Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Pakistan Whale Shark's Death a Mystery

Stephanie Pappas
Live Science
Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:06 UTC
Dead Whale Shark
© Screengrab via ITNNewsTwo cranes pull a whale shark onto a pier in Karachi.

Video of a dead whale shark being pulled from the sea off of Pakistan raises more questions about the school-bus-size fish's demise than it answers, scientists say.

Pakistani newspaper The Express Tribune posted video on Tuesday (Feb. 7) of a crane hauling a whale shark carcass onto a pier in Karachi. According to the newspaper, the owner of the nearby Charai Fishery, spotted the animal floating "unconscious" 10 days earlier, 93 miles (150 kilometers) from the fishery.

But sharks don't fall unconscious, said Bob Hueter, the director of the Center for Shark Research at Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida. And if they stop swimming for any reason, they aren't likely to bob along with the currents.

"If and when they die, they don't float, they sink," Hueter told LiveScience. "So to have one just kind of wash up is very rare. I can only think of a few cases over the years around the world where this is happened."

It's impossible to tell from the video and news stories what really happened to the whale shark, said Jennifer Schmidt, a biologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago who studies whale sharks.
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Snowflake

The Himalayas and Nearby Peaks Have Lost No Ice in Past 10 Years, Study Shows

Damian Carrington
The Guardian, UK
Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:10 UTC
Meltwater from Asia's peaks is much less then previously estimated, but lead scientist says the loss of ice caps and glaciers around the world remains a serious concern
Image
© Paula Bronstein/Getty ImagesHopar glacier in Pakistan. Melting ice outside the two largest caps - Greenland and Antarctica - is much less then previously estimated, the study has found.

The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.

The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

The study is the first to survey all the world's icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps - Greenland and Antarctica - is much less then previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy.

Bristol University glaciologist Prof Jonathan Bamber, who was not part of the research team, said: "The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero."
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Bizarro Earth

Cameroon: Residents Tremble as Mt. Cameroon Quakes

Divine Ntaryike Jr
Cameroon Postline
Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:15 UTC
Residents of various settlements straddling the foot of Mt Cameroon in the country's southwest are increasingly panic-stricken. Over the past one week, they have been witnessing and reporting mild tremors and explosions on the highest geographical peak in West Africa.

Mt.Cameroon Erupts
© Cameroon PostlineCracks on wall caused by tremor.
The most palpable of the protracting volcanic activities was recorded Friday night. A group of Norwegian and Chinese sightseers heading to the mountain summit truncated their sleep and engaged a hasty retreat when loud explosions awoke them at close to midnight.

"It was about 11:45 pm. We heard a heavy explosion followed by some earth vibrations. It lasted about 7 seconds. There were flames and sulphuric acid coming out of a spot where we found ash and we decided to go back down," Peter Linonge Buma, a guide accompanying the tourists recounted Saturday.

Many residents of Buea, the administrative headquarters of the South West Region perched on the foot of the mountain, say they are on their toes. They are readying to vacate should the prolonging tremors and explosions gather intensity.
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Nuke

US: More Concerns Over San Onofre Nuclear Plant Safety

Dave Rice
San Diego Reader
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:53 UTC
San Onofre Nuke plant
© n/a
Concerns about safety and the durability of components at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station are continuing to surface as the plant approaches a full week of complete shutdown. The plant's Unit 3 reactor was taken out of commission after a radioactive water leak was discovered on January 31, while Unit 2 was already down for scheduled maintenance. The Unit 1 reactor was taken offline permanently in 1992.

In the immediate aftermath of the detection of a leak in the piping of a recently installed steam generator, officials downplayed any potential threat, noting that the amount of radiation leaked was so small that Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules did not call for a mandatory shutdown. Later it was disclosed that radioactive gas from the leak had been vented to an auxiliary building that did not have the same safety seals to prevent radiation from being released into the atmosphere as are found on the reactor.

Once the Unit 2 reactor was shut down, it was discovered that hundreds of tubes on the generator, replaced in 2009 as part of a $670 million-plus overhaul using components supplied by Japan-based Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, had suffered significant deterioration over their relatively short service lives. Aside from the one tube known to have failed at Unit 3, two tubes at Unit 2 were found to have more than a third of their thickness worn away, requiring them to be plugged and incrementally increasing the burden on the remainder of the 9,700 tubes in the system. While only these two were worn to the point of needing to be taken offline as a safety precaution, 69 other tubes showed deterioration of at least 20 percent, and more than 800 had thinned by 10 percent or more.
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Nuke

Japan: TEPCO Struggles to Cool Fukushima Plant's No. 2 Reactor

Takashi Sugimoto & Jin Nishikawa
Asahi Shimbun
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:28 UTC
Fukushima reactor 2
© n/aFukushima reactor 2
Tokyo Electric Power Co. is taking steps to prevent a possible self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

Readings from a thermometer at the bottom of the No. 2 reactor's pressure vessel rose from 50.8 degrees at 5 a.m. on Feb. 1 to 73.3 degrees at 7 a.m. on Feb. 6.

