Truck and Barter

Global warming has nothing to do with human use of fossil fuels. Turns out, we can blame rocks from outer space. At least, according to Vladimir Shaidurov we can.

The Tunguska Event, sometimes known as the Tungus Meteorite is thought to have resulted from an asteroid or comet entering the earth's atmosphere and exploding. The event released as much energy as fifteen one-megaton atomic bombs. As well as blasting an enormous amount of dust into the atmosphere, felling 60 million trees over an area of more than 2000 square kilometres. Shaidurov suggests that this explosion would have caused "considerable stirring of the high layers of atmosphere and change its structure." Such meteoric disruption was the trigger for the subsequent rise in global temperatures.

Note that this comes during a time when the canonical "hockey stick" graph is coming under some serious scrutiny from The National Academies. (For completeness: Mann et. al.'s original article, the McIntyre/McKitrick page rebutting the analysis, and another paper that sort of straddles the line saying that Mann and company underestimated variation in historical temperatures, but current warming is beyond past records.)

(Note: X-Files fans should remember this.)