Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Snow, Wind, Rain: Winter Storm Blankets U.S.

Ned Potter
ABC News
Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:58 UTC
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© Mike Groll//AP PhotoA pedestrian walks on a snow-covered street during the area's first winter storm in Albany, N.Y.
Dangerous Road Conditions, School Closings in Much of the Country

It's a mess. A fierce winter storm slogged eastward across the U.S. today, bringing a foot of snow to the Midwest, pelting rain to the eastern seaboard, 50 mph winds, slippery road conditions and hundreds of school closings.

The National Centers for Environmental Prediction called it a "significant winter storm" -- never mind that the winter solstice is still 12 days away. Over the last three days, it said, there have been 17 inches of snow in Madison, Wisc., and 15 inches in Winterset, Iowa.

In Omaha, Neb., a 28-year-old woman was reportedly killed overnight when a pickup truck, plowing out of the parking lot of an apartment complex, accidentally backed over her.
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Bizarro Earth

Hawaii sees highest surf in decades


United Press International
Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:01 UTC
Honolulu - Extremely high waves on the Hawaiian islands of Oahu and Maui have attracted thousands of surfers and onlookers, clogging traffic in the area, observers say.

Rip Curl Pro Pipeline Masters
© UPI Photo/Pierre Tostee/ASP TosteeSpectators watch massive waves crash at the venue for the Rip Curl Pro Pipeline Masters at the Banzai pipeline on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii on December 13, 2004.. The contest was placed on hold due to stormy surf conditions which rocked the North Shore. The Rip Curl Pipeline Masters is the final event for the men on the 2004 Fosters ASP World Championship Tour and features the top 45 surfers and three wild card entrants. .
Surf lovers jammed Oahu's Kamehameha Highway and packed every inch of the North Shore beach Monday as waves as high as 40 feet pounded the shore, while massive, 50-foot waves were predicted for Tuesday, Hawaii Magazine reported.

The magazine said this winter's first round of swells was already being considered the best in many years, perhaps decades. It reported that at Maui's north shore Peahi Beach -- also known as "Jaws" for its big winter waves -- surfers were citing swells of up to 50 feet from crest to trough.
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Ladybug

Homosexual selection: The power of same-sex liaisons

Kate Douglas
New Scientist
Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:11 UTC
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© Tui De Roy/Minden Pictures/FLPAFemale Laysan albatrosses on the Hawaiian island of Oahu pair off with other females.
Not long ago, the news was full of reports about two male Humboldt penguins at a zoo in Germany that adopted an egg, hatched it and reared the chick together. It seems like every time you turn around, the media spotlight has fallen on another example of same-sex liaisons in the animal kingdom.

In the past few years, the ubiquity of such behaviour has become apparent. This summer evolutionary biologists Marlene Zuk and Nathan Bailey from the University of California, Riverside, published a paper on the subject that included examples from dozens of species ranging from dung flies and woodpeckers to bison and macaques.

That is just the beginning of the story. The burning question is why same-sex behaviour would evolve at all when it runs counter to evolutionary principles. But does it? In fact there are many good reasons for same-sex sexual behaviour. What's more, Zuk and Bailey suggest that in a species where it is common, it is an important driving force in evolution.
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Meteor

Dinosaur-killing impact set Earth to broil, not burn

Jeff Hecht
New Scientist
Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:01 UTC
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© Don Davis/NASADebris kicked up by a large asteroid rained back down on the Earth, heating up as it fell. But new research suggests that the first debris to re-enter the atmosphere shielded the surface from the heat of later infalling debris, preventing the world's forests from igniting
The asteroid impact that ended the age of dinosaurs 65 million years ago didn't incinerate life on our planet's surface - it just broiled it, a new study suggests. The work resolves nagging questions about a theory that the impact triggered deadly wildfires around the world, but it also raises new questions about just what led to the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period.

The impact of a 10-kilometre asteroid is blamed for the extinction of the dinosaurs and most other species on the planet. Early computer models showed that more than half of the debris blasted into space by the impact would fall into the atmosphere within eight hours.

The models predicted the rain of shock-heated debris would radiate heat as intensely as an oven set to "broil" (260 °C) for at least 20 minutes, and perhaps a couple of hours. Intense heating for that long would heat wood to its ignition temperature, causing global wildfires.
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Sun

Copenhagen climate summit: global warming 'caused by sun's radiation'

Louise Gray
Telegraph
Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:34 UTC
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© Reuters
Global warming is caused by radiation from the sun, according to a leading scientist speaking out at an alternative "sceptics' conference" in Copenhagen.

