Earth ChangesS


Info

The oldest trees on Earth, Bristlecone Pine


AFP
Sat, 22 Sep 2007 14:56 UTC
They have neither the soaring majesty nor the celebrity of the giant redwood, but in one respect the bristlecone pine is the undisputed king of trees: longevity.

Scattered on a remote mountainside of eastern California, these gnarled, twisted specimens are the oldest living organisms on Earth, the most senior among them some 4,700 years old.

©Signs of the Times
Ancient bristlecone pine trees are seen 13 September 2007 in the White Mountains of the Inyo National Forest near Bishop, California.

Comment: Mike Baillie in the book Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters With Comets uses research in the field of dendrochronology and specific information from tree ring samples of the bristlecone pine to build the case that earth is regularly visited by cyclical catastrophies from space.

Laura Knight-Jadczyk's essay 'Independence Day' includes information from Baillie's book and provides further research and detail on the subject.

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Cloud Lightning

Slovenia floods kill five


UPI
Wed, 19 Sep 2007 14:45 UTC
At least five people were killed when strong rainstorms swept Slovenia, damaging houses and isolating towns and villages from the rest of the country.

Heavy rains driven by high winds were strongest in northern Slovenia Tuesday, rendering serious damage to houses, flooding roads and railways and cutting off electricity and phone networks, the Serbian news agency Beta reported Wednesday.

©AFP
Slovenians clean debris and wrecked cars after heavy floods in Zelezniki, some 60 kms northwest of Ljubljana. Four people died and four were still missing Wednesday, the day after the heaviest rains in 30 years hit Slovenia's northwest, causing flooding and mudslides, state radio said.
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Cloud Lightning

West Bengal rains claim seven lives


IANS
Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:38 UTC
Torrential rains that lashed Kolkata and districts of southern West Bengal last two days have left seven persons dead.

Reports said over 500 dwellings were damaged, mostly in South 24-Parganas district where mud houses collapsed or had their tin roofs blown away in stormy winds with speeds up to 70 km per hour.

©Unknown
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Network

Clever plants chat over their own network


NWO
Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:33 UTC
Recent research from Vidi researcher Josef Stuefer at the Radboud University Nijmegen reveals that plants have their own chat systems that they can use to warn each other. Therefore plants are not boring and passive organisms that just stand there waiting to be cut off or eaten up. Many plants form internal communications networks and are able to exchange information efficiently.

Chat network

Many herbal plants such as strawberry, clover, reed and ground elder naturally form networks. Individual plants remain connected with each other for a certain period of time by means of runners. These connections enable the plants to share information with each other via internal channels. They are therefore very similar to computer networks. But what do plants want to chat to each other about?
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Bizarro Earth

New Zealand volcano erupts


Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:32 UTC
New Zealand's Mount Ruapehu erupted without warning Tuesday night, and at least two people were reported to be injured as lahars, or volcanic mudflows, swept down the mountain.

©BBC
New Zealand's snow-capped Mount Ruapehu volcano erupts, spewing mud down its slopes as well as flying rock, which seriously injured one climber.



Civil defence officials ordered skiing areas evacuated and police closed roads in the area, including the North Island's main state highway and railway line, which run near the foot of the 2,797-metre high mountain.
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Better Earth

Perking volcano's dome still growing

Erik Robinson
The Columbian
Tue, 25 Sep 2007 10:27 UTC
The first faint beats of Mount St. Helens' reawakening appeared as a series of small squiggles on seismograph paper in the pre-dawn hours three years ago today.

Todd Cullings, an interpretive ranger at Johnston Ridge Observatory, didn't think much of it.

"We've had swarms of earthquakes like this before," he said at the time. "There's nothing to worry about at this time."
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Bizarro Earth

Sea Level Rise Could Flood Many Cities

Seth Borenstein
AP
Sat, 22 Sep 2007 16:14 UTC
Ultimately, rising seas will likely swamp the first American settlement in Jamestown, Va., as well as the Florida launch pad that sent the first American into orbit, many climate scientists are predicting. In about a century, some of the places that make America what it is may be slowly erased.

Global warming - through a combination of melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and warmer waters expanding - is expected to cause oceans to rise by one meter, or about 39 inches. It will happen regardless of any future actions to curb greenhouse gases, several leading scientists say. And it will reshape the nation.
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Question

Mysterious Lightning Strike Closes Virginia's Grand Caverns

Hannah Northey
DailyNewsRecord
Mon, 27 Aug 2007 10:19 UTC
Darkness continues to envelop Grand Caverns, America's oldest show cave, after a lightning strike damaged the attraction's electrical system earlier this month, officials there say.

Charmaine Detrow, an education coordinator at the Grottoes park, said caverns officials are still mystified as to how cables and a light box, which provide illumination for tours, were struck by lightning. She said the system is inside the cave with no exposure to the elements.

"There's no doubt in our minds it got hit," she said. "The plastic switches are melted onto the metal box."
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Cloud Lightning

Storm floods Southern California


UPI
Sun, 23 Sep 2007 10:01 UTC
A freak Southern California storm trapped dozens of cars in lava-like mud and delayed an LA Angels of Anaheim game for the first time.

"A mud slide will really screw up your plans," said Mark Skully, a Sunland resident whose truck became trapped Saturday when mud and debris oozed onto the road at a stop light.

©foxreno.com
A mudslide triggered by a sudden cloudburst Saturday caused a hillside near Griffith Park to collapse, trapping as many as 14 cars in mud.
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Cloud Lightning

Tropical storm Francisco hits China, 6 fisherman missing


Xinhua
Mon, 24 Sep 2007 09:54 UTC
Tropical storm Francisco, the 14th such storm to hit China this year, made landfall in south China's Hainan Province shortly after midday on Monday, causing a fishing boat with eight people on board to capsize.

©TSR

The tropical storm, packing up winds of 72 km per hour and bringing torrential rains, landed at Changfa Township in Wenchang County at 12:30 pm, according to the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.
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