Welcome to Sott.net
Sat, 23 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Earth Changes
Map

Radar

4.0 Earthquake rattles central Oklahoma

Earthquake Swarm
© Photos.com
People across the Oklahoma City metro began posting messages to Facebook and Twitter after feeling an earthquake Wednesday afternoon, the second quake in just eight hours.

The shaking began just before 2 p.m. and lasted only a few seconds. While the U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake had a magnitude of 3.5, the Oklahoma Geological Survey ranked it higher, with a magnitude of 4.0

It was centered two miles southwest of Nicoma Park, and 11 miles east of Oklahoma City. According to the latitude and longitude coordinates from the Oklahoma Geological Survey, the epicenter was in a neighborhood between Post and Westminster to the west and east, and N.E. 10th Street and Reno to the north and south.

Candle

Loved ones salute New Zealand dad killed by shark

Image
© The Associated Press
Police in inflatable rubber boats shoot at a shark off Muriwai Beach near Auckland, New Zealand, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013, as they attempt to retrieve a body following a fatal shark attack.
About 150 friends and family of Adam Strange wrote messages to him in the sand and stepped into the water Thursday at a New Zealand beach to say goodbye a day after he was killed by a large shark while training for an endurance swim.

Strange, 46, was an award-winning television and short film director and the father of a 2-year-old girl. He was swimming near popular Muriwai Beach on Wednesday when he was attacked by the shark that was possibly 14 feet (4 meters) long. Surf lifesavers say they are convinced it was a great white shark.

Police attempting to save him raced out in inflatable boats and fired gunshots at the enormous predator, which they say rolled away and disappeared. They couldn't confirm if they'd killed it. Police were able to recover Strange's body.

Muriwai will remained closed for swimming until Saturday after the fatal attack, one of only about a dozen in New Zealand in the past 180 years.

Friend Adam Stevens said the Thursday beach service was run by indigenous Maori who removed the "tapu" or spiritual restriction at the beach. He said it was a "perfect tribute" to a man who spent much of his time swimming and surfing.

"He was a very robust, big, barrel-chested surfer," Stevens said. "He was basically completely obsessed with the ocean, with paddle boards and body surfing, everything. His garage was like a museum of surf craft."

Question

Hundreds of bloodied manta rays wash up on Gaza beach

Dead manta Rays
© Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images
Palestinian fishermen collect several Manta Ray fish that were washed up on the beach in Gaza City on February 27, 2013.
Dozens of manta rays washed up on the shores of Gaza City today, according to the Daily Mail - the first sighting of the fish in that area in six years.

It's unclear what killed and bloodied such a large number of the giant fish, though according to Wikipedia (bear with me), manta rays do face a fair amount of danger in the sea:
Manta rays are subject to a number of other anthropogenic threats. Because mantas must swim constantly in order to flush oxygen-rich water over their gills, they are vulnerable to entanglement and subsequent suffocation. Mantas cannot swim backwards and, because of their protruding cephalic fins, they are prone to being caught in trailing fishing lines, nets and even loose mooring lines. When caught, mantas will often attempt to free themselves by somersaulting, tangling themselves further. It is possible for a loose, trailing line to wrap round and cut its way into a fleshy appendage, resulting in an irreversible injury such as the loss of a cephalic fin or damage to a pectoral fin, or even death if the wound is severe enough.
None of those possibilities, however, seems to explain what happened to these fish, shown being transported by fisherman to the marketplace.

Alarm Clock

Time for USDA to wake up to weed resistance and ban Agent Orange corn once and for all

Image
© Food & Water Watch
herbicide-resistant weeds take over tractor
Last week, Dow announced that because the USDA has not yet approved its 2,4-D Corn "Enlist" variety yet, it will not be ready for planting until at least 2014. This is great news for all of the groups and individuals who have garnered over 400,000 petition signatures telling the USDA not to approve the toxic corn.

This delay is certainly worth celebrating, but the fight to stop the approval of this corn is not over. Dow has gained approval in Canada and Japan for its Enlist brand and is still ramping up production of its 2,4-D herbicide and 2,4-D-resistant corn seeds with every expectation that it will be approved in the U.S.

Regulators and biotech companies are still fumbling to try to find chemical solutions to America's weed resistance problem despite the fact that overreliance on weed killers linked to GE crops is making the situation worse. Agricultural biotechnology companies continue to watch their herbicide and seed sales rise, while weeds develop resistance to all types of chemicals thrown at them at an alarming rate.

Comment: Read the following for more information on the spread of herbicide-resistant weeds:

Meet the weeds that Monsanto can't beat

Monsanto Vs. Nature: The Weeds Fight Back
Scientists say genetically engineered crops encourage stronger weeds
Monsanto's Superweeds Come Home to Roost: 11 Million U.S. Acres are Infested
Monsanto's Roundup Spawns Superweeds Consuming Over 120 Million Hectares


Comet

Link eyed between 1908 Siberian fireball and record heat in New York

Image
© Associated Press
In addition to flattening tens of millions of trees in Siberia, the Tunguska Event of 1908 might or might not have had something to do with an ensuing very hot July in New York City.
Speaking of meteors and their local impact, as we were on Friday, the Siberian fireball brought the mind of Stephen Fybish, City Room's Omniscient Weather Nudge, back to the Tunguska Event, a cosmic burp inflicted on Siberia in 1908 when the airburst of a still-unidentified object believed to be a meteor or a comet fragment flattened tens of millions of trees across 800 square miles.

Normally, Mr. Fybish limits his encyclopedic observations of meteorological data to New York City, at least here on this blog, so what's the connection?

Well.

