"Only the mass media can put the kind of pressure on TEPCO and the Japanese government to bring about major change. This will cost at least 10 billion dollars if not 20-30 billion to clean up. It will take at least 10 years if not 20 and roughly 10,000 people working on the cleanup. The nuclear business is global. This needs an international effort to clean up Fukushima."
-- Nuclear Engineer Akira Tokuhiro

In an email today, Japanese born, U.S.-educated nuclear engineering professor Tokuhiro wrote the following:

I want to bring up a sensitive point to many who are (may be) identified below.

There is a difference amongst the following: nuclear physicist, nuclear engineer, nuclear reactor operator, nuclear non-proliferation specialist.

During the current crisis, all these 'experts' have been in the media.

The ranking of 'experts' who REALLY know how the reactor accident took place is as follows.

1) Nuclear reactor operator (he/she is really the forensic surgeon, the auto mechanic who can build and drive the car)

2) Nuclear engineer (he/she is the forensic and internal/external medicine practitioner; the automobile design and analysis engineer)

As for the other two, they only understand the principles. It is as if they know the principles of driving a car but have never driven the car nor designed a car nor repaired a car.

Would you ask a podiatrist about a medical heart condition? Would you ask a medical ethicist? I think you get my point.

It takes all kinds of people to run the global nuclear industry. However, who do you trust in terms of knowledge?

As the Mississippi River reaches historic crests, the flood control system designed to protect property is instead destroying crops, homes and businesses that will cost billions of dollars and require months of recovery efforts, flood experts and conservationists say.

Nicaragua's Telica volcano is sending a huge plume of gas and ash spewing into the sky.

Venezuela President Hugo Chavez has extended for 90 days in seven states and parts of Caracas a state of emergency called in response to violent rainfalls in late 2010 that may return this year.

The states included in the decree are Vargas, Miranda, Zulia, Falcon, Merida, Trujillo and Nueva Esparta, state media reported late Tuesday. Officials last ordered the state of emergency to be prolonged in February, according to the release.

After an extremely dry winter, spring storms are bringing abundant moisture to metro Denver.

Severe weather erupted by early afternoon along the urban corridor, as funnel clouds were spotted in Adams and Broomfield counties, prompting two Tornado Warnings.

A storm system slowly meandering from the central Rockies into the Plains could bring heavy rain to parts of Nebraska on Thursday, with rain chances continuing into next week.

AccuWeather said cool air arriving on the southern Plains with this system will clash with warmer, moist air flowing in from the Gulf of Mexico, setting the stage for hit-and-miss storms with heavy rain, large hail and wind gusts past 40 mph.

Some isolated tornadoes cannot be ruled out from the strongest of storms, forecasters said.

A mudslide caused the side of a hill to drop 25 feet Wednesday morning. Homeowner Bettie Keith said she heard the sounds of the trees and telephone poles falling. For months, Keith said the ground has been slowly cracking and she has been talking with Cabell Huntington Hospital representatives.

Extreme weather events, such as the heavy rains that recently flooded the Mississippi River and the tornadoes that ripped through an unprecendented 300 mile swath in Alabama, are extremely likely to occur more frequently in the future.

This is prompting local governments to prepare for the impact of climate change, according to scientists and adaptation experts participating in a telephone press conference held yesterday by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

Date-Time:
Thursday, May 19, 2011 at 20:15:23 UTC

Thursday, May 19, 2011 at 11:15:23 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
39.115°N, 29.124°E

Depth:
4.6 km (2.9 miles) (poorly constrained)

Region:
WESTERN TURKEY

Distances:
53 km (32 miles) NNW of Usak, Turkey

82 km (50 miles) WSW of Kutahya, Turkey

120 km (74 miles) S of Bursa, Turkey

332 km (206 miles) WSW of ANKARA, Turkey

From California to England to India, people have periodically reported a fishy form of precipitation: small animals, such as fish, frogs, and snakes have occasionally fallen unexpectedly from the sky, sometimes miles away from water. Waterspouts whirling over lakes or oceans can suck water and whatever is in it up into the clouds above them. The strong winds of these storm clouds can carry their flopping cargo long distances before dumping them on unsuspecting people below.

For centuries, people have reported an electrical oddity invading their homes, usually during thunderstorms. Balls of light, ranging from the size of a golfball to a football, occasionally float through the air during storms, undoubtedly surprising anyone they happen to encounter. Known as ball lightning, they have no smell and emit no heat and little sound. They generally disappear with a ?pop? when they encounter something electrical, like a television, though they occasionally explode more violently, sometimes starting fires. These glowing spheres not only mystify those who happen to encounter them, but scientists as well?as yet, there is no prevailing explanation for how ball lightning forms.

Showers of blood falling from the sky may sound like something out of a Hollywood horror film, but such scarlet-tinted rains have been reported since ancient Roman times. Though they often horrified the people they fell upon, these rains were not actually blood?they were caused by dust or sand blown into the atmosphere and carried long distances by strong winds, eventually mixing with rain clouds and coloring the rain. In Europe, these red rains are usually dyed by dust carried across the continent from Saharan sand storms. (Other colored rains have also been spotted and seem to be caused by similar sources: pollens can create a startling yellow rain, dust from coal mines and ominous black rain, and some dusts a milky white rain.)