Some meteorologists will tell you that a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing could trigger a chain reaction that starts a thunderstorm in Manhattan.

But until recently it was thought that a 33-foot-wide (10-meter-wide) meteor crashing through Earth's upper atmosphere would have little effect.

Now an unlikely team of researchers and a million-to-one observance of such an event are telling another story: When meteors vaporize in our atmosphere, they leave behind much more debris than scientists previously thought.

This cosmic dust may, in turn, affect our planet's atmosphere.

Date and Time:
Sunday, August 12, 2012 at 10:47:06 UTC

Sunday, August 12, 2012 at 06:47:06 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
35.681°N, 82.516°E

Depth:
11 km (6.8 miles)

Region:
XINJIANG-XIZANG BORDER REGION

Distances:
282 km (175 miles) ESE of Hotan, China

481 km (298 miles) ENE of Leh, India

549 km (341 miles) SSE of Aral, China

560 km (347 miles) ESE of Shache, China

Next to people HAARPing on about scalar weapons and UFOs, so-called 'chemtrails' are probably one of the most talked about topics in the alt.net community. The proliferation of pseudo-scientific nonsense has exploded online to the point that every time an unusual weather event or natural disaster occurs, you just know it won't be long before chemtrails or HAARP or both will be brought up. I'm well aware that the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program is high military stuff, but its purpose is to mess with people's minds, not mess with the weather. And messing with your mind may definitely include inducing you to believe, against the evidence, that the government is "in control of the weather." Certainly, there is some kind of atmospheric spraying going on in many places, but this activity is mainly aimed at 1) providing a bounce screen for HAARP mind control waves; 2) providing fuel for the rumors that the government is in control by dribbling a few toxic substances onto the masses which 3) can make people sick and thus more susceptible to the mind control waves.

Just today, Laura received a question from a reader of her books who is unfamiliar with the work published on SOTT.NET that deals more directly with real-world issues, and both the question and answer are so succinct in respect of this topic, I'm going to include it right here at the beginning before I go into details.

Reader Question: Could the earthquakes in Iran [see here] and the "dryness" be caused by seismic and climatic high tech weapons?

Answer: Earthquakes could possibly be caused by satellite based weapons. Weather issues, I'm afraid, are not. Weather is nonlinear and nobody in his right mind would meddle with it. Obviously they try to, but with very limited results and it usually backfires on them. Their inputs are just so small they don't perturb the system very much. (The same applies to "anthropogenic global warming".) Plus, notice the most important clue: that the weather is changing dramatically on the other planets in our solar system which suggests a more "cosmic" cause. Also notice the other interesting phenomena such as increasing volcanic eruptions (keep in mind that 75% of the planet's volcanoes are under water and appear to be erupting with greater frequency lately), sinkholes, torrential rains, landslides everywhere on a scale previously unknown, heating of the troposphere from internal heat of the earth, combined with cooling and sinking of the stratosphere, comet/meteor dust loading of the stratosphere resulting in noctilucent clouds being seen further south than ever before. Then, there is the meandering of the jet stream. Put that together with the really sad performance of the sun during this solar maximum, the puzzling decrease of the Earth's magnetic field, the increase in electrical activity, including the now well-known "mysterious sounds" phenomena, and you get the impression that something outside the solar system or at least at the edges of it, is "grounding the current flow" through all the planets and things are definitely getting interesting.

That describes the situation in a nutshell. And naturally, the PTB would like all of you to believe that they are behind all of this sort of thing with the exception of global warming which is, of course, YOUR fault, not theirs! As SOTT has pointed out again and again, historically, when a people begin to perceive that the cosmos is "against them", their first - and natural - reaction is to find a scapegoat, and the most obvious one is, of course, their leaders. During repeating periods in history when famines, earthquakes, plagues have struck and taken a heavy toll, when volcanoes erupt or comets blaze across the sky or meteor storms and weather anomalies increase, the target has always and ever been the ruling classes, going back to the most ancient times when the king was ritually sacrificed to appease the Storm Gods in their various appearances.

It is no different now. Just as the PTB would like you to think that they are "hiding the truth about aliens because they are in cahoots with them" or that the aerial phenomena that many think are "aliens" is just "secret government experiments", because they know what happens when the rulers appear to be being chastised by the "gods", so is it exactly the same in respect of their helplessness in the face of planetary and cosmic phenomena.

Getting on with our topic: a couple of things ought to be clarified at the outset. Weather modification involves cloud seeding, usually to encourage rainfall in drought-stricken areas, and has been practiced since the 1950s. Geo-engineering covers a number of crazy ideas, some of which are apparently being put into practice. It's the Franken-science of global warmists who are fronting money for experiments they hope will re-modify the climate back to the way they believe it was before. It's absolutely nuts of course. Not only do they not understand how weather/climate is created to begin with; they intend to mess with it to 'save the planet'. The richly dark irony here is that their bright ideas may actually contribute to speeding up the climate shift into an ice age.

