Earth ChangesS


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Red tide outbreak forces ban on North Shore shellfishing

Red tide has spread from central Maine to Gloucester, making it unsafe to harvest soft shell clams or mussels from those coastal waters, state officials said.

Cloud Lightning

US: Lightning ignited house

Waco, Texas - Fire officials determined that a lightning bolt around 10 a.m. today caused a ranch-style house at 3920 Austin Ave. to catch fire.

Its owner, 63-year-old Dub Allen, is a tugboat operator, who was out-of-town at the time of the fire.

Waco fire investigator Charles Lindorfer said lightning struck a metal chimney near the back of the house. The fire caused extensive water and smoke damage, he said, however, the contents in the home were not a total loss.

Cloud Lightning

US: Lightning strike causes fire at well site



Lightning strikes storage tank
©Unknown


(Click here to view video)

A storage tank at an energy well site caught fire in far south Caddo Parish this morning after it was hit by lightning.

The fire began shortly after 8 a.m. at a well site off Louisiana Highway 1 near Bunker Road.

Cloud Lightning

US: Lightning strike sends wood flying

Alton, Illinois - A bolt from the blue struck a large tree in the 1700 block of Muny Vista Drive, sending charred wood and splinters flying hundreds of feet Tuesday morning.

"It was like a bomb hit it," Paul Woulfe said.



Tree struck by lightning
©The Telegraph/John Badman
A screen, apparently blown from the house, sits about 50 feet from a tree, background, that was struck by lightning Tuesday in the 1700 block of Muny Vista Drive in Alton. One side of the tree exploded, sending debris hundreds of feet.


Woulfe, maintenance man at Hillcrest Apartments on Muny Vista, was among those cleaning up the mess left after the impact from the lightning strike flung chunks of a 40-foot-tall cottonwood tree all over the complex's parking lot, some of them as large as 5 feet long and weighing 40 pounds, he said.

Cowboy Hat

Al Gore And Climate 'Ka-Ching'

Junk Science: Al Gore blames the Burma tragedy on global warming despite growing evidence to the contrary. Could the hype be related to his financial interests?

Gore's reaction to the death and destruction caused by a cyclone ravaging Burma was to utter an emphatic "I told you so" Tuesday on National Public Radio. In an interview on NPR's "Fresh Air" broadcast, the jolly green giant made the charge while talking about the paperback release of his ironically named book, "The Assault on Reason."

Ignoring the fact that the rising death toll is due in part to an incompetent, isolationist and authoritarian government that allows most of its people to live in shanty towns of tin and bamboo, Gore claimed that "we're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming."

In other words, people die in Rangoon because of an SUV in Richmond, Va.

Question

Global Warming or Insanity?

Why do intelligent, well-meaning people throw themselves and their organizations money and energies behind causes without first doing their homework?

Back in February, a coalition of Fish and Game Clubs and conservation organizations from around the country petitioned our U.S. Congress to pass climate control legislation. New Hampshire, one of the many states involved, issued a press release that read in part:
Concord, NH (February 19) - More than a dozen of the leading hunting and fishing clubs and wildlife-related businesses in New Hampshire joined forces Tuesday to call on the state's elected leaders in Congress to support strong legislation to confront climate change.

Life Preserver

China quake boy pulled out after 80 hrs under school rubble

A school boy was rescued after 80 hours trapped in the rubble of a collapsed school building in southwest China's Sichuan province, hit by a powerful quake Monday, local media said on Friday.

The massive earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale led to the destruction of many school buildings with over 6,000 classrooms destroyed. In one school alone 300 children were killed when a three-storey building collapsed burying over 850 pupils in Qingchuan.

The death toll from the quake could soar to over 50,000, the country's State Council said on Thursday. The official death toll stands at 20,000 with thousands still trapped beneath the debris.

Bizarro Earth

Estonian bear caught trying to enter Russia

A brown bear was caught by an Estonian environmental inspector in the Narva River swimming toward the Russian border, the Eesti Paevaleht daily reported on Friday.

Light Sabers

US: Giant pythons invade southeastern Florida

Giant pythons capable of swallowing a dog and even an alligator are rapidly making south Florida their home, potentially threatening other southeastern states, a study said.

"Pythons are likely to colonize anywhere alligators live, including north Florida, Georgia and Louisiana," said Frank Mazzotti, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences professor, in his two-year study.

The pythons thriving in Florida are mostly Burmese pythons from Myanmar that were brought over as pets and then turned loose in the wild.

From 2002-2005, 201 of the beasts were caught by state authorities, but in the last two years the number has more than doubled to 418, Mazzotti said in his study published on the university website.

Image
©Unknown

Bizarro Earth

China buries quake dead as new aftershock hits

BEICHUAN - China struggled to bury its dead and help tens of thousands of injured and homeless on Friday when a powerful aftershock brought new havoc four days after an earthquake thought to have killed more than 50,000.

President Hu Jintao flew to the battered province of Sichuan and Premier Wen Jiabao said the quake damage could exceed the devastating 1976 tremor in the northeastern city of Tangshan that killed up to 300,000 people.

Image
©REUTERS/Stringer
An elderly woman mourns as her grandson is buried under the debris of a collapsed building behind at Yingxiu primary school at the earthquake-hit Yingxiu town of Wenchuan, the epicenter, Sichuan province, May 16, 2008.

Wen called on officials to ensure social stability as frustration and exhaustion grew among survivors, many of whom lost everything and were living in tents or in the open air.

China put the death toll at just over 22,000 on Friday but has said it expects it to exceed 50,000. About 4.8 million people have lost their homes.