Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Lightning Strikes Sleeping Woman


ABC News
Sat, 02 Jan 2010 15:26 UTC
A woman has been taken to hospital after her house was struck by lightning in Melbourne's east last night.

She was sleeping in her home in Glencairn Avenue, Ringwood when the lightning struck about 10pm (AEDT).

The Metropolitan Fire Brigade's (MFB) Alan Hunter says the bolt hit the roof, travelled down into the house and into a wardrobe.
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Snowman

U.S. East Coast Faces Deep Freeze; Florida Oranges Threatened

Dan Hart
Bloomberg News
Sun, 03 Jan 2010 12:06 UTC
The U.S. East Coast faces the coldest night of the season as frigid air spills south and threatens agriculture in Georgia, Alabama and the orange crop in Florida.

Freeze warnings were posted by the National Weather Service as far south as the Orlando area, which may be as many as 20 degrees below normal tonight, the National Weather Service said. The advisory alerts growers that subfreezing temperatures are imminent and may kill crops or other sensitive vegetation.

Tampa and others cities in the central part of the state are under a freeze warning from 1 a.m. to 9 a.m. local time tomorrow. Temperatures may fall below 32 degrees Fahrenheit (zero Celsius) for more than three consecutive hours, the National Weather Service in Tampa said on its Web site.
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Snowman

Climategate: You should be steamed

Neil Frank
Houston Chronicle
Sat, 02 Jan 2010 11:59 UTC
Now that Copenhagen is past history, what is the next step in the man-made global warming controversy? Without question, there should be an immediate and thorough investigation of the scientific debauchery revealed by "Climategate."

If you have not heard, hackers penetrated the computers of the Climate Research Unit, or CRU, of the United Kingdom's University of East Anglia, exposing thousands of e-mails and other documents. CRU is one of the top climate research centers in the world. Many of the exchanges were between top mainstream climate scientists in Britain and the U.S. who are closely associated with the authoritative (albeit controversial) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Among the more troubling revelations were data adjustments enhancing the perception that man is causing global warming through the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other atmospheric greenhouse gases.

Particularly disturbing was the way the core IPCC scientists (the believers) marginalized the skeptics of the theory that man-made global warming is large and potentially catastrophic. The e-mails document that the attack on the skeptics was twofold. First, the believers gained control of the main climate-profession journals. This allowed them to block publication of papers written by the skeptics and prohibit unfriendly peer review of their own papers. Second, the skeptics were demonized through false labeling and false accusations.
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Mr. Potato

Michael Mann: Science Journals Must Be Unpolluted by Politics

Michael Mann
Wall Street Journal
Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:48 UTC
In his Dec. 18 op-ed "How to Manufacture a Climate Consensus," Patrick J. Michaels of the Cato Institute falsely claims that work by him (and other fossil-fuel-funded climate change contrarians) has been unfairly blocked by me and others from appearing in mainstream science journals because the peer review process is supposedly biased against climate science deniers.

In truth, the only bias that exists at such publications is for well-reasoned writing that is buttressed by facts.

That is why climate skeptics such as Richard Lindzen of MIT or John Christy of the University of Alabama - who are widely regarded as credible and whose work contributes meaningfully to the scientific discourse - have no problem publishing their work in mainstream scientific journals.

And what about those who are not being published? Every scientist dealing with a major public issue must decide if he or she is going to be a scientist or a de facto politician.
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Fish

Oceans love carbon dioxide, say sea scientists

John O'Sullivan
Climategate.com
Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:28 UTC
Now the doomsayers are telling you that the oceans are turning acid from all that nasty carbon dioxide being absorbed into the seas. How frightening! Or perhaps not? According to oceanographers there's as much chance of the planet's seas turning acid as there is of Al Gore admitting he lied. So it seems we can trust the ecofascists even less now they've started pontificating about other scientific disciplines. In response to the latest environmental hype oceanographers have come out to tell us what the facts actually are and its not good reading for Mr. Gore!

It seems that sea life thrives on warmer water and increased carbon dioxide. On June 2nd, 2009 a groundbreaking new research paper was announced by zoologists that indicated that elevated water temperatures and heightened concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) dramatically increases the growth rate of a keystone species of sea star and may well be beneficial to other sea crustaceans.