It turns out that the Tunguska Event, which occurred on June 30, was immediately followed by one of the hottest Julys ever in Central Park. How hot was it? Let's go to the voice mail left by Mr. Fybish:

Comment: Extreme weather events and cometary debris are more intricately connected than the meteorologist and author even realise:

Comets and the Horns of Moses

All that 'global warming' the Scientific Establishment has been telling everyone about for the past 20 years?

The short answer is: comets!


Arrow Up

Horse Hockey! Contrived horsemeat scandal and rising food prices

Image
© Bloomberg/Abdrew Crowley
CEO of Tesco Philip Clarke
The price of food may rise in the wake of the horsemeat scandal, the boss of Tesco has suggested.

Philip Clarke, the chief executive of Britain's supermarket chain, admitted he could not promise that sweeping reforms to the company's supply chains would not leave customers paying more.

While he denied price rises were "inevitable", he acknowledged that he could not "guarantee" they would remain at present levels.

Publicly commenting for the first time since the food crisis erupted six weeks ago, he admitted that he had been left "shocked" and "appalled" by revelations.

He said horsemeat contamination was "wider than anyone imagined" and had been a "significant breach in trust" to his company's customers, which had been caused by "sloppy" suppliers "cutting corners for their own gain".

In a series of interviews, Mr Clarke announced a raft of reforms by the retail giant in response to the crisis.

Comment: Translation: Further food price rises are inevitable and the food price rises in Europe so far this year are camouflaged by this contrived 'horse meat scandal'.


Snowflake Cold

Global Warming? 'Truly a historic blizzard,' weather service says


Phillip Prince has been sitting in his tractor-trailer, stuck on Interstate 40 near Groom, Texas, for hours.

Nine hours and four minutes, to be precise.

Prince and his co-driver were due in California at 1 p.m. Tuesday, where they were going to drop off 25,000 pounds of frozen pizza.

But then they came upon what the National Weather Service is calling "a crippling, historic blizzard."

"It was pretty nasty when we first got into it," he said. "But then it turned into a whiteout."

Prince, who has been a long-haul driver for nine years, says he's never seen it this bad, as he explained his situation on CNN.com's iReport. The line of trucks is five to six miles long.

It's frustrating, the west-bound driver said, because he can see snowplows in the east-bound lanes. He hopes to get moving soon; he's down to eating his last box of Lucky Charms.

The good news is that it has stopped snowing. The winds are still 55 mph, but the skies are clear though the roads are not.

The storm has been moving east during the day, dumping records amount of snow along the way.

In Woodward, a town in northwest Oklahoma, firefighters were unable to reach a burning house because they ran into 4-foot snow drifts. The snowplow sent to dig them out also became stuck, Matt Lehenbauer, the director of Woodward, said Monday afternoon.

Snowflake

Global Warming? Mauna Kea, Hawaii snow expected to melt as winds pick up

Image
© Courtesy Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Submillimeter Array
Heavy clouds move over Mauna Kea in this webcamera image looking south at Mauna Loa this afternoon.
The burst of winter weather on Mauna Kea over the weekend has apparently come to an end. Snowfalls were replaced by freezing rain and high winds on Hawaii island summits Monday and temperatures are expected to rise above freezing today and Wednesday.

"With more sunshine and warmer temperature, I would expect what's left of the snow will melt pretty quickly over the next couple of days," said Robert Ballard, a forecaster with the National Weather Service Honolulu office.

Forecasters issued a high wind watch for the summits above 8,000 feet starting this morning through 6 a.m. Wednesday. Winds of 45 mph with gusts over 60 mph may blow over the summits, Ballard said.

A wind advisory is also in effect for parts of Maui County and Hawaii island through late tonight because of strong trade winds. Forecasters expect sustained winds of 20 to 40 mph, with gusts over 50 mph that could bring down tree branches, cause power outages and make driving difficult.

The advisory includes Manele, Lanai City, Kahului, Haleakala National Park above 6,000 feet, south Point, Pahala, Hilo, Volcano, Honokaa, Kamuela and Waikoloa.

The winds shouldn't be as strong on Oahu and Kauai, where forecasters predict 15 to 30 mph winds, with higher gusts up to 50 mph in a few areas.

Igloo

'Ice boulders' form on shores of Lake Michigan


Good Harbor, Michigan - She's lived near the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore for nearly seven years but a Northern Michigan woman says she's never seen anything like this.

Leda Olmstead came across dozens of ice boulders during her daily walk Thursday afternoon. The giant formations were scattered across a 100 foot section of the beach and were too heavy for her to pick up.

"I thought it was the coolest thing ever especially since I've never seen anything like it" Olmstead told WZZM 13. "I have a small English bulldog and they were as tall as her. They were pretty massive."

Cloud Lightning

'Gigantic jet' lightning spotted over China

Sprite
© Steven Cummer
A gigantic jet captured above a storm in North Carolina in 2009.
A rare glimpse of a "gigantic jet" - a huge and mysterious burst of lightning that connects a thunderstorm with the upper atmosphere - was made over China in 2010 and was recently described by scientists.

The gigantic jet took place in eastern China on Aug. 12, 2010 - the farthest a ground-based one has ever been observed from the equator, according to the research team.

Previous jets were mainly seen in tropical or subtropical regions, but this one took place around 35 degrees latitude, about the same as the southern part of Tennessee in the United States.

"This is the first report from mainland China," lead researcher Jing Yang, an atmospheric scientist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, told OurAmazingPlanet. The results were recently published in the Chinese Science Bulletin.

Researchers got a good look at the storm using a variety of tools, including Doppler radar data and weather pictures in the infrared band of radiation.