Everyone should live at least 100metres above sea level. Apart from storms such as in India, it would mean keeping your feet dry when comets hit the ocean. [Well, the bigger ones will get you wet anyway, especially if landing within 4000km]. Qualcomm is a good investment because most of their stuff is well above sea level, on the MiraMesa. Globalstar won't get wet either.
<Exodus to Arthur : Catastrophic Encounters With Comets
by Mike Baillie
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Hardcover - 256 pages (May 1999)
B T Batsford Ltd; ISBN: 0713483520 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.02 x 9.55 x 6.46
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 74,930
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Number of Reviews: 2
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Reviews
New Scientist, Ben Rudder
If Baillie is right, history has overlooked probably the single most important explanation for the intermittent progress of civilisation.... if the
author is not carried shoulder-high for broaching this important subject, it will be because his doomsday scenario offers little in the way of
an immediate technical fix.
Customer Comments
Average Customer Review: Number of Reviews: 2
A reader from Roskilde, Denmark , June 2, 1999
Six climate changes in the last 6000 years in tree rings.
This book reads like a detective story where the plot slowly unfolds. In the beginning it describes the use of tree rings to date old wood in
buildings, paintings, ships and other archeological specimens. By a huge collaborative effort by many tree ring scientists it has been
possible to establish almost continuous tree ring patterns over 6000 years in bristlecone pine, oak, and other species. Most variations in
ring width is due to local conditions. However, six peculiar worldwide, decade long episodes of reduced growth has become evident, for
example around 1628 BC and 540 AD. The archeologist Baillie compares this with chinese, egyptian and other history, with the bible and
with myths from all over the world, and with what is known of climate changes, vulcano eruptions, analyses of Greenland ice cores and the
probability of impacts of comets and asteroids. The 1628 BC event may or may not be explained by the Santorini explosion, and perhaps
it caused the 10 plagues of Egypt and the exodus. The 540 AD event coincided with plagues in Constantinople, "dry fog", very pale sun
and famine and with the myths of king Arthur. What caused this to happen? Baillie examines the various lines of evidence and ends up with
collisions with comets and asteroids as the most likely explanation. Will it happen again and what should we do? Stock up on food like in
Egypt under Moses before exodus or hit the comets with nuclear weapons?
Steven Zoraster (szz@zycor.lgc.com) from Austin, Texas , April 24, 1999
And excellent contribution to modern catastrophe theory
I found this book both entertaining and informative. The author, Professor Mike Baillie, an expert in "dendrochronology" and
palaeoecology from Queen's University, Belfast, provides a fascinating scientific detective story. The story starts with the description of a
collaborative effort - over many decades - by scientists in several countries to develop a complete record of world-wide, climate
modulated, annual tree growth as recorded in tree rings (dendrochronology), from the present back to several thousand years BC. The
author then notes several unusual patterns in these records, separated by hundreds of years, which point to multi-year events with very
poor growing conditions. This sets up the principal story in the Exodus to Arthur, as the author describes his efforts to explain these
anomalies. The Professor Baillie uses as evidence historical records left by - among others - Irish, Mediterranean, Chinese and Mayan
writers and story-tellers, and archeological evidence including boats and trees recovered from Irish bogs and well preserved building
timbers from long abandoned Anasazi pueblos in Utah. Attention is also given to those cases in which some anomalies in tree ring records
do not match well across great distances, for example, between Europe and the American southwest.
The conclusion? Well, the title gives it away, so I will not repeat it. I will say that the author does an excellent job of presenting alternative
theories, and then explaining why he finds those theories less compelling than the answer he favors. The presentation of the other theories
takes the readers on an easy to follow tour of efforts to duplicate parts or all of the dendrochronology timeline using other methods. These
methods include gathering and analysis of ice-cores collected in Greenland, the dating of volcano eruptions by radiocarbon methods, and
using archeological evidence to note similarities or differences in tools, clothing, burial practices and trade goods between spatially
separated cultures. In addition, the author explains his own disagreement with recent attempts to re-arrange the "standard" chronology for
the ancient cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Exodus to Arthur is one of many recently published books on "catastrophe theory" aimed at "popular" - and not necessarily scientifically
trained - audiences. This book is the best one I have read. It appears to me that publishers and editors for these books are demanding
"human-interest stories" presenting the thoughts and emotions of the author(s) as they performed their research. Apparently most scientists
do not have the skill to write a human-interest story and still present compelling scientific arguments. Professor Baillie pulls off the trick of
mixing the personal with the scientific almost seamlessly, probably because he has a good sense of humor, which comes through in his
writing.
>
[Thanks to Tim for that]
Mqurice
PS: Yes thanks Bux, it was a great trip. But got tired and we headed home [it was getting cold, wet and dark in the northern hemisphere]. |
