Earth ChangesS


Snowman

Stadium lies in ruins after roof caves-in from weight of snow in New Zealand


TVNZ
Sat, 18 Sep 2010 16:31 UTC
Image
© Wayne Calderwood Heavy snow caused the roof of Invercargill's Southland Stadium to collapse.
Heavy snow has severely damaged one of Invercargill's most important venues.

The weight of snow caused the roof on the main netball court to collapse at the multi-purpose and world-class Stadium Southland this morning.

Stadium Southland General Manager Nigel Skelt said it was lucky it did not happen during a busy time of week.

"We've never had a snow fall this big before, in our history. We've been going ten years and unfortunately in this instant it just hasn't been able to sustain it.

"The result could've been far more catastrophic."
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Hourglass

5.6 earthquake hits Waikato, New Zealand


TVNZ
Fri, 24 Sep 2010 16:19 UTC
A 5.6 magnitude earthquake has hit south Waikato tonight.

The quake struck 10 kilometres east of Tokoroa just before 8pm, at a depth of 200 kilometres.

It was widely felt throughout the North Island.
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Igloo

'Freak' cold snap in Britain as temperatures fall 12C below seasonal average, follows coldest August in 17 years

Sarah Westcott
UK Express
Sat, 18 Sep 2010 16:10 UTC
Britain will be hit by the first frosts of winter this weekend - with warnings of snow in the hills.

The freak cold snap has come weeks early, after the coldest August for 17 years. Temperatures could plummet to -1C (30F) at night - 12 degrees C below the seasonal average, forcing millions to switch the heating on.

The chilly conditions come before the official end of summer - the autumn equinox on September 23 - and will see Britons digging out their duvets to keep warm at night. Forecasters warned the Midlands and Wales would be worst hit and the cold snap is a headache for farmers still harvesting spring barley.
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Igloo

Up to a millions lambs could die as New Zealand freezes over


TVNZ
Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:02 UTC
Image
© TVNZ
Farm lobby group Federated Farmers says this month's spring storm in Southland looks set to cause the agricultural sector greater economic losses than the Canterbury earthquake imposed on farmers, and they want the government to declare it an adverse event.

"Federated Farmers is now working with Agriculture Minister David Carter on a medium scale adverse event declaration," a federation spokesman said tonight.

Such a declaration could give help such as that provided to farmers in recent serious droughts, including funding for a rural support trust to offer financial advice.

Agriculture Minister David Carter will tomorrow visit the small farm the federation's national president, Don Nicolson, and his wife Gail run at Waimatua, southeast of Invercargill, and the farms of Matthew and Vanessa Richards and David and Alana Clarke.
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Igloo

Cassandra Says It Will Get Very Cold

Alan Caruba
FamilySecurityMatters.org
Thu, 23 Sep 2010 21:53 UTC
Ice-Age
© FamilySecurityMatters.org

In the Greek myth about Cassandra, she could foresee the future, but no one believed her warnings. Her name is believed to be derived from the words for beauty and the sun.

Any number of solar scientists and others are warning that the Earth is on the brink of a new Ice Age at worst, a mini ice age at best. Dr. Achim Brauer of the German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam has concluded that the next Ice Age will come on so swiftly that in barely a year much of the northern hemisphere will be encased in ice and snow.

The Little Ice Age from around 1300 to 1850 lasted long enough to transform European society and have a profound affect on the histories of America and France. In England, they went from growing grapes to skating on a completely frozen Thames.

All the signs are in place and throughout the northern hemisphere nations, their leaders prattle on about global warming, clean energy, endangered species, and all the other environmental foolishness without once casting an eye toward the source of all climate on Earth, the Sun!
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Bizarro Earth

The Oil and the Turtles

Alex Shoumatoff
Vanity Fair
Tue, 21 Sep 2010 21:14 UTC
Ridley-turtle hatchling
© Gary BraaschRidley-turtle hatchlings head into the Gulf in Tamaulipas, Mexico.
Every year, Rancho Nuevo, 900 miles southwest of the Deepwater Horizon blowout, sees a spectacular phenomenon: the arribada - mass nesting - of the Kemp's ridley sea turtle, which has already neared extinction. This year, thousands of baby ridleys swam off toward a deadly new enemy.

