-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- Comments? ===== NEW BOOK BY STRIEBER & BELL AN ELOQUENT BOMBSHELL Describes "Superstorm" That Could Start New Ice Age Review by Michael Lindemann "The Coming Global Superstorm" (Pocket Books, 1999) by famed radio host Art Bell and bestselling author Whitley Strieber is, if nothing else, a great read. But it may be much more than that -- perhaps a prescient warning of a most unpleasant but still preventable future. If Bell and Strieber are right, that dark future could see the sudden death of well over a billion people, the decimation of the environment and the virtual destruction of contemporary human culture in a catastrophic global storm that ushers in a new ice age. What has this kind of gloom-and-doom to do with the subject matter of CNI News? Simply put, the inspiration for this book -- the warning itself -- came during a bizarre encounter in a Toronto hotel room between Whitley Strieber and a strange little man on the night of June 6, 1998. This encounter was previously reported in CNI News (Aug 16, 1998). Strieber said then that he was awakened in the middle of the night by a knock on the door. Thinking he had fallen asleep while waiting for room service, he answered, only to have the strange man walk in uninvited and begin a virtual monologue that lasted 30 minutes. Recovering from his initial shock, Strieber says, he began furiously taking notes. When the man was finished speaking, he simply left. Strieber awoke the next morning unsure whether he had dreamed the whole thing -- but on his nightstand, he found a legal pad with pages and pages of notes. "He was as real as you or me. He was a man with an enormous amount of insight on a lot of things," Strieber says. He has no idea who the man was, and has never met such a person before or since. But among the notes Strieber took that night was the following: "As the temperature of the troposphere rises, that of the stratosphere is falling due to changes in air chemistry. At the same time, the north polar ice is melting, reducing the salinity of the Laurentian sea. At some point, winds crossing this sea due to the increasing difference between lower and higher atmospheric pressures will cause the North Atlantic Current to cease to flow so far north. The result will be a sudden expansion of polar air southward and a massive storm that will sheet the northern half of the Northern Hemisphere with ice. This same mechanism always triggers ice ages, and would happen within a few thousand years no matter what. Human activity has sped up the process. The result of this will be that the greater part of human industry and culture, along with its most educated population, will be destroyed in a single season. This will happen suddenly and without warning, within a hundred years, probably much less." That scenario set Strieber on a quest for more information. He decided to team with radio host Art Bell, whose recently published book "The Quickening" addressed many environmental issues. Together, Bell and Strieber began to piece together a picture of a possible catastrophe in the making. "The Coming Global Superstorm" is the result. Strieber provided CNI News with an advance copy. The book is beautifully written -- sometimes quite breathtaking in its passion and audacity -- and though admittedly speculative, it makes an argument that must be taken seriously. Strieber and Bell say that "superstorms" have very likely happened in Earth's past and may well be the best explanation for a number of weird and unanswered anomalies. For example, why are thousands of mammoths and other large animals found buried in Arctic ice, still so fresh after 10,000 years that natives have eaten the flesh? When found, it appears that these creatures were flash-frozen as they grazed. Flowering plants are found in their mouths and stomachs. What could cause such a thing? Science has no answer. Strieber and Bell say a superstorm could do it. The book is loaded with theoretical models of ocean and air currents, storm dynamics, and possible consequences of the global warming now underway. It revisits Earth's antiquity, seeking answers to what brought on the succession of ice ages that began about 2.8 million years ago. It argues that another ice age is a virtual certainty with or without human intervention -- but that the human component in contemporary climate change could bring on a new ice age much sooner than expected. And the trigger, Strieber and Bell say, would likely be a superstorm -- actually a system of colossal hurricane-like storms that engulfs the entire northern hemisphere down to about 35 degrees north latitude, dropping temperatures over 100 degrees in hours and dumping tons of snow and ice over everything in the storm's path. Such a storm system might rage for weeks. When it ended, much of the world would be dead. After reading the book, I asked Strieber if he and Bell consulted with weather experts during the writing. "This book is based on research and study, not on consultation with climatologists, meteorologists and oceanographers," Strieber told me. "Our consultations occurred after the book was finished The problem is, the scientific community in general is afraid to say this, because it seems too extreme. Whether or not a storm of this kind would actually develop is an open question. There has been no modeling of this as far as I could find. "I have shown the book to a number of people in the meteorology community on condition of their anonymity. They don't want to be publicly associated with a book by Strieber and Bell. Their reactions ranged from highly unlikely to terrifying -- as in, it is going to happen. "I think there's going to be a sea change among climatologists, because it's so obvious that in the past the flow of the North Atlantic current has destabilized very suddenly... The current will at some point in the future change. Nobody knows what will happen when that occurs. We speculate that the change is going to be very dramatic. It would be the most extraordinary redisposition of energy in the weather system that mankind had ever witnessed." I for one believe "The Coming Global Superstorm" deserves a wide audience, and I hope it provokes serious discussion among climate experts as well as the general public. Years from now, it might even be seen as one of those rare, historic wake-up calls, like Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring." "I hope public awareness of the problem will fan funding for serious research into the state of the world's ocean currents on an ongoing basis," Strieber says. "If we do that, we might gain years of advance warning." "The Coming Global Superstorm" will be in stores on December 14. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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