a co-axial relationship with Saturn with its northern hemisphere experiencing a temperate climate as suggested by Dwardu Cardona. However, I must disassociate myself from the shish-kebab planetary set-up idea, because I am sure that all of ancient mankind’s myths about Mars and Venus derive from later experiences. I believe that after the Polar Column / Axis Mundi collapsed, as described by Cardona at the 1999 SIS Easthampstead conference and in my Workshop 2007:2 paper, Birth of the Moon, the Earth orbited Saturn for 10 generations during which mankind experienced cold for the first time.

In my chronology the early Anatolian hunter gatherer Natufian people pre-date the collapse of the Polar Column and the Expulsion. The severe deterioration in the climate caused by the Earth’s orbit change encouraged improved farming methods, but the previously occupied upland sites were abandoned for more fertile lowland sites. The upland sites were resettled some 10 generations later after the Noah Flood drowned the lowlands. The new upland settlers were much better farmers who grew improved crops and used new tools for tiling their fields (see W Ryan & W Pitman, Noah’s Flood, 175 to 179). They also build rectangular houses and buried their dead beneath the floors of their houses (see Ian Wilson. Before The Flood, page 87).

I believe that the period of post–Expulsion severe climate is known to us as the Younger Dryas and that the new settlers of the highlands after the Noah Flood are known as the post Younger Dryas generation. I did mention this at a 2008 study group meeting, but it was not included in the meeting report.

I also qualify as one of Trevor’s Jovians because I believe that the flare-up of Saturn, that according to Velikovsky preceded the Noah Flood, was a scaled up coronal mass ejection caused by Jupiter approaching Saturn. As I mentioned in my Workshop World Ages paper, I think that following the flare-up of Saturn the Earth was captured in a Jupiter orbit after experiencing an axis shift that saw the Yukon re-located to the North Pole. With the Yukon at the North Pole the centrifugally raised equatorial sea bulge caused a rise of some hundreds of metres in sea levels in the Middle East.

My dating for start of the post-Younger Dryas period and for the Sodom and Gomorrah and the Exodus catastrophes are given in my World Ages paper.
Peter
 

Interesting quotations

Postby Laurence » Mon 29 Oct 2012 9:08 pm

Axial Shift, Crustal slip, Destruction of polar mountain

In "Shorter Science and Civilisation in China 2, an abridgement by Colin A Roman of Joseph Needham's original Text (1981) on page 84, there is a marvellous quotation describing an axial rotation or crustal shift linked with the destruction of Dave Talbots polar mountain all in 6 short lines. Needham wrote his volume in 1958, I wonder what he made of it. What's your reaction.

"In ancient times Kung Kung (one of the legendary rebels) strove with Chuan Hsi (one of the legendary emperors) for the Empire
Angered he smote the Unrotating Mountain,
Heaven's pillars broke, the bounds with earth were ruptured,
Heaven leaned over to the North west,
Hence the sun, moon,stars and planets were shifted,
And Earth became empty to the South east."

A most concise description of an immense destructive event.
Laurence
 
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Re: Interesting quotations

Postby Val » Thu 01 Nov 2012 12:01 pm

All I'd say for the moment is that this is a yet further text which appears to confirm that there was, at some point in time, cosmic (emphasis) upheaval, but I'm not sure it's actually supportive of David Talbott's polar column, is it?
Val
 
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Re: Interesting quotations

Postby Phillip » Sat 10 Nov 2012 9:17 am

I think you'll find this can be found in one of Paul Dunbavin's books where he dates it to an axial shift at around 3100BC. Certainly, Kung Kung appears in one of them (available I might add from the SIS book service - no doubt Val would like to shift some copies). It was interesting in that it moved to the NW while the SE became empty. This is from a Chinese perspective, so what is in the SE? In the very far SE we have Indonesia where a large portion was submerged under the ocean, but somewhat earlier than 3100BC. According to Steven Oppenheimer, Eden in the East (another book I recommend on the subject), Indonesia was largely drowned around 6200BC. This, we may note, was when the southern North Sea basin was drowned and is where the Mesolithic boat yard in the Solent was overwhelmed, and to add some fancy, it was when Lake Titicaca was hoisted up to the top of the mountains in Peru, having been a coastal lagoon prior to that date. These are all conventional dates and I see no need to bring dating into this particular discussion. Dunbavin's argument is that the 3100 axial tilt was slight in comparison with the earlier one. He did mention that one area of China, in the SE of the country, had been underwater prior to 3100 as it had no Neolithic remains (which are common in other parts of the country) but once it had surfaced, presumably empty of vegetation etc, it was quickly colonised by farmers etc.
Therefore there is a logical explanation for the Kung Kung story, one that doesn't have to include the ideas of the Saturnians. The non-rotating mountain is interesting as I would have thought a cosmic body would have rotated - or have I got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Incidentally, Moe Mandelehr may also mention Kung Kung and he would place the event near 2300BC, just to add a bit of complexity.
Phillip
 
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Re: Interesting quotations

Postby Val » Wed 14 Nov 2012 1:23 pm

Copies of Paul Dunbavin's book are still available - go to the Books/back issues link on most pages of the SIS website for details of costs.
Val
 
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Re: Younger Dryas Boundary Event

Postby Phillip » Thu 15 Nov 2012 11:16 pm

Peter, it would be a good idea if you set up a forum subject on your book. I found it interesting and unless other people on the forum are aware of where you are coming from nobody can actually debate any further when you post a reply. The more dense the better I would say. A brief overview would not give it justice. Your ideas are valid and worth discussion.
Phillip
 
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Re: Younger Dryas Boundary Event

Postby rwaite » Fri 28 Dec 2012 6:14 am

Robert Schoch did a great lecture at the 2012 Electric Universe Conference entitled "The Catastrophic Termination of the Last Ice Age" in which he gave quite a plausible explanation for the Younger Dryas Boundary Event based on a greater solar/electric activity from the Sun at the time. The DVD is available at http://mikamar.biz/.
rwaite
 
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Re: Younger Dryas Boundary Event

Postby Phillip » Sun 30 Dec 2012 11:03 pm

Good to see you over here Roger. Thanks for the link
Phillip
 
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