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Better Earth

Dolphins Maintain Round-the-clock Visual Vigilance


Science Daily
Sun, 03 May 2009 22:14 UTC
Image
© iStockphoto/Peter BarkerDolphins have a clever trick for overcoming sleep deprivation. They are able to send half of their brains to sleep while the other half remains conscious.
Dolphins have a clever trick for overcoming sleep deprivation. Sam Ridgway from the US Navy Marine Mammal Program explains that they are able to send half of their brains to sleep while the other half remains conscious. What is more, the mammals seem to be able to remain continually vigilant for sounds for days on end. All of this made Ridgway and his colleagues from San Diego and Tel Aviv wonder whether the dolphins' unrelenting auditory vigilance tired them and took a toll on the animals' other senses?

Ridgway and his team set about testing two dolphins' acoustic and visual vigilance over a 5 day period to find out how well they functioned after days without a break.
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Bizarro Earth

Guatemala: Earthquake Magnitude 6.1


US Geological Survey
Sun, 03 May 2009 17:10 UTC
Image
© US Geological Survey
Date-Time

* Sunday, May 03, 2009 at 16:21:46 UTC
* Sunday, May 03, 2009 at 11:21:46 AM at epicenter

Location 14.664°N, 91.144°W

Depth 104.2 km (64.7 miles)

Distances 45 km (25 miles) ESE of Quezaltenango, Guatemala

70 km (40 miles) W of GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala

125 km (80 miles) ESE of Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico

1005 km (620 miles) ESE of MEXICO CITY, D.F., Mexico
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Better Earth

Eels in crisis after 95% decline in last 25 years

Steven Morris
The Guardian
Sun, 03 May 2009 16:36 UTC
Image
© Graham TurnerAccording to the Environment Agency, the number of European eels across the continent has declined by as much as 95% in the past 25 years.
They ought to be wriggling through briny water and marshy flatlands in their hundreds of thousands right now.

But the mystery of the vanishing eels is troubling fisheries officials, conservationists and fishermen who for generations have hunted the curious animal.

A conference in Somerset on the plight of the eel, which was attended by experts from across Europe, has been hearing this week that the eel is in crisis.

The number of European eels across the continent has declined by as much as 95% in the last 25 years, the Environment Agency says. Officials report that the number of young eels arriving in Britain's estuaries, rivers and streams this spring is significantly down on last year. Andy Don, an Environment Agency fisheries officer who has studied the eel for 20 years, said: "There is no doubt that there is a crisis. People have been reporting catching a kilo of glass eels this year when they would expect to catch 40 kilos. We have got to do something."
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Network

Limits on CO2 Climate Forcing from Recent Temperature Data of Earth

David Douglass and John Christy
Climate Science
Wed, 29 Apr 2009 04:26 UTC
Our paper

Limits on CO2 Climate Forcing from Recent Temperature Data of Earth

has just been published in Energy and Environment. (Vol 20, Jan 2009). [Copies may be downloaded from here . preprint with figures in color here]

We show in Figure 1 the well established observation that the global atmospheric temperature anomalies of Earth reached a maximum in 1998.
Global temperature anomalies 1980 - 2009
© David Douglass and John Christy

This plot shows oscillations that are highly correlated with El Nino/La Nina and volcanic eruptions. There also appears to be a positive temperature trend that could be due to CO2 climate forcing.
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Attention

Saskatchewan seeding numbers only 2% complete

Robert Felix
IceAgeNow
Sat, 02 May 2009 04:09 UTC
Email from a farmer in Saskatchewan:

Hi Robert,

My name is Tim. I am a vegetable farmer living in Rosthern, Saskatchewan, Canada. My dad and I have a combined 80+ years of agricultural experience, so we naturally take the weather very seriously. Since I discovered your site a few months ago, it has been my beacon towards sanity, as it addresses issues and topics that I've been pondering for the past 10 years or so. You obviously don't need me to reiterate point by point and question by question the very obvious contradictions to the IPCC/Al Gore/David Suzuki line that the Mainstream Media by and large refuses to address in it's discussions about climate. I'm trying to wean myself from both name calling and subjectivity on this topic, however what I hear coming from a lot of folks is either crazy or at the very least contradicts reality.
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Life Preserver

