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Canada: Sinkhole closes west Quebec highway


CBC News
Wed, 02 Jul 2014 19:08 UTC
Quebec Sinkhole
© CBC News
Police closed Highway 148 in both directions after a 10-metre wide sinkhole opened Wednesday morning in the highway's eastbound lane.
Pontiac Mayor Roger Larose says he warned the province a month ago about problems with a highway culvert that likely caused a large sinkhole to appear on Highway 148 on Wednesday.

On Wednesday morning a large sinkhole 10 metres deep and 10 metres wide formed on Highway 148's eastbound lanes, closing the highway in both directions between the communities of Quyon and Luskville, both of which are part of the municipality of Pontiac.

Pontiac Mayor Roger Larose said Wednesday he and his staff told the provincial government a month ago that the culvert was blocked.

He said workers did come to fix the problem, but said the culverts should have been monitored.

"They should have been aware of this before us. They aren't organized and I sure am not impressed," said Larose.

A spokesperson with Quebec's transportation ministry told CBC News recent heavy rains and the Canada Day storm may have contributed to the sinkhole's formation over the culvert.

      Read More...
Arrow Down

Schoolgirl survives fall into 25ft deep sinkhole in Shuttlewood, UK

David Raven
Daily Mirror, UK
Wed, 02 Jul 2014 05:43 UTC
Image
Daisy-Mae Jones, 7, fell the equivalent height of a two-storey house and incredibly walked away with just cuts and bruises

A seven-year-old girl miraculously survived falling 25ft into a sinkhole.

Schoolgirl Daisy-Mae Jones, fell the equivalent height of a two-storey house while she was playing in a field near her home.

Her terrified mother Janine struggled to find little Daisy-Mae at first because of the thick grass, and the search party were led by the schoolgirl's cries for help until they found the hole.

A nearby builder helped to rescue her - and incredibly, she walked away with just cuts and bruises.

Describing the horrifying ordeal, mum Janine, 39, of Shuttlewood, Derbys., said: "Her friends came to tell us what had happened but the grass in that field is tall and thick, so it took a while to find her.

"We just had to keep calling her, and listening out. When we found her she was crying and covered head to toe in clay and mud. It was terrible."
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Arrow Down

Pollution returning to the source: Ocean plastic eaten by marine life may be ending up on your plate

Kristina Bravo
Yahoo News
Tue, 01 Jul 2014 18:06 UTC
turtle eats plastic bag
© greenrock.org
Marine life like turtles mistakenly ingest plastic bags or get caught up in them, resulting in a painful death.
From water bottles to the microbeads in our face wash, we send millions of tons of plastic into the ocean every year. Not only does it amount to $13 billion in damages to the environment, but it costs the lives of the marine animals that end up choking on our garbage. A new study has found even grimmer news: About 99 percent of the ocean's plastic is missing, and there's a chance that a large amount is ending up on our dinner plates.

The study, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reported data collected from all major ocean gyres in 2010 and 2011. When researchers used mesh nets to determine how much plastic the garbage patches have, they didn't find as much trash as expected.

"We can't account for 99 percent of the plastic that we have in the ocean," lead researcher Carlos Duarte told Science. "There is potential for this plastic to enter the global ocean food web.... And we are part of [it]."

According to Duarte, there's a good chance that marine wildlife is eating the ocean's plastic, which could look like fish food after waves and sunlight break it down into tiny pieces.

Comment: See also:

88% of world's oceans covered by plastic garbage - report
Plastic in Bird's Stomachs Reveals Ocean's Garbage Problem
The great Pacific garbage patch: We are literally filling up the Pacific ocean with plastic

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Attention

Two dead humpback whales wash up on Australian beaches


The Coffs Coast Advocate
Wed, 02 Jul 2014 14:38 UTC
Image
© NPWS
A new-born humpback male washed up on the beach north of Scott’s Head on late Friday afternoon.
The joy of the annual whale migration has been tempered by the discovery of two dead mammals on Coffs Coast beaches.

The pair of deceased humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) were reported to the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Services (NPWS) within 24 hours over the weekend.

The first whale was a new-born male which washed on the beach north of Scotts Head on late Friday afternoon.

The second whale was a humpback that had been previously seen resting within metres of rocks at Bonville Headland last Wednesday.

It had been monitored throughout that day by staff from Dolphin Marine Magic, ORRCA Inc and the NPWS before it swam off into open water late Wednesday afternoon. This whale later washed up dead on Bonville Beach around midday on Saturday.

Staff from Dolphin Marine Magic (DMM) were dispatched to both sites to collect biological samples and measurement data from the animals.
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Arrow Down

Sinkhole opens up on road in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia


channelnewsasia.com
Wed, 02 Jul 2014 14:17 UTC
Image
© @wanluv36
A yet-completed tunnel sunk on Wednesday, causing part of a road in Kuala Lumpur city area to sink.
Part of a road at the intersection of Jalan Pudu and Jalan Hang Tuah sunk on Wednesday, after an underground tunnel being constructed, collapsed.

Traffic in Malaysia's capital city was disrupted on Wednesday (July 2) after a road sunk due to the collapse of an underground tunnel being constructed.

According to a report by Malaysia's The Star, part of the road at the intersection of Jalan Pudu and Jalan Hang Tuah sunk after the tunnel, which forms part of the Pudu underpass project by Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL), collapsed at 10.38am. There was another cave-in at 12.20pm.

