George Howard, on his web site www.cosmictusk.com has posted this 2007 article as it appears to tie in with the latest offering from Bill Napier. ‘The case for significant numbers of extraterrestrial impacts through the late Holocene’ by Mike Baillie (a speaker at several SIS meetings and events). It can be downloaded in pdf format from the web site – see menu on LH side. Baillie conforms to the Clube and Napier model of recent astronomical history and begins with the 1908 Tunguska event, and leads to other possible astronomical strikes against the earth (or atmosphere). He asks the question, when astronomers tell us there have been numerous impacts from space during the last 5000 years, when impact craters exist inland and more impacts can be assumed over the oceans, why are historians, archaeologist and palaeontologists not searching for evidence of them. The answer of course is that the majority of scientists are loathe to raise their heads above the parapet – a feature that is only too observable in the current AGW scare.
After examining evidence of cratering and noting the oceans cover most of the earth’s surface he turns to Ted Bryant (2001) who has collected evidence in Australia for tsunami events, some of which potentially have an extraterrestrial origin. One hundred ton slabs of rock were lifted onto the tops of 30m high cliffs – difficult to associate with tsunamis induced by underwater tectonic events (such as the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman fault earthquake and tsunami). Baillie picks on two dates – tsunamis at 3300BC and 500AD. It so happens, he says, there is evidence from the Shetlands of a tsunami around 3500BC and 450AD. In southern Iberia (Spain and Portugal) there have been at least 20 tsunami events in the last 7,000 years (including a high energy event at 3450-3250BC. At the same time (Caseldine, 2005) noted that peats formed on Ireland’s Achill Island and are dated to 3250-3150BC while Baillie himself (and Brown)(2002) draw attention to an extreme low growth tree ring event at 3200BC (from Ireland to Switzerland, Britain and Greenland etc) which is suggestive of changes in the Atlantic weather pattern while the GISP 2 ice core (1994) had evidence of an exceptional sulphate event at the same time. At other periods of time dating evidence of catastrophe is indicated – but features are difficult to pin down or date conclusively. For example, an impact crater in Estonia is dated between 800 and 400BC – and others have suggested a date as early as 1500BC. He then turns to his favourite subject, the 540s AD event. The GRIP ice core displayed evidence of large imports of ammonium in the 540s – but there were ammonium spikes in 150BC and AD1642. In AD1014 there was also an ammonium spike – and historical references to a falling cloud – coinciding with the great sea flood on St Michael’s mass eve. Some of this material is enlarged upon in his book, New Light on the Black Death.