Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

US: Beached whale's stomach found to be full of fresh trash

Lynda V. Mapes
The Seattle Times
Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:26 UTC
A gray whale's last meal in Puget Sound included plenty of trash, and it was fresh enough to indicate the animal took the "eat local" mantra enthusiastically to heart before coming ashore at Arroyo Beach, and later dying about a mile south of the Fauntleroy ferry dock.

Trash in Whale Stomach
© CASCADIA RESEARCH COLLECTIVEBeached whale's stomach found to be full of fresh trash.

A gray whale that came ashore and later died near the Fauntleroy ferry dock last week had all that is pictured here in its stomach, all ingested while feeding in Puget Sound.
Sweatpants. A golf ball. Surgical gloves. Small towels. Bits of plastic. And more than 20 plastic bags.

A gray whale's last meal in Puget Sound included plenty of trash, and it was fresh enough to indicate the animal took the "eat local" mantra enthusiastically to heart before coming ashore at Arroyo Beach, and later dying about a mile south of the Fauntleroy ferry dock.

In 20 years of examining more than 200 whale carcasses, research scientist John Calambokidis says Tuesday he has never seen so much trash in a whale's stomach. Founding member of the Cascadia Research Collective in Olympia, Calambokidis says he does not yet know what caused the whale's death, and tests are continuing.

"It kind of dramatizes the legacy of what we leave at the bottom," Calambokidis said. The sediment at the bottom of Puget Sound bays is loaded with other contaminants, "and an animal feeding and being exposed to this kind of garbage is also being exposed to those, too."
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Blackbox

Australia: Global search can't solve Dolphin mystery

Heather Kennett
Portside Messenger
Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:13 UTC
Injured Dolphins
© Barbara SabertonHorrific burns on Port River dolphins - the cause may never be known.
The exact cause of the horrific burns inflicted on two Port River dolphins is unlikely to ever be known, despite a global search by local authorities.

The injured dolphins, Wave and her calf Tallula are being monitored daily by Port dolphin expert Mike Bossley and Adelaide Dolphin Sanctuary staff since the lesions on the upper flank of their bodies were first seen almost two weeks ago.

Dr Bossley, director of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, said he was "more positive" about the dolphins likelihood of recovery, although the injuries were still a concern. "We've had responses from researchers and veterinarians from all over the world and it was universally acknowledged as the the worst ever injuries seen on a surviving dolphin," he said.

"I'm slightly more positive now that we've got to day 10 and they are still alive, because I feel if they were going to succumb they may have already by now.

"It would seem that Wave is feeding Tallula if Wave was too sick she couldn't provide milk but it is still a touch and go situation."

Environment Department animal welfare manager Deb Kelly ruled out any Port River industry or pollution as a cause of the burns.

However it wasn't possible to capture either dolphin to take skin samples to help determine the exact cause because it would be too distressing, she said.
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Fish

Robin Hood meets his underwater match

Wendy Zukerman
New Scientist
Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:41 UTC
Image
© Shelby Temple, University of QueenslandThwonk!
Species: Toxotes chatareus

Habitat: Coastal waters of the Asia-Pacific region, including Sri Lanka, India, New Guinea and northern Australia; typically in murky, brackish water, where they swim just under the surface.

Archerfish may not carry a bow and arrow, but all they need to shoot like one of Robin Hood's merry men is the chance to watch an expert at target practice.

The shimmering fish, with dashes of black on their silver flanks, are the sharpshooters of the estuaries and mangroves of Asia and Australasia. Having chosen an insect perching unawares on low branches as prey, they press their tongue against the roof of their mouth, snap their gills shut and squirt long shots of water from below the surface that knock the critter into the water. They can dislodge prey at distances of more than 10 times the fish's own length.

But it's not a matter of "shoot and hope" for the cunning archerfish. They fine-tune the size of their water jets to the size of their prey and how well the prey is gripping the surface it is standing on. In 2006, Stefan Schuster and colleagues at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany showed that for any given size of prey, archerfish tuned their inbuilt water guns to hit the insect with 10 times the force required to knock it off its perch.
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Bizarro Earth

Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano is nothing compared to 'Angry Sister' Katla

Mark Sappenfield
Christian Science Monitor
Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:12 UTC
Image
© NewscomMotorists stopped to take pictures of the ash cloud from the eruption at Eyjafjallajökull volcano in southern Iceland Saturday. Scientists are watching a nearby volcano, Katla, to see if it, too, might erupt.
Every time in recorded history that Eyjafjallajökull volcano has erupted, the much larger Katla volcano has also erupted. Scientists are watching Katla carefully.

