The Toba supervolcanic eruption about 74,000 years ago was one of the most colossal eruptions in the past 2 million years.

The massive eruption at the site of present-day Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia spewed an estimated 1,000 times as much rock as the 1980 eruption of Mt St Helens and, many believe, triggered a decade-long “volcanic winter” and a millenia-long glacial period.

This so-called Toba catastrophe theory left the global human population with just a few thousand survivors.

However, an ancient stone tool industry uncovered at Dhaba in northern India suggests that humans have continuously occupied the Middle Son Valley for roughly 80,000 years, both before and after the Toba eruption.

“Populations at Dhaba were using stone tools that were similar to the toolkits being used by Homo sapiens in Africa at the same time,” explains archaeologist Chris Clarkson from the University of Queensland.

“The fact that these toolkits did not disappear at the time of the Toba super-eruption or change dramatically soon after indicates that human populations survived the so-called catastrophe.”

At about the same time as the Toba eruption, our species was also going through a genetic bottleneck, an unmistakable drop in human genetic diversity, and the eruption seemed like a plausible cause for this drop in diversity.

But the authors say the thousands of stone tools found in Dhaba suggest that humans migrated out of Africa and expanded across Eurasia much earlier than expected, and that the Toba eruption did not, I repeat, did not, lead to extreme cooling, nor trigger a glacial period.

The study by Clarkson et al. was published in 2019 in Nature Communications.  ( https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-14668-4 )

For the time being, I think I’ll stick with the millenia-long glacial idea. According to Wikipedia, geologist Michael R. Rampino and volcanologist Stephen Self think the eruption caused a “brief, dramatic cooling or ‘volcanic winter’”, which resulted in a drop of the global mean surface temperature by 3–5 °C. Evidence from Greenland ice cores indicates a 1,000-year period of low δ¹⁸O and increased dust deposition immediately following the eruption. The eruption may have caused this 1,000-year period of cooler temperatures (stadial), two centuries of which could be accounted for by the persistence of the Toba stratospheric loading.

https://www.sciencealert.com/ancient-human-populations-may-have-survived-one-of-the-biggest-volcanic-eruptions-in-2-million-years

https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/ancient-humans-lived-through-a-humongous-volcanic-eruption-74-000-years-ago-1.4826810

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory

The post Stone Tools Show Humans in India Survived a Massive Volcanic Eruption 74,000 Years Ago appeared first on Ice Age Now.

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February 28, 2020 at 12:31PM

The non-binding unenforceable Paris agreement was always a theatre show on the international stage, where most countries promise to do nothing, and the rest make promises they don’t keep. But it’s an excuse for the domestic Deep State to do whatever they want.

The zero carbon goal by 2050 was also a Grand Theater Promise. But here the two symbolic acts of nothingness met like anti-matter and threaten to blow up an economy.

Climate campaigners win Heathrow expansion case

By Tom Espiner, BBC

Controversial plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport have been thrown into doubt after a court ruling.

The government’s decision to allow the expansion was unlawful because it did not take climate commitments into account, the Court of Appeal said.  Heathrow said it would challenge the decision, but the government said it would not appeal.

The judges said that in future, a third runway could go ahead, as long as it fits with the UK’s climate policy.

Since when were Judges appointed to decide if an elected government stuck to its policies? Isn’t that what the voters are supposed to do?

Fears Heathrow eco-bombshell could pose a threat […]

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February 28, 2020 at 10:51AM

German t-online.de news portal here reports how yesterday large areas of central and southern Germany saw the power fail yesterday due to “snow and storms.”

Yesterday late evening’s storm and its winds led to wild fluctuation in the European power grid at around 8 p.m. The grid frequency critically dropped well below the 50 Hz value, which meant more power was being consumed than generated.

Und schon wieder ein Rekordausschlag bei der Frequenz um 20 Uhr: 49,856 Hz. Damit wurden 2/3 der Reserve eingesetzt . Bei 49,80 Hz treten die erste Lastabwürfe ein. pic.twitter.com/YkRWonjmMA

— HerbertSaurugg (@herbertsaurugg) February 27, 2020

In English: “And again a record low peak frequency at 8 p.m.: 49.856 Hz. That’s two-thirds of the reserve power used. At 49.80 Hz the first load drops occur.”

That means had the frequency dropped just a bit more, possible emergency grid switchoffs would have been needed, and so a widespread blackout was narrowly avoided.

The blackouts that did occur led to “many disruptions” to rail and auto transportation, t-online writes.

As of the time of writing this article 12:55 CET, hours-long power outages continued to hamper much of southern Germany:

Image screenshot: https://stromausfall.org

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February 28, 2020 at 10:26AM