Earth ChangesS


Popcorn

A Worldwide Fervor Over Climate Change Orthodoxy

Image
Can you hear me? You've been incognizant, but it's over and you're going to be OK. Take deep breaths and relax until your vision clears.

The world is not going to end because of climate change, at least not in the near future.

You are a most fortunate individual. You have been a participant in the biggest inter-dimensional cross rip since the Tunguska blast of 1909! No wait, that's Ghostbusters.

Let me put it differently: There has never been anything quite like this - ever.

The entire world has been embroiled in a persistent, free-floating global fervor (and a really nasty one, too) allegedly based on fervor-less, dispassionate science.

Recently, there was a huge explosion in the climate change orthodoxy factory that was set off by objective evidence we have been deceived and manipulated.

The evidence was the leaked e-mails of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU), which are now subject to several official investigations, forcing the head of the CRU to step aside. The e-mails tell a lurid tale of unbecoming, unwarranted, organized and fierce hostility to skeptical climatic researchers, as well as data tampering, anti-scientific secrecy, manipulations of scientific journals, and distortions of peer review that make George Orwell look like a prophet.

Better Earth

Australia - Once upon a climate

Jack and Jill and a bucket of weather

Image
It is rather sad, and pathetic, that we have to go to the British press to find robust investigative reporting about the theory of man-made global warming. Apart from this country's national newspaper, The Australian, you could almost believe that the mantra that "the science is settled", is true. If you follow the line of the ABC and much of the mainstream press, to question the science of climate-change is to be un-Australian and un-Earth. Well, the science isn't settled - not by a long shot - and the battle continues.

Having been mugged at Copenhagen, embarrassed out of their wits by the scandal that was Himalaya-glacier-Gate, and facing a planet that doesn't seem to want to respond to the dire predictions of the most learned­ - the lads and lasses at the IPCC have been desperate in their attempts to block the rising tide of public sceptisism. So we have waited, with our breath bated, for a indication as to how they will deal with a growing, non-believing public.

Apart from the "science is settled" spin, which is code for "don't question us", the other side of the debate has been the "Outrageous-Claims Department". This is where the dedicated followers of climate let pass for science any outrageous claim made by any of their front-line "experts". Al Gore, Tim Flannery, James Hansen, Penny Wong, Kevin Rudd and Dr Pachauri. What do you do when scientists and political leaders blindly allow false claims to go uncorrected. When they must know that there isn't a "new" change-in-climate because the climate has always changed. It's what climate does. Sea-levels have always risen or dropped, ice-caps have always built up or shrunk, river systems have always developed, and in certain periods in history, just simply disappeared.

Living things on planet Earth have done what the have always done as climate changes naturally - adapted.

Cow

Eating Less Meat and Dairy Products Won't Have Major Impact on Global Warming

Image
© WikimediaReducing consumption of meat and dairy
products might not have a major impact in
combating global warming despite claims
that link diets rich in animal products to
production of greenhouse gases.
Cutting back on consumption of meat and dairy products will not have a major impact in combating global warming - despite repeated claims that link diets rich in animal products to production of greenhouse gases. That's the conclusion of a report presented here today at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Air quality expert Frank Mitloehner, Ph.D., who made the presentation, said that giving cows and pigs a bum rap is not only scientifically inaccurate, but also distracts society from embracing effective solutions to global climate change. He noted that the notion is becoming deeply rooted in efforts to curb global warming, citing campaigns for "meatless Mondays" and a European campaign, called "Less Meat = Less Heat," launched late last year.

Umbrella

Climate Change. Australia - The sunburnt country is awash

Record-breaking rain means huge Australian arid-land lakes are visible from space.

Image
© ABC NewsCows caught in the flood
Australia has one of the most unpredictable rainfall patterns in the world, and this is one of those unpredictable years. For the past few months, the repeated downfalls have left large pools of water lying in arid lands in Western Queensland. It's great news for farmers. The water will, over the next year, flow south through the Darling River system, restoring parched watercourses, swamps, and dams. The Darling River system flows from Queensland through New South Wales and into South Australia.

Earlier this month, the Bureau of Meteorology announced that the rains were "exceptional":
The most remarkable aspect of this event was the area covered by the heavy rainfall and the total volume of rainfall that fell. Daily totals exceeded 100 mm over 1.7% of Australia on 1 March and 1.9% on 2 March. The latter is the largest area of 100 mm-plus daily totals on a single day in the Australian meteorological record, breaking the previous record of 1.7% set on 22 December 1956. 28 February was the wettest day on record for the Northern Territory with an NT-wide average of 29.23 mm, while 2 March set a new record for Queensland with a Statewide average of 31.74 mm1.
And after that record-breaking rain, the rain kept falling .

