Earth ChangesS


Igloo

Swedish MP declares "Climate science has gone awry...Resembles a religion...Anything but scientific"!

P Gosselin
NoTricksZone
Wed, 13 Aug 2014 14:30 UTC
Josef Fransson
© Scanpix Sweden/Henrik Montgomery/Scanpix
First there was sea level rise expert Nils-Axel Mörner, then top Swedish climatologist Lennart Bengtsson breaking ranks with the IPCC.

Now the Swedish online nyheter24 here has a commentary by Parliamentarian Josef Fransson (photo above) of the Sweden Democrats(SD) party, who fires sharp criticism at IPCC climate science and the policymaking based on it.

First, before looking at his commentary, Wikipedia describes the Fransson's SD party as a "far-right populist and anti-immigration party". But readers need to keep in mind that nowadays in Europe anyone who challenges the IPCC, or expresses the need for governments to clean house of all their entrenched political cronies gets labeled a right-wing extremist...a hater. We see this smearing kind of treatment already with the UKIP party and Germany's AfD. So don't put much stock in Wikipedia's biased political characterizations.

There's just no tolerance for dissent any more.
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Arrow Down

2 passenger train wagons derail in Switzerland after landslide


RT
Wed, 13 Aug 2014 17:59 UTC
Image
© AFP PhotoThis handout picture taken and released by the police of the Canton of Graubuenden on August 13, 2014 shows rescuers working near a train after it was derailed by a landslide near Tiefencastel, in a mountainous part of eastern Switzerland, on August 13, 1014.

Eleven people have been injured, five of whom are in a serious condition, after a passenger train in Switzerland was derailed by a landslide, following heavy rain. One carriage is perilously hanging over a ravine.

The derailment happened in the Graubuenden region near Tiefencastel, in the east of the country, Switzerland's ATS news agency reported. The train was traveling from Chur to St. Moritz and is operated by the Rhaetain railway company, with around 140 people on board. The remaining passengers were able to walk away to safety.

An eyewitness told the Swiss paper, Blick that up to ten people were in the carriage which slipped down the ravine.

Peter Faerber, a police spokesman in the area, said some people were slightly injured in the accident but he could not immediately say how many. Some of the passengers were airlifted from the vicinity by helicopter.

However, the police did say that two of the injured were Japanese and one was Australian.
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Bizarro Earth

Big earthquake looms for Chile, experts say

Charles Q. Choi
Live Science
Wed, 13 Aug 2014 12:01 UTC
Tsunami Damage Northern Chile
© Juan González-Carrasco (Universidad Catolica del Norte, Chile)Damage in northern Chile caused by the tsunami associated with the magnitude-8.2 earthquake that struck in April 2014.
The powerful earthquake that rocked Chile in April ruptured the earth in a way that suggests major quakes may still hit the region in the future, researchers say.

On April 1, a magnitude-8.2 earthquake struck about 58 miles (94 kilometers) northwest of Iquique in northern Chile, a major port city and hub for Chile's copper mining industry. It killed six people, damaged or destroyed at least 13,000 homes, caused power failures and triggered a tsunami wave nearly 7 feet (2.1 meters) high. Preliminary estimates suggest total economic losses from the temblor are close to $100 million.

The powerful earthquake originated in a seismic hot spot that has produced some of the world's strongest known tremors. The area is a subduction zone, where one tectonic plate dives beneath another - specifically, the oceanic Nazca Plate is plowing under the Pacific coast of the South American Plate at an average rate of about 2.75 inches (7 centimeters) per year. Major quakes that burst at subduction zones, the most tectonically active places on Earth, are known as megathrust earthquakes.
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Arrow Down

Pennsylvania sinkhole swallows car in parking lot of 'Hollywood Tan'


WTAE
Wed, 13 Aug 2014 00:00 UTC

Ross Township - A sinkhole that opened suddenly and swallowed a woman's car outside a tanning salon was caused by a storm drain that carries an underwater stream beneath the parking lot, according to police.

Lisa Masley, the owner of Hollywood Tans on McKnight Road, rescued her customer from the car before it vanished into the large hole as severe storms moved through the area Tuesday afternoon.

Masley said Natalie Huddleston just left left the salon and called her on the phone. She couldn't see the parking lot because the front desk of the salon is tall, but she was told to come outside because Huddleston needed help.

"When I stood up and looked, her car already turned into a see-saw and was hanging over the edge," Masley said.

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Document

Cooling or warming climate? 'Data says global cooling, physical model says it has to be warming'

Anthony Watts
Wattsupwiththat.com
Mon, 11 Aug 2014 12:30 UTC
From the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Image
© IStockA fisherman walks toward open water in the Antarctic ice sheet.
When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently requested a figure for its annual report, to show global temperature trends over the last 10,000 years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Zhengyu Liu knew that was going to be a problem.

"We have been building models and there are now robust contradictions," says Liu, a professor in the UW-Madison Center for Climatic Research. "Data from observation says global cooling. The physical model says it has to be warming."

