b'Branch newsASEG newshad banked up over the past two years. which is absolutely mind blowing warming isnt such a terrible thing, is it? It took me less than a nanosecond toand casts doubt on human-causedAccording to Michaels models, the next oblige as I broke all manner of recordsglobal warming. Michael alluded to theice age should occur by 2100. Im 100% to secure a guest speaker for our firsttemporal coincidence of the fall of theconfident I wont be around to witness it, in-person technical meeting night inRoman Empire, mass famine, the Blackbut Im sure aliens would have invaded over five months. Enter Ian Neilson,Death and even witch persecutionsthe Earth by then (fingers crossed).chief geologist of First AU and director ofwith phases of cooling or ice ages, andI certainly hope members took PGN Geosciences, whose talk The Landfurther observed that social phenomenaadvantage of the eased restrictions at that Time Forgot: The Victorian Easternsuch as the Renaissance, Scholasticisminterstate borders to avail themselves Goldfields, drew a mighty audienceand the Age of Enlightenment occurredof travel during the festive holidays to to the Kelvin Club on the night of 25during warmer periods. See? Globalvisit family and friends. I managed to November 2021. I pulled out all the stops for a grand re-opening, hired a string quartet and even booked Tom Gleeson for the half-time entertainment. I was advised to spend money like it was going out of fashion!Ian is a prospector/explorer/great buddy/entrepreneur who presented to members that night his vision for renewed gold exploration in eastern Victoria. Ian even brought in a sample tray of diamond core from his latest drilling campaign to show the audience what a bonanza gold grade intersection looked like. Frankly, under the poor lighting and my unwillingness to touch the core samples (who knows how many other geos have spat on that core for a more thorough look?), I honestly saw mostly pyrite . Ian has a number of projects he is working on at the moment that aim to demonstrate the upside potential of eastern Victoria. Dare I say, he might actually already have an elephant by the tail.The ASEG/PESA/SPE Christmas luncheon at the Kelvin Club.Despite splurging away half the branch coffers in one night, I did not stop there. Victoria Branch joined PESA and SPE to throw a titanic Christmas luncheon with Michael Asten, perennial ASEG ringleader, past President and my old university professor in a previous life, as guest speaker with his key address Synchronous natural climate cycles of the past millennium in central Europe, the Arctic and east Asia; what do they tell us about global temperature change?, presented to hungry, loud-munching geoscientists and engineers on 15 December 2021 at the Kelvin Club. It was a sensational turnout, albeit rather sombre without a string quartet.Michael presented proxy temperature cycles in datasets from European glaciations and agricultural records from China. The correlation of synchronous spectral peaks in these regional temperature datasets with the detection of global cosmic ray flux gives support to the idea that natural climate cycles are partially under astronomical controlProfessor Michael Asten addressing the Victorian Branchs Christmas luncheon at the Kelvin Club.FEBRUARY 2022 PREVIEW 8'