Earth Changes
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| ©John Dransfield
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| This new species of palm, found recently in northwestern Madagascar, goes out with a bang. Once fully grown, the giant Tahina spectabilis produces a vibrant display of flowers - an act that depletes its nutrients and sparks a slow death. The apparently rare palm lives in areas where habitat has already been degraded, making conservation a priority, scientists say.
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A couple on a casual stroll in Madagascar recently discovered a new gigantic palm that flowers itself to death.
Taller than a six-story building, with a trunk 1.5 feet (0.5 meter) in diameter, it is the most massive palm discovered to date in Madagascar.
Kelly Stewart
AlterNetFri, 18 Jan 2008 01:01 UTC
Editor's Note:
Water is an architect of the natural world, a building block of our bodies, and the lifeblood of our communities. It is, in short, our most important resource. And yet, each day, we squander it through pollution, mismanagement, neglect, and greed. As regions across Africa, the Middle East, Australia, Asia, and North America, face worsening drought, it is time to increase our understanding of the role of water in sustaining life for all creatures on this planet.
An amazing crew of individuals at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, led by Dr. Eleanor J. Sterling, the museum's Director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation have made an important contribution to halting the water crisis with their new a ground-breaking exhibit that will change how you think about water. The exhibit was also organized by the Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul, in collaboration with Great Lakes Science Center, Cleveland; The Field Museum, Chicago; Instituto Sangari, São Paulo, Brazil; National Museum of Australia, Canberra; Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada; San Diego Natural History Museum; and Singapore Science Centre with PUB Singapore.
The exhibit covers a huge amount of ground, including information about how other life forms interact with water, the hydrologic cycle, the history of water use across the world, virtual water facts, the effect of dams, maps of water availability and use, and a whole lot more. Presented with incredible interactive displays, you can feel, taste, hear, and see the affect of water on our lives and how important it is to protect this resource.
Rice University Earth scientist Dale Sawyer and colleagues last month reported the discovery of a strong variation in the tectonic stresses in a region of the Pacific Ocean notorious for generating devastating earthquakes and tsunamis in southeastern Japan.
The results came from an eight-week expedition by Sawyer and 15 scientists from six countries at the Nankai Trough, about 100 miles from Kobe, Japan. Using the new scientific drilling vessel "Chikyu," the team drilled deep into a zone responsible for undersea earthquakes that have caused tsunamis and will likely cause more. They collected physical measurements and images using new rugged instruments designed to capture scientific data from deep within a well while it is being drilled.
While flooding in California's Central Valley is "the next big disaster waiting to happen," water-related infrastructure issues confront almost every community across the country, according to engineers at the University of Maryland's Clark School of Engineering in separate reports to California officials and in the journal
Science.
An independent review panel chaired by Clark School Research Professor of Civil Engineering Gerald E. Galloway said the area between the Sacramento and San Joaquin river floodplains faces significant risk of floods that could lead to extensive loss of life and billions of dollars in damages. The panel's report, "
A California Challenge: Flooding in the Central Valley," was commissioned by California's Department of Water Resources.
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| ©California Department of Water Resources
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| The image showing floodwaters surrounding the Arco Arena in Sacramento, Calif. on the cover of this document has been edited and is not authentic. It was made to illustrate the depth of flooding predicted if that area of Sacramento were to experience levee failure or overtopping and thus be subjected to deep flooding.
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CNNFri, 18 Jan 2008 10:20 UTC
A volcano erupted in southwestern Colombia on Thursday night, prompting authorities to order the evacuation of about 8,000 people.
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| ©Associated Press
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| This video frame released by the Colombian Institute of Geology and Mining shows the eruption.
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While the rest of Europe is debating the prospects of global warming during an unseasonably mild winter, a brutal cold snap is raging across the semi-autonomous nation of Greenland.
On Disko Bay in western Greenland, where a number of prominent world leaders have visited in recent years to get a first-hand impression of climate change, temperatures have dropped so drastically that the water has frozen over for the first time in a decade.
Comment: While the global climate seems to have taken on a cooling trend as indicated by this and several other recent articles, this article still tries to put in some damage control for the global warming scare. It may not be long before such damage control is no longer possible.
Antananarivo, Madagascar - A self-destructing palm tree that flowers once every 100 years and then dies has been discovered on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, botanists said Thursday.
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| ©AP Photo/Royal Botanic Gardens, John Dransfield
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| This undated photo released by the Royal Botanic Gardens, shows a newly discovered species of palm tree on the Indian Ocean Island of Madagascar. A self-destructing palm tree that flowers once every 100 years and then dies.
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China is facing its worst drought in a decade, with water in parts of the Yangtze River at the lowest level in 142 years, state media has reported.
Millions of people were short of water, and dozens of ships had run aground in the river since October, reports said.
Maputo - Floods in southern Africa have killed about 45 people in a growing humanitarian crisis that has engulfed the region and brought renewed appeals for Western financial help.
Heavy rains have caused rivers in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi to burst, killing three people in Malawi since Friday and forcing hundreds of others to flee their homes.
Heavy downpours are common in southern Africa during the rainy season, which runs generally from November to April, but the relentless rain is unusual and has caught officials off guard.
Comment: Unusual flooding in Africa, bizarre snowfalls across the Middle East, extreme cold in Siberia, something is very wrong. Keep watching the Signs, they are all around you!
Raccoon dogs thought extinct in the Altai Mountains since the early 1950s have been again detected in Russia's south Siberian Altai Republic, a source in the regional government said on Wednesday.
Traces of an unknown dog-like creature had previously been detected by Russian biologist Genrikh Sobansky near Lake Teletskoye in the northeastern part of the republic. He later came to the conclusion that the trail belonged to a raccoon dog, an animal which looks much like the North American raccoon, but is only distantly related.
Comment: While the global climate seems to have taken on a cooling trend as indicated by this and several other recent articles, this article still tries to put in some damage control for the global warming scare. It may not be long before such damage control is no longer possible.