Earth Changes
National Guard troops used Humvees to ferry in food, fuel and baby supplies on Thursday to the lines of motorists caught in a 50-mile traffic jam on Interstate 78. Friday morning, the troops were busy towing away the remaining vehicles while road crews struggled to melt ice that had built up four to six inches in places.
This comes soon after the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that strongly supports the conclusion that the Earth's climate as a whole is warming, largely due to human activity.
The broken record was fueled by a waning El Nino and a gradually warming world, according to U.S. scientists who reported the data Thursday. Records on the planet's temperature have been kept since 1880.
According to the head of FAO's Water, Development and Management Unit, Pasquale Steduto, water use has expanded at twice the rate of population growth over the past 100 years creating conditions of water scarcity.
"I'm afraid I'll go out of business. I have $38,000 worth of flowers but I've only sold $7,000 worth," said Karen Pell of Flowerama, a florist shop in snowy Indianapolis.
"It's a lot slower than we had hoped," added a disappointed Margaret Maxham, trying to sell bouquets at Emslie The Florist in Vermont's capital, Montpelier.
For some, dining by candlelight was a cold necessity, not a romantic option. Power companies said 300,000 customers were without electricity from Virginia to New York, and outages were reported in Ohio. Just as utilities in the Mid-Atlantic states restored power, new outages struck in the Northeast.
A study comparing the summer temperatures in downtown Tokyo on weekends versus weekdays shows air conditioners dump enough heat into the streets to raise the temperature at least 2 to 4 degrees F (1 to 2 degrees C).
In turn, the heat blasting from the rear-ends of air conditioners is contributing to the "heat island" effect that makes cities hotter and their weather sometimes more severe.
Comment: Well, now we know the real reason for Global Warming :-)
Comment: The guy paints a pretty bleak picture and he isn't even talking about comets and meteors!