Of all the devastation in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the Deepwater Horizon blowout, no one single species is being directly affected as much as the critically endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle. Only 8,000 adult females nested in 2009, and the adult males are thought to be even fewer. Those that remain have been hit hard. Most of the surviving juveniles inhabit the waters 20 to 30 miles from shore, feeding and growing in the same currents and gyres that collected the bulk of the four million barrels spewed by the now capped well. There were confirmed reports of ridleys being burned alive in the pools of corralled, concentrated oil that BP had been burning off during the spill.
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Cow Skull

US forces drop dead drug-poison killer mice from helicopters

Lewis Page
The Register
Thu, 23 Sep 2010 15:01 UTC
Gloves come off in Pacific jungle conflict

The United States military is waging war in the Pacific on invading jungle snakes - by dropping dead mice stuffed with household headache remedies on them from helicopters.
deadmicehelicopter
© The RegisterIn you go, Fluffy

Stars and Stripes reports on the airborne murine drug-zombie campaign being waged around US bases on the tropical island of Guam. Guam has been plagued since World War II by an invasion of brown tree snakes, which have swarmed through the local jungles eating everything they can catch and wiping out several kinds of bird.

The snakes are thought to have reached Guam aboard military transports, and the US authorities there are concerned that they might travel on by similar means to invade other Pacific islands and devastate more exotic ecosystems. Island life typically has no defence against predators introduced by human activity.
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Attention

Speeding Train Kills Seven Elephants in Eastern India

Manik Banerjee
The Associated Press
Thu, 23 Sep 2010 10:00 UTC
A speeding freight train struck a herd of elephants in a densely forested region in eastern India, killing seven, an official said Thursday.

The herd was crossing the tracks in Banarhat forest in West Bengal state at around midnight Wednesday when the train plowed into it, said Sumita Ghatak, a district forest officer.

"This is the first incident in the state when so many elephants have been killed in a single accident. It is really shocking," Ghatak said.

Outraged wildlife activists said they had complained to railroad authorities many times, asking them to divert trains to other routes or avoid running trains through forests at night.

Animesh Basu, who runs the Himalayan Nature and Adventure Foundation, said conservationists have been urging railways to instruct drivers to slow down while traveling in forest areas.
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Bizarro Earth

US: Flooding Forces Mass-Evacuation of Wisconsin City Homes


The Associated Press
Thu, 23 Sep 2010 09:10 UTC
A powerful storm system passing through the upper Midwest has flooded a small Wisconsin city where police are urging more than half of residents to leave their homes for higher ground.

Arcadia City Clerk Angela Berg says officials are going door to door to tell up to 1,500 of the city's 2,500 residents to evacuate their homes. Berg says about 15 businesses were closed downtown due to flooding.

Classes in Arcadia schools have been canceled and two highways leading into town have been closed.

Berg says two creeks burst their banks in the city, which sits along the Trempealeau (TREMP'-eh-loh) River.
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Bizarro Earth

Typhoon Fanapi Kills 54 in China


Agence France-Presse
Thu, 23 Sep 2010 06:00 UTC
Image
© Agence France-Presse79,000 people have been evacuated due to Fanapi, according to Xinhua news agency
Typhoon Fanapi, one of the strongest storms to hit China in years, has left 54 people dead and 42 missing in flooding and landslides in the south of the country, state media said on Thursday.

Xinhua news agency said 79,000 people had been evacuated due to Fanapi, which hit China on Monday a day after raking Taiwan with heavy rains, killing two people and leaving more than 100 injured on the island.

All of China's deaths occurred in the southern province of Guangdong, which has been battered by its worst rains in a century, it said.

Authorities in Guangdong had to use helicopters to air-drop relief supplies to victims in some areas, it added, quoting provincial flood control authorities.

Of those missing, 25 people disappeared in a rain-triggered mudslide, state media reports had said.
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