Two excavators were in the tunnel when the incident happened, but no casualties were reported, said Kuala Lumpur Fire and Rescue Department Assistant Director (Operations) Azizan Ismail said. He predicted the road would collapse further along the tunnel lines, the report stated.
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Apple Red

Early signs of autumn in UK 'already appearing in natural world'


The Guardian
Tue, 01 Jul 2014 11:13 UTC
Image

Natural beauty: Purple Emperor butterflies, pictured, have started arriving early after Britain experienced warmer than average temperatures for seven months in a row. Autumn could soon be upon us
Sycamore seeds are well developed and hawthorn berries are already red, says National Trust

After an early spring and summer, the year is now racing towards autumn ahead of schedule, conservationists have said.

As the year reached the half-way mark, the National Trust said wildlife seemed to have come through the wettest and stormiest winter on record and nature had hurtled "helter-skelter" through the seasons since.

Now signs of autumn are already in the hedgerows and woods, National Trust naturalist Matthew Oates said.

"Looking at this year, where does it want to be? It raged its way through winter, then we went into an incredibly early spring, and then it rushed helter-skelter through spring without stopping for breath," he said.
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Cloud Precipitation

Met Office: El Nino has potential to induce "major climatic impacts" this year

Tom Bawden
The Independent
Tue, 01 Jul 2014 10:49 UTC
el nino

Droughts, fires, floods, extreme winters: El Nino to blame?
The world is almost certain to be struck by the "El Nino" phenomenon this year, with the potential to induce "major climactic impacts" around the world, the Met Office has warned.

India and Australia are likely to be hit the hardest but the fallout could also be felt in Britain, where the last El Nino event in 2009/10 contributed to the heavy snowfall in the UK that winter.

The term El Nino relates to feedback between the atmosphere and ocean that occurs every two to seven years and can wreak havoc on the weather system, inflicting droughts and excessive rainfall across the world.

"El Nino is associated with colder than average winters, but is only one of the players that determine the weather," a Met Office spokesman said.

This means that while the phenomenon increases the chance of a cold winter, and was found to have contributed to the freezing conditions across Northern Europe last time it struck, it was by no means certain that the UK would become blanketed in snow.

In a report that concludes the event is "probable", the Met Office predicts that the worst effects of the El Nino will be felt in India, during the forthcoming three-month Monsoon season.

Comment: Humanity has a lot more to prepare for than El Nino: Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.

      Read More...
Cloud Lightning

More torrential rain worsens Midwest flooding

Jim Salter and Jim Suhr
ABC News
Tue, 01 Jul 2014 13:22 UTC
Iowa flooding

Highway flooding near Marshalltown, Iowa on Tuesday, July 1, 2014.
More torrential rain worsened flooding in the Midwest, spawning high water that swept away an Iowa teenager, caused a traffic nightmare near one of the nation's busiest airports and threatened to swamp a Missouri town for the fifth time in less than a decade.

More than 3 inches of rain fell over much of eastern Iowa and northern Illinois Monday night and Tuesday morning, and some areas got up to 5 inches of rain, National Weather Service meteorologist Mark Fuchs said, capping a week of downpours in the region.

Six Midwest states - North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Missouri - were dealing with significant flooding and there were pockets in some other states. By the weekend, the Mississippi River will be at major flood stage along many Iowa, Illinois and Missouri communities, forecasters said. River flooding could close highways, potentially top levees and threaten some homes and businesses.
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Phoenix

San Francisco Bay Area wildfire spreads to 3,200 acres

Brian Shields
KRON 4
Tue, 01 Jul 2014 10:05 UTC
Napa wildfire
© KRON 4
The Butts Fire burning in the North Bay has spread from Napa County into Lake County early Wednesday morning. Smoke from the 3,200 acre wild fire can be seen across much of the northern and central parts of the Bay Area.

By Wednesday morning, the fire remained just 30% contained.

About 200 homes are part of the mandatory evacuations that remain in effect from the west side of the 7800 block of Butts Canyon Rd to north of Snell Valley Rd including the Berryessa Estates.

"Right now they're not bad," one Calfire worker tells KRON 4′s Jackie Sissel Wednesday morning. "Yesterday they looked pretty bad with the wind. It looks like it is a fuels driven fire with the drought that we're experiencing now."

The fire broke out early Tuesday afternoon off Butts Canyon Rd in Pope Valley. That's about ten miles southeast of Middletown. Aetna Springs Road is now closed in the area. Butts Canyon Road is also closed between Snell Valley and Aetna Springs roads.

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Arrow Up

Global cooling? Great Lakes water levels rising - Scientists 'startled'

Robert Felix
Iceagenow.info
Wed, 02 Jul 2014 02:44 UTC
Lake Michigan
© Mark Kauzlarich/The New York Times
Dylan Drephal and Bryan Townsend fishing for smallmouth bass in mid-June along the Lake Michigan shore north of Ephraim, Wis., where the water is at least a foot higher than it was a year ago.
Another global warming prediction bites the dust

The National Wildlife Federation recently warned that "Lake Erie water levels, already below average, could drop 4-5 feet by the end of this century." The announcement also warned, in a section entitled "Threats from Global Warming," that "within another 30 years Lake Superior may be mostly ice-free in a typical winter."

On Thursday, Huffington Post Canada observed that "the (Great Lakes) basin has experienced the longest extended period of lower water levels since the U.S. and Canada began tracking levels in 1918." The article blamed the lower water levels on "climate change," of course.

On, Friday, Julie Bosman at the New York Times reported a new 5-year study that concluded that "water levels in the lakes were likely to drop even farther, in part because of the lack of precipitation in recent years brought on by climate change."

Uh huh. Except that Great Lakes water levels are rising. A lot.
      Read More...
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