Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Floods Kill 100 People in Pakistan as Monsoon Hits

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© Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesLocal residents remove wood from their collapsed huts in a flood-hit area of Nowshera
At least 100 people have been killed by rivers bursting their banks in north-west Pakistan as the country was hit by its worst floods for 80 years.

Floodwater destroyed a dam and washed away countless bridges in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, leaving an estimated 400,000 people stranded, after two days of monsoon rains.

Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the regional information minister, said the deluge made it difficult to reach people in need of shelter and clean drinking water.

"A rescue operation using helicopters cannot be conducted due to the bad weather, while there are only 48 rescue boats available for rescue," he said.

The province's deputy health director, Ali Khan, added that he feared there may be as many as 500 casualties. Medical workers had launched a programmed to immunise people against cholera and typhoid, he said.

Ten of the victims died when their homes collapsed in the provincial capital Peshawar.

Arrow Down

China: Zoo Accidentally Gasses Giant Panda to Death

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© Getty ImagesWorkers had been disinfecting an air raid shelter inside the zoo when the gases leaked through the ventilation system into the panda house.
A Chinese zoo accidentally killed one of its giant pandas after a faulty ventilation system pumped toxic gas into its enclosure.

Quan Quan, a 21-year-old panda at Jinan Zoo in Shandong province, in eastern China, died after inhaling a mixture of chlorine, chlorine hydride and carbon monoxide, according to a spokesman.

The panda, which had given birth to seven cubs, arrived on loan at the zoo in 2007 from the Wolong panda reserve in Sichuan province. Quan Quan was one of the zoo's star attractions, helping to boost visitor numbers to around 30,000 a day.

Workers had been disinfecting an air raid shelter inside the zoo when the gases leaked through the ventilation system into the panda house.

"The ventilation system was built in 1995," said a spokesman. "It was used to keep the panda house cool, but it fed large amounts of smoke into the panda enclosure."

Binoculars

World's Most Ancient Creatures Found in Scottish Field

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© Edmund Fellowes/Press AssociationThe tadpole shrimp, Triops cancriformis, which was part of two colonies found at Caerlaverock on the Solway Coast of Dumfriesshire.
Two colonies of age-old and endangered tadpole shrimps discovered alive and well near Solway coast

A field near Gretna in Dumfriesshire might not be an obvious place to find the world's oldest living creatures, but a team of scientists has done just that.

Two colonies of a prehistoric shrimp that evolved when the dinosaurs ruled the Earth have been found alive and well in the Caerlaverock nature reserve on the Solway coast.

The discovery has led experts to think there could be more of the little crustaceans, which are listed as endangered species, elsewhere in the area.

The ancient creatures, known as Triops cancriformis or tadpole shrimps, are thought to have the oldest pedigree of any living animal. Fossil evidence suggests they have hardly changed in the more than 200m years that they have been around.

Arrow Up

Researchers Find Ocean Temperatures Rising, Even in the Depths

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© ReutersUnderwater "Submarine" Volcano Erupts near Japan
An important piece of the global-warming picture has come into clearer focus with a confirmation by scientists that the world's oceans have soaked up much of the warming of the last four decades, delaying its full effect on the atmosphere and thus on climate.

The warming of the deep oceans had long been predicted, and the consequent delaying effect long thought to exist.

But until now the ocean's heat absorption had not been definitively demonstrated, and its magnitude had not been determined.

The finding, by scientists at the National Oceanographic Data Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, is based on an analysis of 5.1 million measurements, by instruments around the world, of the top two miles of ocean waters from the mid-1950's to the mid-1990's.

Comment: The oceans are not soaking up the warming from above, they are heating from below.


Igloo

Selection and substitution of data: Blame the cold on natural cycles, but the rain is humanity's fault!

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© Irish TimesA pedestrian battles the elements in Dunboyne, Co Meath, Ireland in January
Last winter's weather might have been extreme but according to a new report it was within 'normal variability'

The heavy rainfalls and the resultant floods they caused last November were not triggered by climate change. Nor does the big chill that froze things solid at the turn of the year mean that global warming has somehow passed us by.

Both events - though certainly extreme - were within the range of "natural variability", according to a study published this morning by the Royal Irish Academy.

Comment: Oh, so when there is a heatwave, it is down to man-made global warming, but when there is a deep freeze, it is down to natural cycles. What passes for consistency in mainstream "science" today is breathtaking!

The widespread flooding along the west coast from Galway down to Cork sparked considerable public concern. There were fears that submerged homes would now be the norm due to climate change.