This history of Iceland will not make for comforting reading for thousands of would-be air travelers stranded across northern Europe and beyond.

The last time Eyjafjallajökull erupted, it continued belching the Earth's unsettled insides for 14 months, from December 1821 to January 1823.

Scientists do not expect Eyjafjallajökull to keep northern Europe's airports closed for 14 months, but they suggest that Eyjafjallajökull's impact on world travel might not end with the end of this current eruption.

Moreover, Iceland's "Angry Sister" hasn't even awoken yet. The three times in recorded history when Eyjafjallajökull has erupted, its neighbor, the much larger Katla, has followed suit.

Data do not yet suggest that a Katla eruption is imminent. Yet, in some respects, it is the far greater concern, both in Iceland and beyond.
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Igloo

Are winters in Europe becoming colder?


PhysOrg.com
Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:42 UTC
Image
© NASAA sight which we will need to get accustomed to: Large parts of Great Britain and Central Europe were covered in snow during the previous winter, as this satellite image from 7 January 2010 shows.
Despite the trend towards global warming, people in Great Britain and Central Europe will possibly experience cold winters more often in the next few years. This is the findings of a study by scientists from the University of Reading, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau.

Comment: There is no "trend towards global warming." The cold winter to come is the result of a trend towards global cooling, specifically an ice age.

The researchers have discovered a link between low solar activity and unusually low winter temperatures in this region. It is possible that, at times of low solar activity, the mild winds from the Atlantic do not reach Europe in winter. These results do not contradict an anthropogenic climate change, which is causing the temperatures on Earth to increase on average. (Environmental Research Letters, April 15, 2010)

Comment: These results do not contradict an anthropogenic climate change because there is no such thing as anthropogenic climate change. The changing climate is the result of natural cycles. Apart from pockets of warming, the temperatures on Earth are not increasing on average. They are falling.

The sun does not always radiate with the same intensity: Phases of high activity, in which our Sun sends particularly large amounts of radiation and large numbers of particles towards Earth, alternate with comparably quiet phases in a roughly eleven-year cycle. Visible evidence of this cycle is provided by the dark sun spots which can sometimes even be seen with the naked eye. If there are a large number of these spots, the Sun is experiencing a particularly high level of magnetic activity and therefore radiates very brightly.

Comment: Sott.net prediction: next winter will also be bitterly cold across the northern hemisphere. It may not even end.

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Propaganda

Propaganda Alert! Iceland volcano causes fall in carbon emissions as eruption grounds aircraft

David Adam
The Guardian
Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:37 UTC
Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano
© JON GUSTAFSSON/APIceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano
Cooling effect from volcano ash cloud will be 'very insignificant', but flight ban stops emission of estimated 2.8m tonnes of CO2

The eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano is unlikely to have any significant impact on climate but has caused a small fall in carbon emissions, experts say.

Although large eruptions such as Mount Pinatubo in 1991 can spew out enough material to shade and cool the planet, recent activity in Iceland is very small in comparison. The ash cloud has not reached the high atmosphere, where it would have the most effect, and it contains little sulphur, which forms reflective droplets of sulphuric acid. The World Meteorological Organisation in Geneva says any cooling effect from Eyjafjallajokull will be "very insignificant".

A larger effect on the atmosphere, though still small in global terms, comes from the mass-grounding of European flights over the past few days. According to the Environmental Transport Association, by the end of today the flight ban will have prevented the emission of some 2.8m tonnes of carbon dioxide since the first flights were grounded.

Comment: Once again 'experts' on the man-made global warming bandwagon spreading absurdities. The real issue is the massive volume of toxic fluoride and ash that is contaminating drinking water and threatening livestock.