As the world gathered in the Danish capital for the UN Climate Change Conference, more than 50 scientists, businessmen and lobby groups met to discuss the arguments against man made global warming.

Although the meeting was considerably smaller than the official gathering of 15,000 people meeting down the road, the organisers claimed it could change the course of negotiations.
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Bulb

The climate-change travesty

George F. Will
The Washington Post
Sun, 06 Dec 2009 17:22 UTC
With 20,000 delegates, advocates and journalists jetting to Copenhagen for planet Earth's last chance, the carbon footprint of the global warming summit will be the only impressive consequence of the climate-change meeting. Its organizers had hoped that it would produce binding caps on emissions, global taxation to redistribute trillions of dollars, and micromanagement of everyone's choices.

China, nimble at the politics of pretending that is characteristic of climate-change theater, promises only to reduce its "carbon intensity" -- carbon emissions per unit of production. So China's emissions will rise.

Barack Obama, understanding the histrionics required in climate-change debates, promises that U.S. emissions in 2050 will be 83 percent below 2005 levels. If so, 2050 emissions will equal those in 1910, when there were 92 million Americans. But there will be 420 million Americans in 2050, so Obama's promise means that per capita emissions then will be about what they were in 1875. That. Will. Not. Happen.
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Bizarro Earth

US: Big Storm Brings Heavy Snow and Strong Winds to Upper Midwest

Melanie S. Welte
The Associated Press
Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:10 UTC
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© AP PhotoScotti Carver sweeps snow from the roof and windshield of his truck.
A fierce winter storm was moving into the nation's midsection Tuesday, promising to wallop the region with heavy snow and strong winds.

Officials were warning residents in parts of the west and Midwest to stay close to home.

"Anybody traveling tomorrow morning is really taking a huge risk I would say - a risk of being stranded and not having anybody be able to help you for 6 or 12 hours, probably," Karl Jungbluth, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Johnston, Iowa, said Tuesday.

The storm already blanketed much of the mountain west with snow and drenched Southern California with rain. In the Phoenix area, fierce wind brought down power lines, left four hospitals temporarily without power and created wide outages.
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Fish

Blue whale songs are getting deeper, say baffled scientists

Claire Bates
Mail Online
Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:13 UTC
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Blue whales are famed for their haunting songs that travel thousands of miles under the ocean. Now scientists have discovered the world's largest mammals are singing in deeper voices every year - and they are not sure why.

A study in the journal Endangered Species Research, has found male blue whales all over the world have lowered their tone. Mark McDonald of WhaleAcoustics first noticed the change about eight years ago when he had to shift automated blue whale song detectors off California to lower frequencies.

He decided to compare the songs in areas ranging from the North Atlantic to the Indian Ocean with the help of researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California.
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Igloo

US: Up to 4 inches of snow in the foothills coming, a light dusting in Sacramento

Loretta Kalb
The Sacramento Bee
Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:47 UTC
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© Paul Kitagaki Jr.
Snow is coming to the Sacramento Valley -- but only a light dusting is expected on the streets of Sacramento. The National Weather Service said today that 2-4 inches of snow is expected to fall at the 1,000-foot elevation, below Auburn and El Dorado Hills.

Cindy Matthews, forecaster, said a dusting of snow is likely to start in the pre-commute hours in Sacramento and should continue off and on throughout the day.

The cold storm system dropping from the northeast out of Canada will be unusual since the coldest temperatures will bypass Northern California communities such as Red Bluff and Redding but drop Sacramento Valley temperatures Monday to a record 27 degrees.
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Bizarro Earth

Samoan Tsunami wave was 46 feet high


Associated Press
Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:47 UTC
The tsunami that killed more than 200 people in the Samoan islands and Tonga earlier this year towered up to 46 feet (14 meters) high - more then twice as tall as most of the buildings it slammed into, scientists said Friday.

New Zealand scientists studying the size, power and reach of the tsunami as part of efforts to guard against future disasters said they found up to three destructive waves were caused by the magnitude 8.0 undersea earthquake in September.

The massive waves that struck Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga totally destroyed traditional wooden buildings, many of them singly story, along the coast while reinforced concrete buildings sustained only minor damage, said Stefan Reese, a risk engineer with New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.

The waves were up to 46 feet (14 meters) high, Reese told The Associated Press. The scientists measured watermarks on buildings and trees to help confirm the height of the waves.

"In some areas there was virtually nothing left" after the waves reached up to 765 yards (700 meters) inland, Reese said.
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