Earth ChangesS


Footprints

Tar Balls Continue to Plague Alabama's Shores

Alabama tar ball clean up
© NBCClean up crews scoop tar balls off of Fort Morgan beach in Alabama.
After taking a break for the holidays, oil spill cleanup crews returned to find thousands of tar balls awash on Alabama's shores.

"Being off ten days like we were, got a little catch up to do here," said Wilber Ledet, project manager with CrowderGulf.

Ledet said as soon as his crews remove the tar balls on the north side of Fort Morgan, replacements find their way ashore.

"We get a beach clean, and we're thinking it's done," he said. "And a good wind comes back, and there it is again."

Question

The 10 Leading Theories For Dead Birds And Fish

As the mainstream media attempts to downplay the latest die-off event, which has now gone global, it is worthwhile to keep track of the story lines. Feel free to add your own to the comments section, and we will update accordingly.

Mainstream Explanations: Lightning, hail, mid-air collision, power lines, and New Year fireworks for the birds . . . but disease for the fish. This is even rolling eyes in the mainstream media. Birds are incredibly sensitive to their environment (think canary in the coal mine), and the thought that they were caught by surprise, or that they "fowled" up their flight pattern is patently ridiculous. And where are the roasted birds from this lightning strike? And what about fish dying in the same region? Just a "disease" coincidence. One mainstream headline has to be enshrined as the saddest attempt at sensationalism, while revealing an obvious natural conclusion Falling Birds Likely Died From Massive Trauma. Really?

Meteor showers: We are in a period of intense seasonal meteor showers, and several perennial YouTubers reported hearing sonic booms in the area that could have indicated a local shock wave. This would be one non-conspiratorial, natural cause that actually makes sense, but it is hard to connect to both birds and fish, unless it produced a disabling frequency. There were indeed other sound anomalies according to the report highlighted above.

Igloo

Little Ice Age? NASA Satellite Reveals Snow-Covered Ireland

Image
© NASA Goddard/MODIS Rapid Response Team, Jeff SchmaltzThe Emerald Isle was swathed in white on December 22, 2010, when the MODIS instrument aboard the Terra satellite passed overhead, capturing this true-color image.
The Mid-Atlantic and northeastern U.S. were not the only areas dealing with holiday snowfall.

Ireland [usually] enjoys a "temperate ocean climate" (Cfb) based on the Koopen climate classification system. Such climates normally enjoy cool, cloud-covered summers and mild winters. Ireland's climate is also [usually] moderated by the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, which flows off the western shore. Snow commonly falls only in the highest elevations; dustings may occur elsewhere a few times each year. Significant accumulations anywhere in the country are rare.

The winter of 2009-2010 was unusually cold and snowy. Called "The Big Freeze" by the British media, it brought widespread transportation problems, school closings, power failures and twenty five deaths. A low of -22.3°C (-8.1°F) was recorded on January 8, 2010, making it the coldest winter since 1978/79.

Igloo

India shivers in deadly cold snap: dozens killed

Image
© Associated PressIndian-administered Kashmir has been hardest hit by the cold weather
An intense spell of cold weather has disrupted life across northern India, reportedly claiming two dozen lives.

The capital, Delhi, has been badly hit by the cold snap, along with Indian-administered Kashmir, Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.

In Leh in Kashmir, temperatures dropped to -23.6C - this winter's lowest - on Sunday, weather officials said.

Delhi, which is experiencing one of its coldest winters in years, has been hit by thick fog which disrupted flights.

Sunday was Delhi's coldest day this winter with temperatures dipping to 7.8C - cold by the standards of the Indian capital.

Indian homes rarely have central heating - a regular feature in buildings in the West.

Eye 1

Dead birds in Sweden killed by 'external blows'

dead birds

A large number of dead birds were found in the city of Falkoping, Sweden, Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, according to a press release on the website of the Swedish National Veterinary Institute.

Autopsies were peformed on five of the birds. The institute said they died due to "sudden, hard external blows," according to the press release. They had no signs of infection or other illnesses, and there were no external signs indicating what killed them.

"We have determined that the birds have died from severe internal bleedings caused by external blows," said the Institute's Marianne Elvander.

Eye 1

Dead Birds in China: Birds continue to fall around the world - may be a precursor to reversal of poles

dead birds, china
© unknown
Online Translation

On January 2 in cities and towns of Arkansas, more than 1,000 blackbirds fell to the ground from the sky, and they were dead! The American Wildlife Service is confused why the birds fell out of the sky.