Melted fuel is believed to have accumulated at the bottom of the reactor, but high radiation levels have prevented workers from checking the exact situation within the reactor.

After the flow of cooling water was increased to 10.6 tons per hour on Feb. 6, up from 8.6 tons two days earlier, the temperature fell to 69.2 degrees at 5 p.m. on Feb. 6. That night, TEPCO injected boric acid into the reactor to prevent criticality, the point at which a nuclear fission reaction becomes self-sustaining. Boric acid absorbs neutrons, which induce nuclear fission.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) instructed the company to consider injecting boric acid earlier in the day.
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Bizarro Earth

US: Strange Clouds Form Over Florida Beach

Jessica Sinclair
Long Island Press
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:38 UTC
Strange Clouds
© CNN

Throughout the year, amazing photos of natural occurrences make their way to the Internet and even sometimes, make the headlines. That's the case for a recent photo of low-lying clouds.

A man flying a helicopter snapped the latest phenomenal photo making its rounds. The amazing shot shows low-lying clouds hugging buildings in a Panama City beach.

Dr. Greg Forbes of Weather.com gave a detailed description of the clouds in a recent report, saying, "You see the clouds forming off shore, as the winds from south to north push them toward and then up over the high rises as the air rises and reaches its crest."

"And then sinks back down and lowers the relative humidity and the clouds dissipate," Forbes of Weather.com explained.
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Bug

Bizarre White Cobweb Found on Nuclear Waste

Ted Thornhill
The Daily Mail, UK
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:05 UTC
top of nuke fuel rods
© SWNS.comThe top of the uranium fuel assembly where a white cobweb like material has been found.
Scientists are investigating a bizarre white cobweb found on nuclear waste - amid fears it could have been made by a 'mutant' spider.

In a freakish echo of the Spider-Man comic strip, workers at a U.S nuclear waste facility discovered the growth on uranium last month.

The white 'string-like' material - never seen before on nuclear waste - was found among thousands of spent fuel assemblies submerged in deep pools.

Experts from Savannah River National Laboratory collected a small sample of the mystery material to run tests.

A report filed by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board - a federal oversight panel - concluded: 'The growth, which resembles a spider web, has yet to be characterised, but may be biological in nature.'
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Stop

UF report: 2011 shark attacks remain steady, deaths highest since 1993


University of Florida
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:07 UTC
Shark attacks in the U.S. declined in 2011, but worldwide fatalities reached a two-decade high, according to the University of Florida's International Shark Attack File report released today.


While the U.S. and Florida saw a five-year downturn in the number of reported unprovoked attacks, the 12 fatalities - which all occurred outside the U.S. - may show tourists are venturing to more remote places, said ichthyologist George Burgess, director of the file housed at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus.

"We had a number of fatalities in essentially out-of the way places, where there's not the same quantity and quality of medical attention readily available," Burgess said. "They also don't have histories of shark attacks in these regions, so there are not contingency plans in effect like there are in places such as Florida."
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Igloo

Snow to return as freezing temperatures split Britain

Andrew Hough, and David Millward
The Telegraph
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:10 UTC
UK snow scene
© ReutersForecasters warned that travelling conditions would remain "difficult" across much of Britain as many parts still recover from the weekend's snowfalls.
Snow is set to return to much of southern Britain by Thursday as the country battles with freezing weather and transport chaos.

On Thursday much of the south, including Heathrow airport, which was ground to a halt at the weekend, will be hit by a mixture of potentially treacherous snow, sleet and rain.

Temperatures throughout southern areas expected to remain close to freezing. The north will remain significantly warmer with temperatures as high as 8C.

The Met Office said overnight temperatures in some areas could fall to as low as -13C. It remains unclear how much snow will fall, as an Atlantic weather system pushes across the country from the west.
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Snowflake

Cold Spell Affects 40,000 in North China


Xinhuanet
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:56 UTC
Image
© AsianewsphotoA resident watches ice cascade outside a building in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Temperatures plummeted to minus 50.7 Celsius after a cold front hit the city last Friday.
A month-long cold front has persisted in north China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region and caused havoc for more than 40,000 people, said local authorities Tuesday.

Over 1,600 heads of livestock were killed and cracks appeared on walls in over 8,000 homes due to the freezing weather in the city of Hulunbuir, located in the region's northeast, according to a spokesman with the regional civil affairs department.

The extreme weather has inflicted direct economic losses and apartment renovation costs of 13 million yuan (2.1 million U.S. dollars), said the spokesman, adding that no casualties have been reported.

The cold front began to plague Hulunbuir in late December last year and has tightened its grip on the area since the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday in late January.

Chenbaerhu Banner, administered by Hulunbuir, registered the lowest temperature to date this winter in Inner Mongolia, 51.9 minus degrees Celsius, said the spokesman.

In addition, five banners and cities administered by Hulunbuir have seen their new record low temperatures during the past month and a half, compared with the same period of previous years, he said.
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