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today, Liu and colleagues from Rutgers University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, the University of Hawaii, the University of Reading, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the University of Albany describe a consistent global warming trend over the course of the Holocene, our current geological epoch, counter to a study published last year that described a period of global cooling before human influence.
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Windsock

Dramatic dust storm blows through Eastern Washington


KOMONews.com
Tue, 12 Aug 2014 22:23 UTC
Eastern Washington dust storm
© Bob Jenness
A massive, dramatic dust storm more often associated with the Southwest blew through Eastern Washington and north Idaho on Tuesday evening in advance of thunderstorms, lightning and rain.

Washington state troopers said the dust storm or "haboob" reduced visibility to zero in parts of Whitman and Adams counties, leading to numerous traffic accidents, especially in the Ritzville area southwest of Spokane.

Crashes in the wake of the dust cloud temporarily closed eastbound Interstate 90 west of Ritzville, the Spokesman-Review reported.

Avista Utilities said nearly 10,000 customers temporarily lost power in the Spokane and Palouse areas and in the Grangeville, Idaho, area.
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Map

Double earthquake in Ecuador: Two dead, several trapped


RT
Wed, 13 Aug 2014 05:07 UTC
ecuador quake
© Agence France-Presse/Rodrigo BuendiaView of a dust cloud on August 12, 2014 in Quito, after a 5.1-magnitude earthquake rattled the Ecuadoran capital and the surrounding area causing buildings and homes to shake violently
A 5.1 earthquake has struck around 22.5 km northeast of Ecuador's capital, Quito, followed by a 4.3 magnitude aftershock. At least two people have been killed as the tremors caused several landslides and trapped at least three people in a collapsed mine.

At least eight people were injured, a government office said via Twitter, Reuters reports. The country's Risk Management office said firemen were working to rescue those who had been trapped in Catequilla mine.

The epicenters of both earthquakes were recorded at a depth of around 5 kilometers, according to preliminary data from the Geophysical Institute of Ecuador.

Following the quakes, the Mariscal Sucre International Airport in Quito suspended operations as a precaution and urged passengers to leave the terminals. Operations were resumed an hour later, after airport officials ensured the infrastructure wasn't damaged.
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Cloud Precipitation

Near record rain wreaks havoc in Detroit

Katrease Stafford
USAToday
Tue, 12 Aug 2014 17:47 UTC
Detroit flooding
© Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press
As the skies around metro Detroit started to darken yet again today and thunder started rumbling, signaling another possible onslaught of rain, metro Detroiters are still struggling to cope with the aftermath of historic rains that flooded thousands of basements and left hundreds of cars stranded across area freeways on Monday.

Commuters are being urged to stay off the roads, with standing water in spots on virtually every area interstate. Michigan State Police divers searched for submerged vehicles this morning on I-696 near Dequindre and other flooded viaducts. On Stephenson Highway near I-696, heavy rains washed a wall of mud onto a southbound I-75 exit ramp, swamping a dump truck and a car.

"We've got a lot going on. It's not just the water on the roads. We can't clean up the roads, we've got to get the cars off the roads," said Michigan Department of Transportation spokeswoman Diane Cross said.

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Brick Wall

Extreme weather becoming more common due to blocking patterns

Damian Carrington
The Guardian
Mon, 11 Aug 2014 16:59 UTC
Meandering jet stream
© Skeptical ScienceThe slowing of the west to east flow of the jet stream produces large meandering lobes that can stall, resulting in long periods of unchanging weather.
Extreme weather like the drought currently scorching the western US and the devastating floods in Pakistan in 2010 is becoming much more common, according to new scientific research.

The work shows so-called "blocking patterns", where hot or wet weather remains stuck over a region for weeks causing heatwaves or floods, have more than doubled in summers over the last decade. The new study may also demonstrate a link between the UK's recent flood-drenched winter and climate change.

Climate scientists in Germany noticed that since 2000 there have been an "exceptional number of summer weather extremes, some causing massive damage to society". So they examined the huge meanders in the high-level jet stream winds that dominate the weather at mid-latitudes, by analysing 35 years of wind data amassed from satellites, ships, weather stations and meteorological balloons. They found that blocking patterns, which occur when these meanders slow down, have happened far more frequently.

Comment: The weather is certainly turning toward extremes. For a better explanation than global warming for the blocking patterns described in this article and the change in the jet stream read Pierre Lescaudron's book 'Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection:The Secret History of the World.'

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Attention

Florida red-tide bloom biggest since 2006

Letitia Stein
The Columbus Dispatch
Sun, 10 Aug 2014 11:31 UTC
red tide Florida
The largest red-tide bloom seen in Florida in nearly a decade has killed thousands of fish in the Gulf of Mexico and might pose a greater health threat if it washes ashore as expected in the next two weeks, researchers said.

The patchy bloom stretches from the curve of the panhandle to the central Tampa Bay region. It measures approximately 80 miles long by 50 miles wide.

Red tide occurs when naturally occurring algae bloom out of control, producing toxins deadly to fish and other marine life. The odorless chemicals can trigger respiratory distress in people, such as coughing and wheezing.
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