Yesterday morning, the king master was walking to work when an eagle suddenly hit him and died. Birds dropping from the sky, such a small probability event, happened most recently in Geleshan, sporadically, and continued for months. These birds out of the sky is only the beginning, now even the eagle is falling. Residents are beginning to feel unrest and scared.

At the Forestry University in Harbin, thousands of sparrows were found in the woods near death, said to be frozen to death.

We know that birds navigate by the Earth's magnetic field - if the magnetic field changes, birds may fall. That migratory birds rely on the body's "biological compass" to determine direction is an "open secret", but it is not clear how birds perceive the magnetic field.

Better Earth

Shift of Earth's Magnetic North Pole Impacts Tampa Airport

Tampa Airport
© Tampa Bay OnlineRunway changes are needed to account for the moving magnetic pole, which is nearing Russia at 40 miles per year.

Scientists say the magnetic north pole is moving toward Russia and the fallout has reached -- of all places -- Tampa International Airport.

The airport has closed its primary runway until Jan. 13 to repaint the numeric designators at each end and change taxiway signage to account for the shift in location of the Earth's magnetic north.

The closure of the west parallel runway will result in more activity on the east parallel runway and more noise for residential areas of south Tampa.

The busiest runway will be re-designated 19R/1L on aviation charts. It's been 18R/36L, indicating its alignment along the 180-degree approach from the north and the 360-degree approach from the south.

Later this month, the airport's east parallel runway and the seldom used east-west runway will be closed to change signage to their new designations.

The Federal Aviation Administration required the runway designation change to account for what a National Geographic News report described as a gradual shift of the Earth's magnetic pole at nearly 40 miles a year toward Russia because of magnetic changes in the core of the planet.


Bizarro Earth

Faenza Italy: The Rain of Death Turns Blue - Thousands of Doves Dying

dead dove
Translation by Sott editors

There are certainly many hundreds, probably thousands, of collared dove who are dying at this moment in Faenza. They are in heaps in the flower beds, crushed by machinery in the streets, horribly hung from trees like Christmas balls. And many, many more, as told by the well-informed, are found in industrial-fenced zones.

The WWF has collected more of these birds, not all already dead. A dozen, in fact, have been sent to the Center of Recovery 'Il Pettirosso' in Modena, where those arriving are still alive but died shortly after. Overall, a mystery. Inside the beak, in some animals, the staining was of a strange blue.

What could have caused it? Both the doves collected by the Forestry and those sent by the WWF to the Center of Modena, have been delivered to the 'Istituto Zooprofilattico' of Emilia Romagna and Lombardy. Nobody, however, likes to deliver an opinion on this issue and for the analysis may take a week. Is it possible that the Collared doves... have been dying of stomachache? So someone would have argued (see article, GeaPress). In general, blue is a sign of hypoxia, caused for example by suffocation. The bluish tint, however, is also typical of potassium cyanide, a deadly poison used, for example, from poachers. Cyanide, however, also causes hypoxia, .... maybe a dove with an upset stomach would die suffocated. Another poison appears bluish in some types of rat poison grains. However, believing that the doves have died choking could be a faulty guess. And why only them? On the site there are only doves, but the pigeons in other places are likely to eat the same seed mesh that certain industries stack up around Faenza? So why they do not die from choking too?

Black Cat

Flock of Dead Blackbirds Found In Wilson County Tennessee

dead,birds,tennessee
© wsmv
Now, more that 100 dead birds were recently found in Wilson County, causing the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency to investigate.

A resident notified the agency Tuesday afternoon after he spotted dozens of dead birds along Highway 70 north in Lebanon a few days ago.

"It's kind of a strange, odd thing. It plays into some of the things that have been happening in other places," said Lt. Jim Hooper of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.

TWRA officials found 120 dead blackbirds in the Spring Creek area when they investigated the situation on Wednesday.

"We searched the adjoining fields and everywhere else, and there are no other birds except in this one very localized area," said Hooper. "The birds have definitely been dead 5 or 6 days."

Bizarro Earth

Cold weather kills dozens in northern India

cold,india
© Unknown
Lucknow, India - Near-freezing temperatures and icy Himalayan winds have killed dozens of people in northern India over the past two weeks and forced schools to close in the capital, officials said Wednesday.

A spokesman for worst-hit Uttar Pradesh state said five people died from the cold overnight, pushing the number of deaths there to 41.

Uttar Pradesh is one of India's poorest states and nearly a fifth of its 180 million people are homeless.

In New Delhi, at least 10 homeless people died from the cold weather over the past two weeks despite a drive by police and welfare officials to persuade people living on the streets to sleep in 80 city-run shelters.