Yes, that's right - sea-dwelling creatures like a drop of acid in the drink. Crustaceans (e.g. shellfish and coral) survive by making carbonate structures and they do so by turning soluble bicarbonates in the water to carbonates. In basic terms, their way of life causes them to release CO2 into the water. It's normal, not nasty, say the sea scientists.
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Gear

"Ocean acidification" keeps evil man-made pollutant CO2 on the agenda

James Delingpole
Telegraph.co.uk
Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:19 UTC
I first chanced upon this horror (in abbreviated form) while in the bath reading The Week (which used to be my favourite mag but has gone seriously off now that it has abandoned all pretence of neutrality on the AGW * issue). And though I admit it wasn't quite as bad as having Freddy Krueger's clawed hand come from beneath the bubbles to disembowel me then drag me down the plughole, it still gave me a seriously nasty turn - as I'm sure it will you too once I've parsed its insidious monstrousness.

It's an article Charles Clover wrote in The Sunday Times a few weeks ago titled "If climate change doesn't grab you, meet its evil twin." On first glance, it might look like just more of the same old glib drivel we've come to expect from the MSM's environment specialists...

There's the statutory de haut en bas dismissal of your typical sceptic: "always a man, almost invariably wearing a tweed jacket", apparently, claims the tweed-jacket-wearing, pheasant-shooting Clover.
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MIB

Climategate: Michael Mann's very unhappy New Year

James Delingpole
Telegraph.co.uk
Sun, 03 Jan 2010 10:01 UTC
As I said yesterday, one of our jobs this year is to wipe the complacent smiles off the smug faces of the lobbyists, "experts", "scientists", politicians and activists pushing AGW.

This is why I am so glad to report that Michael Mann - creator of the incredible Hockey Stick curve and one of the scientists most heavily implicated in the Climategate scandal - is about to get a very nasty shock. When he turns up to work on Monday, he'll find that all 27 of his colleagues at the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University have received a rather tempting email inviting them to blow the whistle on anyone they know who may have been fraudulently misusing federal grant funds for climate research.

Comment: Who is Kent Clizbe? CIA counter-terrorism 'expert':
Kent served as a staff CIA case officer in the 1990s, and as a contractor after 9/11. He has worked in various capacities in intelligence positions in Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His specialty is Counter-terrorism and Islamic Extremism.

Kent has also worked Counter-intelligence, Counter-proliferation, Counter-narcotics, and other targets. In addition to extensive liaison work with foreign intel services, he has worked in the US Intel Community in inter-agency, inter-governmental intelligence operations since 9/11. He was awarded the Intelligence Community Seal Medallion, the highest civilian intelligence agency decoration for contractors, for his counter-terrorist operations in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. His work in the Philippines was described in an article by Mark Bowden in the Atlantic Monthly in March 2007, Jihadists in Paradise.


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Snowman

Cold weather kills scores in India


Independent Online
Fri, 01 Jan 2010 18:50 UTC
At least 17 people died as towns and cities in India's northern states were hit by cold weather, officials said on Friday.

"Sixteen people have died in Uttar Pradesh since early Wednesday due to cold [weather] conditions in the state. Most victims were homeless or pavement dwellers," state police spokesman G N Khanna said.
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Igloo

Best of the Web: Glacial Rebound Here We Go: Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years, experts predict

Nick Britten
Telegraph.co.uk
Sat, 02 Jan 2010 16:55 UTC
Image
© Telegraph Parts of Scotland have had snowcover for nearly three weeks
Britain is bracing itself for one of the coldest winters for a century with temperatures hitting minus 16 degrees Celsius, forecasters have warned.

They predicted no let up in the freezing snap until at least mid-January, with snow, ice and severe frosts dominating.

And the likelihood is that the second half of the month will be even colder.

Weather patterns were more like those in the late 1970s, experts said, while Met Office figures released on Monday are expected to show that the country is experiencing the coldest winter for up to 25 years.

On New Year's Day 10 extreme weather warnings were in place, with heavy snow expected in northern England and Scotland.
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Bizarro Earth

Nyamulagira Volcano erupts in eastern Congo


Associated Press
Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:04 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Congolese Wildlife Authority, Virunga National Park, HOIn this photo released by the Congolese Wildlife Authority, Virunga National Park, showing the scene as the Nyamulagira volcano erupts early Saturday, Jan. 2, 2010.
Kinshasa - A government official says a volcano has erupted in eastern Congo, sending lava toward a national park.

Feller Lutahichirwa said Saturday that the Nyamulagira volcano had erupted at dawn. While the area where the lava was headed is sparsely populated, wildlife officials say it is home to about 40 endangered chimpanzees.

Lutahichirwa says government observers are monitoring the situation with help from U.N. helicopters.

The director of Virunga National Park says the eruption is "of great concern" and that rangers have been deployed to monitor the lava flow.
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