Next we'll be told that humans caused the volcanic eruption...Oh hang on..CNN and NPR already have:
NPR and CNN worry that Global Warming may have caused Iceland's Volcano!!!

This is just too bizarre:
Diana Rehm (NPR): We do wonder whether there's human involvement in all of these eruptions, earthquakes, storms -

Elise Labott (senior State Department producer for CNN): - and how much global warming has a role in it. You know we've seen a lot of wacky weather but that's just a microcosm for what's happening around the world and how much climate change is contributing to earthquakes and volcanic ash - it's a really good question.
How exactly could global warming cause a volcano to go off?


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Bizarro Earth

Australia: Earthquake Magnitude 5.2 Hits Kalgoorlie


ABC News
Tue, 20 Apr 2010 04:20 UTC
Kalgoorlie Earthquake 1
© USGS
Hundreds of school children were evacuated from classrooms after a 5.0-magnitude earthquake hit the West Australian Goldfields city of Kalgoorlie-Boulder this morning.

Geoscience Australia says the earthquake hit one to two kilometres south of the Kalgoorlie city centre in Boulder about 8:20am.

Ambulance officers have taken a man and a woman to hospital with minor injuries. They are both in a stable condition.

Residents are being warned to prepare for aftershocks, but Geoscience Australia's David Jepsen said the worst should be over.

Comment: USGS has rated this earthquake at magnitude 5.2 as opposed to the local media. The detail might sound insignificant, however because the Richter scale is logarithmic, the difference is quite substantial in terms of energy released.

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Igloo

Best of the Web: A Climate for Change: Our past can tell us about our future

Alistair Dawson
SEPA View
Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:01 UTC
Image
In the first of a new series of book focuses for SEPA View, Alistair Dawson describes how his new book So Foul and Fair a Day: a History of Scotland's Weather and Climate traces the history of climate conditions in Scotland, showing that dramatic changes have played an important part in shaping Scotland's history.

Read through any history syllabus in any school and you will find few references to the impact of climate and weather on history. Text books on Scottish history are no different. There are descriptions of death and famine but there is nowhere to be seen any consideration of whether specific periods of hardship might also have something to do with extremes of weather and climate. For those trying to understand Scotland's present weather and climate and how it might change in the future, we can learn a great deal by looking back in time, beyond living memory, and attempt to decipher past patterns of change. Over the last thousand years some remarkable changes have taken place

Radical change

A big change in Scotland's weather took place between AD 1400 - 1410, before which it was rarely stormy in winter. Thereafter, there seems to have been a radical change in atmospheric circulation across the northern hemisphere. Scotland started to endure winter storms brought in from the North Atlantic and began to experience a much greater frequency of easterly winds during winter that brought low temperatures and plentiful amounts of snow. The country started to experience what was later to be known as 'the Little Ice Age'.

Comment: A "sulphurous fog", like this?

Video of a drive through the ash cloud in Iceland yesterday, April 18, 2010:



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Cloud Lightning

Come Rain or Come Shine

Willis Eschenbach
Watts Up With That?
Sun, 18 Apr 2010 13:10 UTC
One of the claimed dangers of a few degrees warming of the Earth is increasing drought. Drought is a very difficult thing to fight, because it is hard to manufacture water. So this is a frightening possibility.

I have long claimed that "a warmer world is a wetter world". I have said this without any actual data, based solely on the following logic.:
Increased temperature - > increased evaporation - > increased precipitation.
Today I graphed the numbers for the US precipitation. I used the USHCN state-by-state precipitation database, which also includes area-averaged values for regions of the US, and for the US itself.

First, here is the change in precipitation in the US since 1895:
Image
Figure 1. Annual precipitation in the US.
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Document

Queens University of Belfast told to hand over tree ring data


BBC
Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:33 UTC
Image
Queen's University in Belfast has been told by the Information Commissioner to hand over 40 years of research data on tree rings, used for climate research.

Douglas Keenan, from London, had asked for the information in 2007 under the Freedom of Information Act.

Mr Keenan is well-known for his questioning of scientists who propose a human cause for climate change.

Queen's University refused his request saying it was too expensive, but it is now considering its position.

The university claimed that as the information was unfinished, had intellectual property rights and was commercially confidential information, it did not have to pass it on.
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