Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Magnitude 5.8 - Off Coast of Northern California


United States Geological Survey
Sat, 29 Nov 2008 00:31 UTC
Date-Time

* Friday, November 28, 2008 at 13:42:18 UTC
* Friday, November 28, 2008 at 05:42:18 AM at epicenter
* Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location 40.336°N, 126.981°W

Depth 10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program

Region OFF THE COAST OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

Distances

* 229 km (142 miles) W (271°) from Petrolia, CA
* 232 km (144 miles) W (264°) from Ferndale, CA
* 239 km (148 miles) W (260°) from Humboldt Hill, CA
* 243 km (151 miles) W (259°) from Eureka, CA
* 486 km (302 miles) NW (307°) from San Francisco City Hall, CA
Image
© USGS
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Bizarro Earth

5.4 Earthquake recorded off coast of California


Associated Press
Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:04 UTC
Eureka police say they have no reports of any damage or injuries after an earthquake was recorded off the coast.

The U.S. Geological Survey says a quake with preliminary magnitude of 5.4 hit about at 5:42 a.m. Friday about 147 miles west of Eureka.
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Bizarro Earth

Magnitude 6.0 quake hits Indonesia's Sumatra

Telly Nathalia and Sanjeev Miglani
Reuters
Fri, 28 Nov 2008 22:51 UTC
Jakarta - A magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck off Indonesia's Sumatra island on Friday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, although there was no tsunami warning or reports of damage or casualties.

The quake was centered 141 km (88 miles) south southwest of Bengkulu city at a depth of 35 km, the agency said in a bulletin on its website.

An official at Indonesia's meteorology agency said the quake could be felt in Bengkulu and Lampung provinces in southern Sumatra, but there was no report of damage or casualties.
Jakarta map
© Reuters
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Bizarro Earth

Faroe islanders told to stop eating 'toxic' whales

Debora MacKenzie
New Scientist
Fri, 28 Nov 2008 22:34 UTC
Chief medical officers of the Faroe Islands have recommended that pilot whales no longer be considered fit for human consumption, because they are toxic - as revealed by research on the Faroes themselves.

The remote Atlantic islands, situated between Scotland and Iceland, have been one of the last strongholds of traditional whaling, with thousands of small pilot whales killed every year, and eaten by most Faroese.
pilot whale slaughter
© Adam Woolfitt/Robert Harding/CorbisThe traditional pilot whale slaughter may become a thing of the past.

Anti-whaling groups have long protested, but the Faroese argued that whaling is part of their culture - an argument adopted by large-scale whalers in Japan and Norway.
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Meteor

Canada: Fragments of last week's 10-tonne meteor found


The Star Phoenix
Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:24 UTC
Remnants of the 10-tonne space rock that lit up the prairie skies last week have been found near Lloydminster.
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Better Earth

Rocks evolve too, geologists claim

Randy Boswell
Canwest News Service
Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:37 UTC
A landmark scientific study co-authored by a Canadian geologist has identified a sudden explosion of mineral diversity after the emergence of life on Earth, and advanced a "revolutionary" theory that rocks have been evolving -- much like plants and animals -- throughout the planet's history.

Wouter Bleeker, an Ottawa-based researcher with the Geological Survey of Canada, is one of eight members of an international team whose theory of "mineral evolution" -- the idea that many of the Earth's rocks are dynamic "species" which emerged and transformed over time, largely in concert with living things -- is generating a major buzz in the global scientific community since its publication last week in a U.S. journal.

"The key message," Mr. Bleeker told Canwest News Service, "is how closely intertwined the mineral world is with life and biology." He said human teeth -- with their key ingredient of apatite -- are vivid reminders that the "seemingly static, inorganic" physical Earth should be viewed more like a "living organism" underpinning the biosphere.

But the new theory is also being hailed as a potential tool in the search for life on other planets since it offers new ways of perceiving the interactions between rocks and living things. Probes of distant planets should be seeking evidence of biological processes that may have shaped alien landscapes, the scientists contend.
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Phoenix

Underwater volcano found off Washington coast


Terra Daily
Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:15 UTC
Crew members of a research ship say they were surprised to find a volcano more than 10,000 feet underwater off the coast of Washington.

Jeremy Weirich, the operating officer on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ship Okeanos Explorer, said the volcano was found while crew members were testing a new mapping program on underwater topography 200 miles off the Washington coast, The Seattle Times said Monday.

"It turns out we had this great volcano in the spot we were testing," Weirich said.
The discovery of the large underwater volcano was not an entire surprise to researchers as NOAA scientists have estimated that 95 percent of the world's oceans haven't been explored.
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Igloo

410 low temperature records set in the US during the past week


Hamweather
Thu, 27 Nov 2008 07:31 UTC
US record lows
© Hamweather
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Fish

Ocean Growing More Acidic Faster Than Once Thought


Science Daily
Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:17 UTC
University of Chicago scientists have documented that the ocean is growing more acidic faster than previously thought. In addition, they have found that the increasing acidity correlates with increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a paper published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Nov. 24.

"Of the variables the study examined that are linked to changes in ocean acidity, only atmospheric carbon dioxide exhibited a corresponding steady change," said J. Timothy Wootton, the lead author of the study and Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago.
Dead mussels as well as live mussels
© C.A. Pfister, University of ChicagoDead mussels as well as live mussels with open, eroded shells are possible symptoms of stress from declining ocean pH and increasing acidity.

The increasingly acidic water harms certain sea animals and could reduce the ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide, the authors said. Scientists have long predicted that higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide would make the ocean more acidic. Nevertheless, empirical evidence of growing acidity has been limited.
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Bizarro Earth

Stubborn glaciers fail to retreat, awkward polar bears continue to multiply

Christopher Booker
Telegraph UK
Sun, 23 Nov 2008 05:59 UTC
Second only to the melting of the Arctic ice and those "drowning" polar bears, there is no scare with which the global warmists, led by Al Gore, more like to chill our blood than the fast-vanishing glaciers of the Himalayas, which help to provide water for a sixth of mankind. Recently one newspaper published large pictures to illustrate the alarming retreat in the past 40 years of the Rongbuk glacier below Everest. Indian meteorologists, it was reported, were warning that, thanks to global warming, all the Himalayan glaciers could have disappeared by 2035.
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