These fears are misplaced however, according to Prof Ray Bates, chairman of the RIA's climate change sciences committee.

"We are not saying global warming is not significant, it is very significant," he said in advance of the report's launch. Climate change induced by human activity remains "a long-term threat", he says.

Comment: Just you wait Henry Higgins, just you wait! Sott.net's 4-year weather forecast: floods, lots of them. Droughts and sudden localised heatwaves too, but predominantly deluges of rain, later turning to storeys-high snow and ice with a risk of psychopaths-induced Ice Age.


Bizarro Earth

Russia: Earthquake Magnitude 6.2 - Off The East Coast of Kamchatka

Kamchatka Quake_300710
© USGSEarthquake Location
Date-Time:
Friday, July 30, 2010 at 03:56:14 UTC

Friday, July 30, 2010 at 03:56:14 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
52.535°N, 159.919°E

Depth:
21 km (13.0 miles)

Region:
OFF THE EAST COAST OF KAMCHATKA, RUSSIA

Distances:
101 km (63 miles) ESE (122°) from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, Russia

333 km (207 miles) NE (50°) from Severo-Kuril'sk, Kuril Islands, Russia

496 km (308 miles) SW (236°) from Nikol'skoye, Komandorskiye Ostrova, Rus.

2455 km (1526 miles) NE (34°) from TOKYO, Japan

Attention

Plankton, Base of Ocean Food Web, in Big Decline

Washington - Despite their tiny size, plant plankton found in the world's oceans are crucial to much of life on Earth. They are the foundation of the bountiful marine food web, produce half the world's oxygen and suck up harmful carbon dioxide.

And they are declining sharply.

Worldwide phytoplankton levels are down 40 percent since the 1950s, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The likely cause is global warming, which makes it hard for the plant plankton to get vital nutrients, researchers say.

The numbers are both staggering and disturbing, say the Canadian scientists who did the study and a top U.S. government scientist.

Binoculars

Montana, US: Woman Recounts Bear Attack as Caught Grizzly ID'd

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© Matthew Brown/AP PhotoAn unidentified U.S. Forest Service Employee closes the gate at the entrance to the Soda Butte Campground in Cooke City, Mont., Thursday, July 29, 2010.
One of the survivors of a deadly grizzly bear attack said Thursday she realized her only hope was to play dead after feeling the bear's jaw clamp onto her arm in the middle of the night.

Wildlife officials were testing the DNA of a bear captured at the site of the early Wednesday mauling to confirm it was the animal that also killed a Michigan man and hurt another camper near Yellowstone National Park, but they said they were confident they had caught the right animals.

"Something woke me up, and a split second later, I felt teeth grinding into my arm," Deb Freele of London, Ontario, said from her bed at a Wyoming hospital. "I realized, at that split second, I was being attacked by a bear, but I couldn't see it.

"It was behind me and I screamed. I couldn't help it - it's kind of like somebody else was screaming," she told The Associated Press. "And then it bit me harder, and more. It got very aggressive and started to shake me."

Bizarro Earth

More than 30,000 trapped by floods in China's northeast

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© Unknown
More than 30,000 people are thought to be trapped by floodwaters in a town in northeast China, state media said Wednesday, as torrential rain that has killed over 300 in two weeks continues.

China is struggling with its worst flooding in a decade tat has left 1,405 dead or missing since the beginning of the year and caused at least 26 billion dollars in damage, and authorities have warned of more to come.

In the central city of Wuhan, tens of thousands of people have been evacuated as authorities brace for flood crests from the Yangtze River and one of its tributaries to converge there.

More than 200 rescue workers have been sent to northeastern Jilin province's Kouqian town to reach 30,000 residents thought to be trapped after a nearby reservoir overflowed, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The local train station was also surrounded by water with over 80 people trapped inside, it said.

Bizarro Earth

EPA: 1M gallons of oil may be in Michigan river

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EPA says 1 million gallons of oil may have spilled in Mich. river, governor criticizes cleanup.

Federal officials now estimate that more than 1 million gallons of oil may have spilled into a major river in southern Michigan, and the governor is sharply criticizing clean-up efforts as "wholly inadequate."

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the update Wednesday night, shortly after Gov. Jennifer Granholm lambasted attempts to contain the oil flowing down the Kalamazoo River. She warned of a "tragedy of historic proportions" if the oil reaches Lake Michigan, which is still at least 80 miles downstream from where oil has been seen.

Granholm called on the federal government for more help, saying resources being marshaled by the EPA and Enbridge Inc., which owns the pipeline that leaked the oil, were "wholly inadequate."