• Two quakes hit northwest Iran near city of Tabriz
• Quakes were 6.4 and 6.3 in magnitude
• Casualties may rise as rescuers reach new areas on Sunday
• Some 16,000 people given emergency shelter

Two powerful earthquakes killed 250 people and injured around 1,800 in northwest Iran, where rescue workers frantically combed the rubble of dozens of villages throughout the night and into Sunday as medical staff desperately tried to save lives.

Thousands huddled in makeshift camps or slept in the streets after Saturday's quakes in fear of more aftershocks, 40 of which have already struck.

Casualty figures are expected to rise, Iranian officials said, as some of the injured were in critical condition while others were still trapped under the rubble inaccessible to rescue workers hampered by darkness in the first hours after the quakes.

Six villages were destroyed and about 60 sustained more than 50 percent damage, Iranian media reported. About 110 villages were damaged in the quakes, Deputy Interior Minister Hassan Ghadami was quoted by Fars as saying.

Photographs posted on Iranian news websites showed numerous bodies, including children, lying on the floor of a white-tiled morgue in the town of Ahar and medical staff treating the injured in the open air as dusk fell.

A sinkhole has closed lanes to north- and southbound traffic on Colorado 67 north of Cripple Creek as crews work to determine its severity.

According to the Colorado Department of Transportation, crews closed the area between mile markers 53 and 56 around 10:30 a.m. Saturday and are diverting traffic to local county roads.

Drivers also are encouraged to use a detour in place at Teller County Road 82.

The hole was originally called in at 2 feet wide, but, according to a report by The (Colorado Springs) Gazette, when crews arrived it had grown to about 5 feet wide and 20 feet deep.


The picturesque Camargue, France is home to numerous salt flats. It is this concentration of salt that will occasionally stain red the regions normally blue water.

At first glance, it might look like a sign of the apocalypse - but scientists say the blood red lakes in southern France are actually a natural phenomenon.

Camargue, France is a river delta where the Rhône meets the sea. The picturesque area is home to numerous salt flats, and it is this concentration of salt that will occasionally stain red the regions normally blue water.

A photographer driving through the region recently stopped to chronicle the incredible blood-red color of the water and the trillions of salt crystals crusting rocks, branches and shoreline.

Madrid - Officials said Saturday that a wildfire thought to be under control on a Spanish island is now spreading, threatening a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Regional agriculture spokeswoman Nancy Melo said flames on the Canary Island of La Gomera were encroaching on Garajonay National Park, which contains forests "of incalculable ecological value."

The government of the Canary Islands said in a Friday night statement that the fire had now intensified, and another blaze had started on the neighbouring island of Tenerife, with some 400 residents evacuated from the island's west.

Los Angeles, California - Temperatures are soaring into triple digits across the western United States as a continuing heat wave strained energy supplies and sent thousands to beaches, lakes and shopping malls in search of cooler climes.

A large and forceful high pressure system pushed the mercury to roughly 10 degrees above normal across the west Saturday.

California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Montana all reported higher than normal temperatures. Authorities in numerous states issued warnings for everything from fire danger to energy use to dehydration - and even to be on lookout for hungry bears.

David Sweet, meteorologist for the National Weather Service, says relief is in sight - the high pressure system is drifting east. By Tuesday, temperatures should be back to normal.

Source: The Associated Press

Northwestern Iran was struck Saturday by a series of major earthquakes and strong aftershocks, as state TV reported at least 180 dead, 1,350 injured and at least six villages leveled.Officials asked residents in affected areas to stay outdoors through the night, the Fars news agency reported.The U.S. Geological Survey put the first earthquake, which struck midday, at magnitude 6.4, followed by a 6.3 quake. There were numerous aftershocks, registering as high as magnitude 5.0.

1800 years ago Taupo volcano in New Zealand had the largest volcanic eruption in the world for the last 5000 years. Taupo ejected over 30 cubic kilometers of material including a pyroclastic flow that moved at 600-900km/hr, traveling up mountains to a height of 1500m .

But even that massive eruption was dwarfed by the huge Taupo eruption just 26,500 years ago which plunged the earth into a volcanic winter & wiped out 60% of the population. From Wikipedia;

The Oruanui eruption of the Taupo volcano was the world's largest known eruption in the past 70,000 years, with a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 8. It occurred around 26,500 years ago and generated approximately 430 km³ of pyroclastic fall deposits, 320 km³ of pyroclastic density current (PDC) deposits (mostly ignimbrite) and 420 km³ of primary intracaldera material, equivalent to 530 km³ of magma. ^{[4] [5] [6]}

Modern Lake Taupo partly fills the caldera generated during this eruption.

Tephra from the eruption covered much of the central North Island with ignimbrite up to 200 metres deep. Most of New Zealand was affected by ash fall, with even an 18 cm ash layer left on the Chatham Islands, 1,000 km away. Later erosion and sedimentation had long-lasting effects on the landscape, and caused the Waikato River to shift from the Hauraki Plains to its current course through the Waikato to the Tasman Sea.