Earth ChangesS


Blackbox

Britain on high alert after 'voracious predator' from Eastern Europe spotted in UK waters

Mark Prigg
Daily Mail
Fri, 05 Oct 2012 09:53 UTC
A dangerous shrimp that could decimate British waterways has been found in the UK. The killer crustacean - branded a 'voracious predator' by the Environment Agency has been found in the Worcester and Birmingham canal following previous sighting in the River Severn. It arrived in the UK from Eastern Europe, and feeds on fish, sparking fears it could dramatically change the UK's delicate marine ecosystem.
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© Environmental AgencyPublic enemy number one: The 'killer shrimp' that could decimate Britain's waterways. The Environment Agency today issued a high alert warning people to look out for it.
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Snowflake

Minnesota and North Dakota see new snowfall records and power outages in October


NOAA
Fri, 05 Oct 2012 16:41 UTC
An early season snow event produced significant snow amounts for northeast North Dakota into northwest Minnesota for early October. The heaviest snow fell in Roseau county where around a foot of heavy wet snow has been reported as of 3 pm Thursday October 4. This heavy wet snow has also produced numerous power outages across this area.

These snow amounts appear to be record amounts for this early in the season for many areas. The previous record snowfall for October 4 or earlier at the NWS in Grand Forks was 2 inches on October 2, 1950. The NWS at Grand Forks reported 3.5 inches of snow with this storm on October 4, 2012. While records from around the area indicate that the October 2, 1950 storm produced about 2-5 inches around the region with localized higher amounts, with Leeds, ND receiving 7.0 inches on October 2, 1950, and Hallock 4.5 inches.
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Question

Mysterious tremors raise questions

Xerxes A. Wilson
Daily Comet
Thu, 04 Oct 2012 21:59 UTC
Louisiana - Nobody quite knows what caused the ground in some parts of Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes to shake, but it certainly has people talking.

A little before 2 p.m. Wednesday, reports began flooding in to officials of tremors accompanied by a loud noise. The Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office and Office of Emergency Preparedness received reports, but nobody has been able to narrow down a cause.

Lockport resident Bryan Comardelle had just sat down to watch television when he felt the rumble.

"It was just a sudden vibration," Comardelle said. "I live in a brick house, and it even made it shake."

Most reports are fairly uniform: one to four tremors reported in the southern reaches of the parishes all the way up into Raceland and Houma. Some people reported hearing a loud noise similar to thunder accompanying the rumbling.

"My wife described it as sounding like a garbage truck had just dropped a dumpster," Comardelle said.

After the first rumble, Comardelle joined his perplexed neighbors outside looking for the rumbling culprit or any sign of bad weather that could have caused the thunderous noise.

"It was clear outside, and then we felt more tremors," Comardelle said.
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Attention

Fire, high winds wreak havoc across Tasmania

Damien Larkins
ABC
Thu, 04 Oct 2012 17:10 UTC
Tasmania tree fall
© ABC / Linda HuntAurora crews fix powerlines after a tree brings them down at Boyer in southern Tasmania.
Storm-force winds are damaging properties and fanning fires across Tasmania.

Gusts of up to 100 kilometres an hour have brought down powerlines, sparking several fires.

The Tasmania Fire Service (TFS) is attending several fires, while Tasmania Police has issued hazard and road closure alerts.

The wild winds threatened to collapse a wall at Elwick Racecourse, facing Goodwood Road, just after 1pm.

Airlines Virgin and Qantas have diverted flights back to Melbourne, with one plane aborting a landing in Hobart.

About 9,300 households are without power in the Derwent and Huon Valleys and the Channel areas.
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Red Flag

How GMOs unleashed a pesticide gusher

Tom Philpott
Mother Jones
Thu, 04 Oct 2012 15:02 UTC
Image
© Charles O'Rear/USDA/Wikimedia Commons
For years, proponents of genetically modified crops have hailed them as a critical tool for weaning farmers from reliance on toxic pesticides. On its website, the GMO-seed-and-agrichemical giant Monsanto makes the green case for its Roundup Ready crops, engineered to withstand the company's own blockbuster herbicide, Roundup:
Roundup agricultural herbicides and other products are used to sustainably an [sic] effectively control weeds on the farm. Their use on Roundup Ready crops has allowed farmers to conserve fuel, reduce tillage and decrease the overall use of herbicides. [Emphasis added.]
But in a just-released paper published in the peer-reviewed Environmental Sciences Europe, Chuck Benbrook, research professor at Washington State University's Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources, shreds that claim. He found that Monsanto's Roundup Ready technology, which dominates corn, soy, and cotton farming, has called forth a veritable monsoon of herbicides, both in terms of higher application rates for Roundup, and, in recent years, growing use of other, more-toxic herbicides.

Comment: For a more in depth look at the 'Superweed' issue plaguing America's industrial agribusiness industry read the following articles:

US: 'Superweed' explosion threatens Monsanto heartlands

The Escalating Chemical War on Weeds

Monsanto's Superweeds Come Home to Roost: 11 Million U.S. Acres are Infested:
So the dramatic recent increases in resistant weeds have occurred despite years of urging farmers to use additional chemicals to avoid resistance. Weed scientists now say that superweeds from GMO crops infest over 11 million acres of US farmland - nearly five times more acreage than just three years ago - at a cost to US farmers of $1 billion a year.