Info

More than 50 million hit by drought in south of China

Image
© ReutersA man stands on a dried-up pond on the outskirts of Kunming in the Yunnan province. Forecasters see no signs of drought abating in the short term.
Hong Kong - China was ravaged by extreme forces of nature as the country's south wrestled with the worst drought in decades that has brought hardship to 51 million people, while a powerful sandstorm in the north turned Beijing's sky orange.

The drought in the provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan, as well as the Guangxi Autonomous Region and the city of Chongqing, has forced local governments to tap underground water sources and use cloud seeding to produce rain for agricultural production.

More than 20 million people throughout the southern region are dealing with water shortages and about 16 million acres of cropland are suffering from drought, the China Daily newspaper reported. Many areas have declared a state of emergency.

China's State Commission of Disaster Relief said the drought had left more than 16 million people and 11 million livestock with drinking-water shortages.

Bizarro Earth

Iceland volcano eruption could set off bigger blast: expert

Image
© AP Photo/Ragnar Axelsson
Reykjavik - A small volcano eruption that forced more than 600 people to flee their homes in Iceland over the weekend could conceivably set off a larger volcano, experts warned Monday.

"Historically, we know of three eruptions in (the large volcano) Katla linked to eruptions in Eyjafjallajokull," Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, a professor of geophysics and civil protection advisor, told AFP, adding however that there so far was no indication of volcanic activity at Katla.

A volcanic eruption near the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in southern Iceland forced hundreds to flee their homes early Sunday, but no casualties were reported.

It was the first volcanic eruption in Iceland since 2004, and the first in the vicinity of the Eyjafjallajokull glacier since 1823.

Bizarro Earth

Strong quake hits off Papua New Guinea

Port Moresby - A strong 6.6 magnitude quake struck off Papua New Guinea's coast on Monday, US geologists said, but there was no tsunami warning and the epicentre's depth lessened the likelihood of damage.

The quake struck at 1400 GMT with its epicentre located 93km north of the town of Rabaul on New Britain island and at a depth of 415 kilometres, the United States Geological Survey said.

There was no immediate alert from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre, based in Hawaii.

Wolf

Wolves on the prowl again in Western Europe

wolf
© Unknown
Wolves are again howling through the woodlands of western Germany for the first time in 150 years, after spreading back into Western Germany now that most of their natural enemies have disappeared, conservationists say.

Wolf sightings have been common in Poland and eastern Germany for several years, but never in the heavily urbanised and industrial heartland of the Ruhr Valley and the Rhineland - until now.

Front-page tabloid headlines shocked city dwellers recently with reports that at least one wolf is on the prowl in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany's most populous state and a region which borders on France.

Fish

Fearless Fish Forget Their Phobias

Imagine if your fear of spiders, heights or flying could be cured with a simple injection. Research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Behavioral and Brain Functions suggests that one day this could be a reality.

The cerebellum, an area of the brain thought to be involved with the development of our fears, was studied in goldfish by researchers at the University of Hiroshima in Japan. Using classical conditioning, Masayuki Yoshida and Ruriko Hirano taught their fish to become afraid of a light flashed in their eyes. By administering a low voltage electric shock every time a light was shone, the fish were taught to associate the light with being shocked, which slowed their hearts -- the typical fish reaction to a fright.

Yoshida explains, "As you would expect, the goldfish we used in our study soon became afraid of the flash of light because, whether or not we actually gave them a shock, they had quickly learned to expect one. Fear was demonstrated by their heart beats decreasing, in a similar way to how our heart rate increases when someone gives us a fright."

Bad Guys

Uncontacted Tribes Threatened by "Thousands of Explosions"

Nahua
© SurvivalA Nahua man shortly after first contact in 1984. More than 50% of the Nahua died following contact.
A pioneer scientific study has revealed how some of the world's last uncontacted tribes are threatened by 'the detonation of thousands of seismic explosives' on their land.

The study says that seventeen large areas in the Peruvian Amazon where oil and gas companies can work include land inhabited by uncontacted Indians.

The potential impacts on the tribes and their land are 'severe and extensive', says the study. These impacts include: 'hundreds of heliports', 'the cutting of hundreds of kilometres of seismic lines', 'the detonation of thousands of seismic explosives', oil spills and leaks, new roads, and the 'unique potential of advancing the agricultural, cattle and logging frontiers', all of which could be disastrous for the tribes 'whose lack of resistance or immunity make them extremely vulnerable to illnesses brought by outsiders.'