US: More Rain Dumped on Corn Belt, Planting Behind Schedule

Dale Mohler and Meghan Evans
AccuWeather
Sat, 02 May 2009 03:59 UTC
Corn Belt planting behind schedule 2009
© AccuWeather

For the second consecutive year, a cool, wet weather pattern has delayed corn planting in the nation's breadbasket. Corn planted after the middle of May is more vulnerable to summer heat and may not reach maturity before the first frosts arrive. Much of an area from Missouri to Ohio has been very wet during the month of April with rainfall running 120-200% of normal.

One difference between last spring and this spring is that all of the Midwest was running behind schedule last year at this time, while this year, it's mostly the area from Missouri to Ohio and Michigan. The northwestern corner of the Midwest corn belt is actually running ahead of schedule, as of late April. The cool, wet pattern is forecast to last another 1-2 weeks across the Midwest. By the middle of May, corn planting from Missouri to Ohio may be running as much as three to four weeks behind schedule.
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Magic Hat

Australia's BOM backs down on warming at Antarctic bases

Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That
Fri, 01 May 2009 03:04 UTC
Bureau blows hot and cold over Antarctica warm-up as Bureau of Metereology backs down from a claim that temperatures at Australia's three bases in Antarctica have been warming over the past three decades
Australia Antarctic station stamp
© unknown

With weather stations like the ones below, it might be a bit hard to separate the real temperature signal of Antarctica from your local UHI. I wonder how much more cooling would be evident in the data had the weather stations been placed away from the "living pods"?

This picture on a postage stamp from Australia, celebrating the Australian Antarctic Territory in 1997, may help settle the issue. Note the Stevenson Screen near the "living pod" on the right.
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Chess

Al Gore, global warming and truth

Thomas Fuller
Examiner
Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:54 UTC
I voted three times for Al Gore, twice for VP and once for President. I don't regret the first two votes...

The former Vice President spoke before the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week. It was not his shining hour. Some of what he said was hyperbole. Some of what he said is just not true. And he, or one of his staff, should surely have known the limits he was transgressing.

For example, when speaking about Arctic ice, he said this:
"New research, which draws upon recently declassified data collected by U.S. nuclear submarines traveling under the Arctic ice cap for the last 50 years ... has told us that the entire Arctic ice cap may totally disappear in summer in as little as five years."
What he might have added was that Arctic ice has only been measured for 30 years, and that it is recovering at the fastest rate ever recorded (from an extreme melt over the past 18 months) and it is more or less (within a standard deviation) back to normal now.
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Hourglass

US: Fairfield digging out from snow


WorldNow
Fri, 01 May 2009 17:45 UTC
Montana 2009 April May snow storm
© Roy FolsomEast Glacier Park

Temperatures warmed up on Friday and the winter storm system finally moved out of Montana, but not without leaving mounds of record-setting snow behind.

Many small towns and schools even closed due to severe driving conditions and road closures over the past few days.

The community of Fairfield was one of the hardest hit by the spring snow; business was back to normal in Fairfield today after over two feet of snow caused the town to shut down Wednesday.

Mayor Lillian Alfson said, "It was drifting so bad it was dangerous to come in and out and they had closed the highway, from Vaughn this direction anyway, so coming into town was dangerous so we just wanted people not to unless it was an emergency."
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Igloo

US: Up to 4 feet of snow in Montana closes highways


WSVN
Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:41 UTC
Helena, Montana - A storm dumped as much as 4 feet of snow on northwest Montana and piled it in drifts 12 feet high, blocking major highways Wednesday and isolating an entire town.

Many schools were closed in the area along the Rocky Mountain Front.

Officials said all roads in and out of the town of Browning -- just east of Glacier National Park -- were closed Wednesday.

A foot of snow fell in Browning during the night, bringing the total since the storm started Monday to 4 feet, the National Weather Service said.
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