Oh I love Nevada.....and Lake Lahontan, and the Truth

This is what Nevada looked like just a few thousand years ago.......before "global warming".....not computer modeling, not IPCC......just factual observation and measurements. Where did all that water, and all those lakes go?

The following article is entertaining.....with an under-current of truth.....Imagine a lake this size and more, dried up and gone since the last Ice Age.....not computer modeling, fact, not myth.....Enjoy.
Peter

source:

The following comes from Nevada.........

Our global warming 'Animal Farm'
January 9, 2008, 12:05 AM
By Ed Iverson
In one of his incomparable essays, C. S. Lewis criticized man's often insolent determination to control the forces of nature. He remarked that man's control of nature was frequently nothing more than man's control over other men - with nature as the instrument.

Nothing explains the mad obsession with global warming quite so pointedly. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the global warming panic has little to do with temperature change and everything to do with man's control of other men with climate as the instrument.

The global warming hoax is a dream come true for the global bullies intent on imposing their repressive regulatory regime upon a willing world of useful idiots. With an ozone hole here and a stranded polar bear there, here an oink there an oink, everywhere an oink, oink, Old Napoleon Gore had a farm; and pretty soon all the animals were explaining to themselves why the rules were constantly changing to advance the agenda of the swine who had assumed control in the house. The "chosen" go to Bali. The rest of us schmucks go meekly to our secure stalls in the barn. As the self-appointed dungeon masters softly close the iron gates, the plastic faces in Hollywood form a cheering chorus line. As we labor under increasingly onerous regulations, faint-hearted academics fearful of losing their grants gravely announce the absolute necessity of the new rules.

There are signs, however, that the tide is running out for popular support of Napoleon Gore's contrived crisis. The myth of scientific consensus is evaporating like the hazy aura of Clintonian inevitability. Even the New York Times is starting to dither and dissemble about the grimness of the emergency. A recent editorial openly questioned the data supporting the exaggerated claims of Napoleon Gore and the biased reporting of the "Squealer" media. According to an article recently run by Newsmax.com, New York Times columnist John Tierney "took a close look at the global warming debate and found that the climate change scenario being peddled by Mr. Gore and his legion of followers is anything but the settled scientific fact they claim."

In his column, Tierney noted that last January, weather experts in England confidently predicted that the buildup of greenhouse gases would make 2007 the "hottest year on record." Tierney then illustrated the fanatical commitment to global warming that we of the great unwashed see all the time. He wrote "even though the British scientists reported the global temperature average was not a new record (it was actually lower than any year since 2001) the BBC confidently proclaimed, '2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend.'"

Global warming is not a scientific fact. Shoot, global warming does not even rise to the level of scientific theory. In order to qualify as a scientific, a theory must in principle be falsifiable. There must be some conceivable means of disproving it. By rendering global warming bulletproof, devotees have transferred global warming to the unassailable regions of faith.

Examples of this sort of thing are everywhere. According to satellite imaging, ice in the Arctic has thinned. Good old Squealer (the sycophant media) trumpeted this as an indication that the entire planet was warming. However, when the same technology revealed that ice in the Antarctic increased to the highest level ever recorded, Squealer totally ignored the data.

Remember the hand wringing and chest beating indulged in by Napoleon after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita? A sure sign of the terrible hurricanes our overheated planet would generate in the coming years, he bellowed. He never mentioned the last two quiet seasons while accepting the Nobel Prize.

In a recent report to the a senate subcommittee, more than 400 climatologists cast doubt upon the "scientific consensus" that man-made global warming is a threat to the planet. Many of the scientists were members of the IGPCC.

If it was about science, real scientists would welcome the minority report. Instead, dissenting scientists are ostracized and accused of industrial collusion. Now, here is the truth: Global warming has nothing to do with a verifiable warming of our planet. It has everything to do with man's control over other men with "science" as the tool.



Ed Iverson is a former Fallon (Nevada)resident.

From Nevada, Where People Know Something About Warming.....

If you've ever spent much time in Nevada, during the summer, and I have, then you'll listen to what this person has to say about global warming, drought, and man's effects.
Peter

Global Warming?
Who cares about cause? Something must be done!

By Vin Suprynowicz, writing from Nevada
For more than a thousand years, Christian doctrine had prescribed harsh punishment for anyone who made a false accusation of witchcraft. Since for obvious reasons it was pretty hard to actually prove your neighbor had made your cow go dry by hexing it with the evil eye, or that she flew around at night on a broomstick, this kept false accusations to a minimum.But in the 1480s the interestingly named Pope Innocent III changed all that with his bull "Summis Desideratis"; a couple of German shopkeepers published their Malleus Maleficarum -- the "Hammer of Witches" -- and the witch-hunts were on.