What irks many farmers facing superweed problems and rising costs (not to mention consumers facing the prospects of more chemicals sprayed on our food and environment) is that Monsanto markets the use of a single herbicide as the main benefit of its GMO Roundup Ready crops. Even after all the publicity about this GMO failure, the "Council for Biotechnology Information," a front-group funded by Monsanto and other GMO crop producers, continues to put forth this now laughable claim.


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Stop

Fox tried to eat hand of sleeping pensioner

James Hall
The Telegraph
Wed, 03 Oct 2012 02:35 UTC
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© AlamyThe fox tried to eat the hand of the sleeping pensioner
A pensioner awoke from sunbathing to find a fox was gnawing at his hand, his daughter-in-law claimed today.

In a letter in Country Life magazine Carey Tesler told how her 83-year-old father-in-law had asleep in a chair in the back garden when he woke by a "searing pain" to see a "mangy-looking fox eating his hand".

When the father-in-law's neighbour was also troubled by the fox, the neighbour telephoned his local council and asked them to come and get rid of the animal.

But he was left baffled to be asked if he still had the fox with him.

When the neighbour said no, the council officer replied: "Well next time you see this fox, throw a blanket over him, carry him into your car and drive him to your nearest RSPCA."

It is not clear which council Ms Tesler is referring to, however she lives in London.
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Igloo

Snow in October: How weird is it?

Douglas Main
OurAmazingPlanet
Wed, 03 Oct 2012 10:55 UTC
Early Snow
© National Weather ServiceRain and snow falling in North Dakota on Oct. 3, 2012.
Autumn has only just begun, but it's already snowing in Montana and North Dakota. But it turns out that it's not that weird an occurrence.

The town of Heart Butte, Mont., has already received 6 inches (15 centimeters) of snow, while other areas have recorded about 1 inch (2.5 cm), said Chris Zelzer, National Weather Service meteorologist in Great Falls, Mont. Areas throughout eastern Montana, North Dakota and western Minnesota are expected to receive an inch of snow or more today (Oct. 3) and tomorrow morning, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

This is the earliest measurable snowfall, defined as an inch of snow or more, for most of the area. On average, the first full inch of snow doesn't fall until Nov. 11 in Fargo and Nov. 15 in Grand Forks, N.D., according to the Grand Forks Herald.
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Bizarro Earth

Three recent incidences of bears breaking into houses and attacking people in Russia


Pravda Ru
Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC
polar bear
In Chukotka, a polar bear attacked employees of Valkarkay polar station. According to New Politics portal, the bear came right up to the house, where the meteorologists lived, killed a leashed dog and tried to break into the house. The bear broke one of the doors, but the second one stopped the beast.

To escape from the predator, the explorers climbed onto the roof and called for help. The nearest settlement - Pevek - was 70 kilometers away.

Armed policemen arrived on an offroad vehicle. One of them fired his rifle three times in an attempt to scare the bear away. The beast stubbornly refused to leave, and the policeman had to kill the animal.
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Fish

Australia's Great Barrier Reef on brink of collapse

Stephen Leahy
Inter Press Service
Mon, 01 Oct 2012 20:29 UTC
blow fish
© Jan Derk/public domainThe common clownfish at home on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. More than 50 percent of the coral in the 2,300 km long reef has died over the past 27 years.
Monterey, California, U.S. - Australia's iconic Great Barrier Reef is dying, and little will be left less than 10 years. More than half of the coral in the 2,300 km long reef has died over the past 27 years, according to a scientific survey released Monday.

Unless Australians act with urgency, only five to 10 percent of the 3,000 individual coral reefs off the eastern coast of Australia will remain, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We are losing an entire ecosystem in the best-managed coral reef system in the world," said Katharina Fabricius of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), and study co-author.

"This is the first thorough analysis of all the survey data on the GBR (Great Barrier Reef)," Fabricius told IPS.
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Cloud Lightning

Winter storms to be named by Weather Channel

Tom Niziol
Weather.com
Tue, 02 Oct 2012 10:15 UTC
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© weather.com
During the upcoming 2012-13 winter season, The Weather Channel will name noteworthy winter storms. Our goal is to better communicate the threat and the timing of the significant impacts that accompany these events. The fact is, a storm with a name is easier to follow, which will mean fewer surprises and more preparation.

Hurricanes and tropical storms have been given names since the 1940s. In the late 1800s, tropical systems near Australia were named as well. Weather systems, including winter storms, have been named in Europe since the 1950s. Important dividends have resulted from attaching names to these storms:
  • Naming a storm raises awareness.
  • Attaching a name makes it much easier to follow a weather system's progress.
  • A storm with a name takes on a personality all its own, which adds to awareness.
  • In today's social media world, a name makes it much easier to reference in communication.
  • A named storm is easier to remember and refer to in the future.
The question then becomes: "Why aren't winter storms named?" In fact, in Europe the naming of weather systems has been going on for a long time. Here in the U.S., summer time storms including thunderstorms and tornadoes occur on such a small time and space scale that there would be little benefit and much confusion trying to attach names to them. However, winter weather is different. Winter storms occur on a time and space scale that is similar to tropical systems.
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