Adolf Hitler alive: weird conspiracy theories

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/6242144/Adolf-Hitler-alive-weird-conspiracy-theories.html

Adolf Hitler alive: weird conspiracy theories
The discovery that the skull believed to be Adolf Hitler's was actually a woman's has reignited conspiracy theories.
By Tom Chivers
29 Sep 2009

Rumours of Hitler’s survival have been widespread for years, with some even claiming he is alive today.

While that is unlikely – the Nazi leader would celebrate his 121st birthday in April – the possibility that he made it out of the Berlin bunker has been seriously put forward on several occasions. Here are four of the strangest theories.

Hitler fled on a 'ghost convoy' to Argentina

Several prominent Nazis – including 'architect of the Holocaust' Adolf Eichmann and Dr Josef Mengele, the 'Angel of Death' – certainly did flee to Argentina.

And the arrival of two U-Boats in the South American country in the weeks after the war led to more speculation that Hitler joined his former underlings there. But Heinz Schäffer, one of the officers on the U-Boats, has alwas strenuously denied being part of a 'ghost convoy'.

The two U-Boats, U-530 and U-977, surrendered at Mar del Plata in Argentina in July and August 1945 respectively.

Hitler 'fled to Antarctica in a U-Boat'

Among the theories of Hitler's whereabouts after the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945 was that he was smuggled out of Germany and onto a U-Boat.

From there, the story goes, the Nazi leader was taken to a secret military base in Antarctic. In the late 1950s British and American forces found the base and destroyed it with atomic weapons.

The theory falls down on three major points. One, there was never a German military presence in Antarctica, despite a pre-war mission there to see whether a whaling base would be feasible.

Two, while the two U-Boats mentioned above did arrive in Argentina after the war, they could not possibly have made it to Antarctica. The sea ice in the winter blocks all access to the land where any base would have been.

Three, while atomic bombs were detonated in the southern hemisphere in 1958, they were atmospheric tests, hundreds of miles above the surface of the Earth. All three took place between 1400 and 2150 miles north of Antarctica.

Using secret rocket technology, Hitler fled to a Nazi base on the moon

The point when Hitler conspiracy theories lose touch with reality altogether. The Nazis' development late in the war of high-technology weapons – including the V2, an early ballistic missile, and the Me 262 jet fighter – inspired some to believe that Germany had secretly won the space race.

It was also suggested that the Nazis had made contact with UFOs and that they had made it to the Moon as early as 1942. Furthermore, Russian and American astronauts actually made it there in the 1950s, and stayed at a Nazi lunar base.

For added measure, it is claimed that the Moon is perfectly habitable for humans, but that NASA claims it is barren and airless in order to stop Third World countries visiting it.

Hitler is alive and well and staying in San Diego

Well, not really. This one is a joke – but there is a structure, visible on Google Maps, that might make you think otherwise. A barracks building in the US Navy base in San Diego's Coronado island, known as the 'Seal's Lair', is very definitely in the shape of a swastika.

In 2007, the US Navy said it was going to redesign the 1960s-built edifice, spending around $600,000 (£375,000) to make it less master-racy. They admitted they noticed the shape when it was built, but didn't think anyone would spot it from the ground.

It’s getting warmer in Antarctica

http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/01/21/its-getting-warmer-in-antarctica/

It’s getting warmer in Antarctica
By Pete Spotts
01.21.09

For years Antarctica has been AWOL when it comes to continent-wide evidence of warming temperatures. Serious warming appeared limited to the Antarctic Peninsula, a mountainous finger of land jutting north toward South America.

No longer, if results from a new study hold up.

The continent is still bitingly frigid and largely a desert. The average annual temperature for the interior is -58 degrees Farhenheit. Along the coast, it ranges from 5 to 14 degrees F.

But over the past 50 years, the continent as a whole has warmed (or grown less cold, if you like) by an average of 0.2 degrees F. per decade, according to a team led by Eric Steig, a geochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle. The pace is comparable to the rate of warming the southern hemisphere as a whole has undergone during that time, the team notes.

Warming usually seen on the Antarctic Peninsula now appears to extend across all of West Antarctica. The team estimated that temperatures on the peninsula have risen by 0.2 degrees F. per decade. West Antarctica has warmed at a rate of 0.3 degrees F. per decade. And East Antarctica has warmed at a 0.18 degrees F. per decade pace.

The team is a reluctant to unequivocally point a finger at human-triggered global warming just yet. A 50-year record is too short to allow researchers to sort out the relative contribution of human and natural influences to the trends they see at the bottom of the world.

Still, the results “are consistent with the general warming we get from greenhouse gases,” says Drew Shindell, a climate-modeler at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Dr. Shindell is a member of the research team.

An understatement?

Indeed, the results may understate warming in some areas, suggests Gareth Marshall, a climatologist with the British Antarctic Survey. In an email exchange, he notes that the rate of warming as measured by stations on the Antarctic Peninsula have been somewhat higher than the rate Steig and his colleagues derived.

Still, he offers, the new results illustrate “that over the past 50 years overall, Antarctica has warmed at a similar rate to the rest of the Southern Hemisphere. This suggests that Antarctica, like the six other continents, is being affected by anthropogenic climate change.”

Portions of the new results appear to enjoy the beginnings of independent confirmation. A team of scientists from Swansea University and the British Antarctic Survey have found that temperatures at one location in West Antarctica have risen by 0.17 degrees C per decade since 1930. That’s virtually identical to the rate Steig’s team found for West Antarctica as well.

The British results are estimates based on temperature measurements the team made at various depths in a bore hole they drilled into the Rutford Ice Stream in West Antarctica. The hole is 1,000 feet deep. The results have been accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Review Letters.

But one bore hole isn’t representative of a region, as the researchers readily acknowledge. They call on colleagues to make similar measurements to better pin down the rates and geographic reach of warming in West Antarctica.

Still, the two efforts “complement each other in a very nice way,” notes Brian Barrett, the lead author on the Geophysical Review Letters paper.

How they gathered their numbers

Steig and his colleagues had more data to work with. But they faced a problem. Of the 42 stations with records dating as far back as 1957 (the International Geophysical Year), only two sit within the continent’s interior. The rest dot the continent’s coast. So the team also tapped data from 65 temporary stations that scientists set up periodically for a few years as they conducted research away from long-established sites.

But that’s still sparse for an entire continent. So the team tapped satellite data to look at the continent as a whole. Measurements from on high only reach back 25 years. So the team used a statistical approach it developed to turn data from ground and space into a 50-year reconstruction of temperature trends.

Like Dr. Barrett, Steig encourages colleagues to begin taking more bore-hole measurements as an independent test of the results.

Even if the warming rate the team claims for East Antarctica — higher and colder than the western part of the continent — turns out to be more ify than results for other regions of the continent, the results for West Antarctica alone should be a wake-up call, researchers agree. This is the area where large ice shelves are breaking up and the region’s ice sheet is thought to be the most vulnerable to melting over the coming centuries if industrial greenhouse-gas emissions and deforestation remain unchecked.