Anyone could turn in a neighbor on suspicion of consorting with demons, without fear of repercussions. Defendants had no right to confront or cross-examine their accusers. The church and state combined their powers to seize the suspects, split up their property and torture them into confessing.Traveling witch-finders were paid handsome fees for their supposed expertise in identifying witches by the presence of minor telltale blemishes on their skin. The growth of the industry was assured when the torturers decided they wouldn't stop inflicting pain until the victim had named a dozen members of her "coven" -- who could also be quickly rounded up, seized along with their property.

Why didn't anyone speak out against this madness? Here's the good part. Because if you were a "denier," that proved you must be under demonic influence, yourself. Care to view our instruments of torture? And so the madness grew. When sanity finally returned, in the 1700s, wise men started talking about "separating church and state," about defendants being "presumed innocent till proven guilty," about a "right to confront and cross-examine one's accusers." Just as importantly, the deductive methods of science were elevated above superstition.

New generations were taught it wasn't sufficient to notice a correlation between the old lady down the road waving her arms while mumbling under her breath and your cow going dry. You had to demonstrate there was some explanation within our understanding of the laws of physics for how one thing could cause the other. You had to demonstrate the presumed effect happened every time the presumed cause was present, that it never happened when the presumed cause was absent, and that there was no better alternative explanation.

It's not a perfect system. Government-funded science, in particular, tends to generate results curiously close to what the funding agencies are looking for. But note we're using the word "science" to refer to the ongoing skeptical testing of theories to see if they reliably predict real-world events. As soon as someone says, "It's been proved by science! No one must be allowed to question this any more!" they've warped the word "science" and are now using it to describe just another received religion, little different from "I read it in the Bible so I know it's true.

"Why does all this matter, in 2007? Just read a week's worth of letters to the editor. In recent days, you'll find readers writing in: "I am so tired of reading the letters and editorials that the Review-Journal prints disputing the science behind global warming. I no longer go fishing on Lake Mead because it has become too difficult to launch a boat. All my relatives in the Midwest talk about now are the mild winters and the extreme violent storms of the summers. Towns in Georgia are running out of water. And the glaciers are disappearing. And you keep printing stories from people who say, 'It's alright. It's cyclical!' Who cares whether it is or not? Who cares if we are causing it or not? Why can't we just agree that it is happening and that we have to work together to adapt to it! ...

"A Manhatten (sic) -type project that spent our tax dollars researching alternative energies that wean us from our oil addiction and that do not contribute to the Greenhouse effect would go a long way to helping us adapt no matter who is right! I'd like to go fishing again without having to wait 15,000 years!

"But if the reader agrees that burning fossil fuels may not be causing global warming, why spend billions of dollars and lower our standard of living to reduce a minimal "Greenhouse effect" that may not matter? Even if mean temperatures had increased 1 degree over the past 30 years -- and they have not -- does any responsible science explain how such a slight temperature increase could have caused lower water levels in Lake Mead?

Might not increased human water usage and the fact that rainfall here in the early 20th century was far above prehistoric norms be a more reasonable explanation? Might not warmer weather in the Pacific cause more evaporation, which could give us more rain? How could meeting all our current power needs with windmills or solar cells (ignoring the costs) possibly cause Lake Mead to fill with water? How could socking us with $5 billion in "carbon taxes" -- doubling the cost of turning on a light switch or pumping a gallon of gasoline, for starters -- cause Lake Mead to fill with water? What evidence is there that this would do any more good than rounding up 10,000 widows and burning them as witches?

Another reader recently wrote in: "The global warming debate is the best end run I have ever seen. Big Business cannot deny that it is polluting our planet. ... Big Business says, 'It's not all our fault. There are forest fires, volcanoes, sun flares, CO2 coming off the oceans and let's not forget the belching cows. Please don't forget the cows!' All the while the air, land and water are being polluted. The people dying from multiple forms of cancer and the asthmatic children going to the emergency rooms for breathing treatments and we aren't buying it." Global warming now causes cancer and childhood asthma? Doesn't this remind anyone else of the hysteria of the late 15th and 16th centuries, when every problem, global or local, could be blamed on the witches down the road consorting with demons and dancing naked in the moonlight, when the devil was seen to have the upper hand in his battle to take over the Earth from the godly, when no delays could be brooked? After all, the very fate of the Earth was at stake; if burning a few hundred more witches could help us turn the corner, who could possibly object?

