Earth ChangesS


Blackbox

Dirty secret of Vietnamese wildlife farms revealed

Image
© AFP/Getty ImagesRestaurant workers skinning a crocodile. But is it from a farm or from the wild?
Wildlife farms are supposed to promote conservation by providing a sustainable alternative to hunting animals in the wild. But those in Vietnam are having exactly the opposite effect, says a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in New York.

Over the past two decades, dozens of commercial wildlife farms have sprung up in Vietnam. WCS investigators and Vietnamese officials who visited 78 farms undercover found that half had taken original breeding stock from wild populations, and 42 per cent were still doing so.

Animals farmed include snakes, turtles, crocodiles and monkeys. Worst affected are species such as tigers and bears, whose body parts or secretions are valued in traditional medicine. Not only are they slow to breed, but farms can also be used to launder products from animals killed in the wild.

Eye 2

How spitting cobras are such blinding shots

For venom-spitting cobras, an accurate shot is the difference between slithering away and getting trampled to death by an elephant.


A new study finds that the snakes adjust the trajectory of their squirts to deliver venom right to the faces of animals that tread too closely.

"We know they spit on elephants, hyenas, just about anything that passes by that's big enough to trample on them or even eat them," says Guido Westhoff, a herpetologist at the University of Bonn, Germany, who led the study.

Alarm Clock

South Asia cyclone contaminates water sources

New Delhi - Tens of thousands of cyclone survivors in India and Bangladesh desperately need clean water after the storm contaminated drinking sources with sea water, aid agencies say.

Relief workers also warned the death toll could soar if there are outbreaks of water-borne diseases following massive flooding.

Bizarro Earth

Earthquake Magnitude 5.7 Seram, Indonesia

Image
© US Geological Survey
Date-Time:
- Friday, May 29, 2009 at 00:58:38 UTC
- Friday, May 29, 2009 at 09:58:38 AM at epicenter

Location:
3.857°S, 127.537°E

Depth:
55.9 km (34.7 miles)

Region:
SERAM, INDONESIA

Sun

Flashback David Archibald's elegant illustration of how late and weak solar cycle 24 is proving

weak solar cycles dalton minimum
© unknown

There is another way of looking at solar cycles.

Solar cycles actually start with the magnetic reversal near the peak of the previous cycle. The sunspots take seven years to surface and become visible. Almost all sunspot cycles tend to be about 18.5 years long, measured from the peak of the previous cycle.

The above graph compares the average of three cycles, 21 to 23, from the late 20th century with three, 14 to 16, from the late 19th century (which had much colder weather). Also included is Solar Cycle 5, the first half of the Dalton Minimum.

Sun

New Solar Cycle Prediction: Fewer Sunspots, But Not Necessarily Less Activity (who knows?)

Sun image from STEREO satellites
© NASA

An international panel of experts has released a new prediction for the next solar cycle, stating that Solar Cycle 24 will peak in May 2013 with a below-average number of sunspots. Led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and sponsored by NASA, the panel includes a dozen members from nine different government and academic institutions. Their forecast sets the stage for at least another year of mostly quiet conditions before solar activity resumes in earnest.

"If our prediction is correct, Solar Cycle 24 will have a peak sunspot number of 90, the lowest of any cycle since 1928 when Solar Cycle 16 peaked at 78," says panel chairman Doug Biesecker of the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, Boulder, Colo.

It is tempting to describe such a cycle as "weak" or "mild," but that could give the wrong impression. "Even a below-average cycle is capable of producing severe space weather," says Biesecker. "The great geomagnetic storm of 1859, for instance, occurred during a solar cycle of about the same size we're predicting for 2013."

Comment: Commentary from Icecap.us on this article:

Other forecasters (Clilverd and Archibald) have an even quieter cycle like that of the s0-called Dalton Minimum with a maximum nearer 40. NCAR's Dikpati is still holding out for an active cycle 24. The last few cycles including this ultralong cycle 23 (larger image here) mimics the cycles of the late 1700s and early 1800s much as Clilverd and Archibald showed, leading up to the Dalton Minimum, the age of Dickens with winter snows in London (hmmm).
Solar Cycle length
© unknown



Better Earth

Science a slave to expediency

The notion that human activity has an alarming influence on climate is based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and spurious claims about a scientific consensus.

Independent scientists who question these claims are accused of being in the pay of the energy industry and of believing that the notion of man-made climate change is a conspiracy.

To the best of my knowledge, no climate conspiracy has ever existed. But another force has driven science into its present parlous state where the output of computer software is held in higher regard than observational data, where marketing spin is more important than fact and evidence, and where a trenchant defence of the notion of man-made global warming is seen as paramount.

Sun

Spotless Sun, new 'Baby Grand' milestone has arrived

current solar minimum
© unknownPlot of Cycle 23 to 24 sunspot numbers in an 11 year window.

No we aren't talking pianos, but Grand Solar Minimums. Today a new milestone was reached. As you can see below, we've been leading up to it for a few years.

A typical solar minimum lasts 485 days, based on an average of the last 10 solar minima. As of today we are at 638 spotless days in the current minimum. Also as of today, May 27th, 2009, there were no sunspots on 120 of this year's (2009) 147 days to date (82%).

Paul Stanko writes:
Our spotless day count just reached 638.

What is so special about 638? We just overtook the original solar cycle, #1, so now the only cycles above this are: cycles of the Maunder minimum, cycles 5 to 7 (Dalton minimum), and cycles 10 + 12 to 15 (unnamed minimum).

Since the last one is unnamed, I've nicknamed it the "Baby Grand Minimum", in much the same way that you can have a baby grand piano. We would now seem to have reached the same stature for this minimum. It will be interesting to see just how much longer deep minimum goes on.

Sun

Scientists proclaim climate change is natural

Scientists proclaim climate change is natural

As the Rudd government geared up its push for a CO2 cap-and-trade emissions trading scheme (ETS), which would annihilate what's left of Australia's collapsing physical economy, a public symposium last Sunday heard evidence from several leading Australian scientists that climate change is a natural phenomenon.

The symposium, ignored by the lying mainstream media, was held at Monash University and convened by Emeritus Professor Lance Endersbee. Several scientists identified hard evidence that severe cooling is the biggest climate challenge that we face - and its cause is entirely natural.

Bizarro Earth

Earthquake Magnitude 4.9 - Off Coast of Jalisco, Mexico

Image
© US Geological Survey
Date-Time Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 21:32:25 UTC

Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 02:32:25 PM at epicenter

Location 18.335°N, 106.437°W

Depth 10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program

Region OFF THE COAST OF JALISCO, MEXICO

Distances 235 km (145 miles) WSW of Manzanillo, Colima, Mexico

270 km (165 miles) SW of Autlan, Jalisco, Mexico

280 km (175 miles) SSW of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico

775 km (480 miles) W of MEXICO CITY, D.F., Mexico