Earth Changes
Helen Chernikoff
ReutersWed, 08 Aug 2007 17:44 UTC
Flooding in New York's subway lines ground the city's morning commute to a halt on Wednesday, angering New Yorkers who are facing rail and utility fee hikes to support an aging infrastructure.
Every subway line into Manhattan was affected by flooding after a severe predawn storm sent roofs flying, toppled trees, submerged cars and inundated subway stations.
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| ©AP/Shahrzad Elghanayan
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| Residents look at flooding outside their building in the Queens borough of New York early Wednesday.
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Jim Gomez
APWed, 08 Aug 2007 17:34 UTC
Tropical Storm Pabuk churned across the Philippines Wednesday, triggering deadly landslides before it moved into southern Taiwan, where it cut power and forced schools and business to close.
The death toll from a separate, unnamed storm in Vietnam rose to 34, with 17 missing and feared dead. The tropical storm, the worst to hit Vietnam this year, was downgraded to a depression on Monday, but heavy rains continued, the national weather center said.
A powerful earthquake has struck Indonesia's main island of Java near the capital, Jakarta.
The magnitude 7.5 quake hit at 0005 on Thursday (1705 GMT Wednesday) at a depth of 289km (180 miles).
Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.
Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.
Laura MacInnis
ReutersWed, 08 Aug 2007 02:22 UTC
GENEVA - The world experienced a series of record-breaking weather events in early 2007, from flooding in Asia to heatwaves in Europe and snowfall in South Africa, the United Nations weather agency said on Tuesday.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said global land surface temperatures in January and April were likely the warmest since records began in 1880, at more than 1 degree Celsius higher than average for those months.
JIM SALTER
APWed, 08 Aug 2007 02:17 UTC
ST. LOUIS - Much of the nation continued to sweat Tuesday under oppressive heat, made worse by high humidity, that stretched from the Midwest to the East Coast.
Temperatures reached well into the 90s and in some cases above 100 degrees, a trend expected to continue through the weekend in parts of the South and Midwest. The National Weather Service issued excessive-heat warnings in several states, and health officials urged people and pets to stay in air conditioning.
Comment: In contrast the Iraqis have to live in 117 degrees heat without fans, air conditioning, electricity or water due to the wholesale destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure over the last 4 and a half years by Uncle Sam!
Ho Binh Minh
ReutersWed, 08 Aug 2007 02:02 UTC
Floods have killed at least 32 people in central Vietnam, displacing thousands and cutting the
north-south railway, officials said on Wednesday.
The floods triggered by a storm that weakened into a depression since the weekend have isolated many areas from emergency aid, said an official in Quang Binh province.
HUNTINGTON, Utah - Seismic activity has "totally shut down" efforts to reach six miners trapped below ground and wiped out all the work done in the past day, a mine executive said Tuesday.
A fungus that is devastating amphibian populations around the world is a relatively new disease that is spreading rapidly, rather than an old disease that has recently become more virulent, according to research on frogs in California's Sierra Nevada.
Worse, not only is the fungus being spread by infected water, it may also be transmitted in the form of spores carried on the wind or birds' feathers, for example, a genetic analysis of the Californian frogs suggests. This would help to explain outbreaks of the disease, called
chytridiomycosis, in remote, inaccessible habitats like the Sierra Nevada lakes.
Seven people drowned and four were missing after heavy rains caused severe flooding in northern Bulgaria, while storms cut off electricity and washed away bridges in neighboring Romania, officials said on Tuesday.
Six elderly people died in accidents in the small Bulgarian town of Tsar Kaloyan, some 380 km (235 miles) northeast of Sofia, after torrential rain cut off electricity and raised water levels, the local civil defense service said.
Comment: In contrast the Iraqis have to live in 117 degrees heat without fans, air conditioning, electricity or water due to the wholesale destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure over the last 4 and a half years by Uncle Sam!