Today, again, we're told that global warming "deniers" cannot be tolerated. Something must be done! What? What must be done? They don't seem so clear on that. Though if they succeed in pricing heat and air conditoning out of reach, thousands of people will die, make no mistake. In the 1970s, politically correct "left-centist" publications such as Newsweek were doing cover stories about the coming Ice Age. Polar bears are not vanishing; their populations have been growing for 25 years.

The Kyoto Protocol -- even if everyone signed it and met its terms, which would be an international first -- would reduce temperatures by only 0.04 degrees Celsius by 2100."The American people are fed up with the media for promoting the idea that former Vice President Al Gore represents the scientific 'consensus' that SUVs and the modern American way of life have somehow created a 'climate emergency' that only United Nations bureaucrats and wealthy Hollywood liberals can solve," said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the outgoing chairman of the Environment & Public Works Committee, last year.

But how can you deny we've been cursed by the witches? Aren't the lakes drying up? Aren't there storms and wildfires everywhere? Don't children have cancer and asthma? Why can't we all just agree these things are happening, and start to round up and burn the witches? There's no time left to beat around the bush and wait for all this tedious testing of "causality"! Who cares what's causing it? Something must be done!

Source

Lake Lahonton, Nevada: Climate Change

The Black Rock Desert and ancient Lake Lahontan in northwestern Nevada bring back fond memories for me. To those who know and remember, this is a tribute to "Bruno's Country Club", in Gerlach, Nevada, to days gone by.
Peter

Searching for Lake Lahontan
Evidence of the giant, ancient lake can be seen throughout northern Nevada.
Mark Vanderhoff RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL Posted: 5/17/2003
There was a time when a giant lake covered much of northwestern Nevada. Between 9,000 and 20,000 years ago, the same mountains that exist today dipped into its deep, dark blue waters. Junipers or limber pine carpeted the slopes from the snowcapped peaks to its shores. Nearby, prehistoric camels, mammoths, bison and horses grazed. Cheetahs chased antelope. Huge sloths and the giant short-faced bear, larger than a Kodiak bear and fast on its long legs, roamed.
Fingers of the lake reached into mountain valleys and the tops of large hills poked out of the water, forming little islands. What is now the high country beginning in the Truckee Range north of Fernley to the Jackson and Kamma Mountains forming the eastern border of the Black Rock Desert once was a large island in the middle of the ancient lake.

Lake Lahontan, as the giant lake was called, reached its high point 15,000 years ago.
The climate then was much different than it is today because a massive glacier of the last ice age stretched down to the Canadian border, deflecting polar jet streams toward the southwestern United States. An abundance of rain and snow filled the Great Basin with hundreds of feet of water. During its highest years, the lake was almost 900 feet deep at present-day Pyramid Lake.

Lake Lahontan at its highest stretched from the Oregon border to Walker Lake, as far east as Winnemucca and as far west as Honey Lake up U.S. 395 in California. Although Reno and Carson City were high and dry, the Black Rock Desert, Lovelock and Fallon were under water.
Climate changes eventually dried up the lake, but today, clues about Lake Lahontan remain all across its former domain.
“You can see a world that was different from today,” said Pat Barker, the Bureau of Land Management’s Nevada archaeologist.

The beach
The playa of the Black Rock Desert may be the most famous remnant of Lake Lahontan.
“I think one of the coolest things is it’s one of the biggest, flattest surfaces on the planet,” said Ken Adams, a Desert Research Institute geologist who studies Lake Lahontan.
Playa means beach or shore in Spanish, but in the days of Lake Lahontan, the playa was at the bottom of the lake. The fine silt and clay that compose the playa was light enough to be carried in by the rivers and streams that flowed into Lake Lahontan. That sediment eventually settled to the bottom.

Today, the playa owes its flat surface to the water table, Adams said.
A water table, standing water that sits underground, has a flat upper surface, just like a lake.
The winds that blow over the playa only blow off the loose items — they can’t pick up the cohesive, moist sediment wetted by the upper surface of the water table. Essentially, the playa surface has been “planed off by the wind,” Adams said.

Part of Adams’ research consists of finding remnants of the ancient shorelines and measuring their heights in the hills that once surrounded Lake Lahontan.
He has found the highest shorelines in the hills surrounding the Black Rock Desert and the Carson Sink. Those areas may have been under as much as 450 feet of water at one point, he said.

Shorelines and seashells
The highest shorelines may have been around the Black Rock Desert and Carson Sink, but the deepest waters stood at what is now Pyramid Lake.
Today, it is easy to see where the waves of Lake Lahontan also lapped at the hills surrounding Pyramid Lake.
“They’re very obvious if you know what to look for,” Adams said. “There’s a lot of places I could bring my mother and she’d understand what she was looking at.”
Look at the mountainsides that surround the lake, and white or light tan splotches will begin to appear among the brown dirt. Those spots consist of very fine silts that were deposited by Lake Lahontan on these hills thousands of years ago.

Next, search the slopes of the mountains for horizontal lines. Look closer and notice the terraces cut into the mountains like giant steps. Those terraces formed as crashing waves eroded soil from the hillsides. As the lake level dropped, the waves tore at successively lower spots on the slopes.

Pyramid Lake yields other clues about Lake Lahontan.
Walk to the beach and examine the sediment in the escarpments cut by the waves. Pick up a handful of sediment and look closely, and some white shells will appear among the sand and pebbles. “They look like snail shells, but there are no aquatic snails in the lake today,” Adams said. Those snail shells, called gastropods, have been dated to as far back as 25,000 years ago, suggesting they lived in Lake Lahontan. While the snails no longer live in Pyramid Lake, one species that swam Lake Lahontan does still call Pyramid Lake home. The qui-ui, a bottom-feeding fish that is now endangered because its spawning habitat on the Truckee River has been altered, thrived for thousands of years in Lake Lahontan and now only lives in Pyramid Lake.
“That’s one reason why we know Pyramid has never dried up since Lake Lahontan,” Adams said.
Pyramid Lake is, in fact, the real heir to Lake Lahontan. Walker Lake is also a remnant of Lahontan, but it has dried up numerous times over the years because of climate change and the diversion of the Walker River.

Surf’s up
If humans existed during Lake Lahontan’s prime, they could have stood on a sandy finger reaching into the lake now called the Russell Spit. Russell Spit looks like a long, wide pile of sand sticking out of the hills south of Fallon like an earthen finger. It was formed when Lake Lahontan’s waves crashed on nearby slopes at a slight angle, tearing away soil and then redepositing it down the shoreline. “You can stand on this beach and look north and go ‘Wow, there must have been huge waves here,’” Adams said. The waves here got so big because they had a large fetch, Adams said. Fetch is the area of open water where waves are built by the wind.

From the Russell Spit, it’s more than 50 miles as the wave rolls to the north end of the Carson sink. Back then, the Desert Mountains, on the edge of which Russell Spit stands, rose out of the water. Today, someone standing on Russell Spit can see where that giant expanse of water stood, clear beyond Fallon.

The human element
Throughout its long life, Lake Lahontan grew and shrank as the climate of the Great Basin gradually changed. After its high point, the lake dried up as the ice sheets retreated. A long drought ensued, followed by a very cold period that probably froze any water left.
Then the lake returned one final time. Scientists believe humans lived at the lake during this last incarnation, and the proof lies in sites like the Grimes Point-Hidden Cave Archaeological Area.

This site, south of Fallon, consists of caves hidden among hills and large boulders and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. “Those boulders would have been on the shore lines,” said Amy Dansie, a retired Nevada State Museum anthropologist. The Spirit Cave Man might have lived on this shore and caught giant Lahontan cutthroat trout from its waters. This mummified human was found in nearby Spirit Cave in 1940 by two archaeologists who thought the remains were only 2,000 years old.

The remains were boxed and forgotten for six decades until the Nevada State Museum tested them as part of a program to return the remains to the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone tribe, who claim the Spirit Cave Man as their ancestor. The tests showed the mummy was about 10,630 years old. That places him at the Spirit Cave around the time Lake Lahontan was a dying lake.
But Dansie and other archaeologists believe humans may have seen Lake Lahontan in its prime.
Their theories are based on artifacts believed to have come from a period before this marshy time.

Some artifacts found at high elevations appeared to be “water tumbled,” Dansie said, suggesting they existed around the time of Lake Lahontan’s high stand. Dated bones belong to horses that appear to have been butchered using tools that predate the Spirit Cave Man’s culture. One spearhead called the McGee point is believed to be more than 13,000 years old, putting humans at Lake Lahontan no later than its high stand.

Any people that lived around Lake Lahontan through its varied life would have had to put up with — or perhaps retreated from — the changing climate. “They may have existed here but gone south and come back up multiple times,” Dansie said. Dansie is searching for a smoking gun, some artifacts that can be positively dated using the most modern technology. Those artifacts might be buried deep in layers of lake silt.

She believes such artifacts might prove humans appeared about 1,000 years before the Clovis Man, a member of a culture that lived 11,000 years ago — the earliest accepted date of a human presence in the New World. “It’s only another 1,000 years,” she said. “It’s not like we’re proposing 30,000 years.”