Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

Torrential Rains Threaten Colombia's Coffee Crop

Colombian coffee grower
Colombia's rainiest April on record drenched Ismael Garcia's hillside coffee farm, causing a landslide that wiped out thousands of his trees in one swoop.

The loss would sting any year but hurts more now that coffee prices hit their highest levels in more than three decades this week.

Damage to farms like Garcia's from months of heavy rains in Colombia, the world's No. 1 producer of top-quality washed arabica beans, may threaten to push coffee prices even higher -- bad news for drinkers around the world.

Cloud Lightning

Nearly 3 Million Colombians Affected by Heavy Rains

Colombia floods
© AFPThe intense rainy season has caused heavy rains to beat down in Colombia for over a year.
Some 3 million Colombians, 6.4% of the population, have been affected by the heavy rains wreaking havoc across Colombia, revealed a study conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (DANE), Semana reported Thursday.

The official figure equates to just under 3 million people, with the greatest concentration of victims in the Caribbean region, where 1,479,434 people are affected, representing 3.2% of the Colombian population.

Cloud Lightning

Propaganda Alert!: Extreme Weather in the United States 2010

The extreme weather of 2010 was record-setting. But it may be the new normal. This year Americans have already suffered through "supercell thunderstorms" in Iowa, severe drought and record wildfires in Texas, and heavy rains across the United States. The recent southeastern storms and tornados took at least 340 lives across eight states. And residents of the Mississippi River Valley only narrowly avoided the most severe, damaging floods there in nearly a century.


Comment: Bad 'science', fear mongering and global warming propaganda to divert attention from the real causes of change - and of course to prompt the public into beliefs and actions that benefit no one but those seeking to make profit from it. For an objective view of the changing reality here on the Big Blue Marble see: Connecting the Dots: Earth Changes Are Upon Us


Monkey Wrench

Changes in the climate are having an effect on crop yields - but not yet a very big one

Crop harvesting
© EPA
The problems climate change looks likely to bring in the future may increasingly be visible in the records of the past. Not just in the far-off ages of surging sea levels following ice-age thaws, spikes in prehistoric temperatures correlated with natural releases of greenhouse gas and ancient civilisations brought low by drought, but in records from living memory - which are based on reliable measurements made at the time. Using such data researchers have now compiled an estimate of global changes in crop yields which can be put down to recent increases in temperature and decreases in rainfall (the world as a whole is getting wetter, but the rain has stayed away from some agricultural plains). The bad news is that they find that climate change has lowered the amount of maize (or corn, if you prefer) and wheat produced in a given area. The good news is that the effect is so far reasonably small.

Attention

Guatemala: Alert in Two Areas for Volcanic Activity

Volcan Santiaguito
© C. Grandpey
Guatemalan departments of Quetzaltenango and Retalhuleu were declared this Friday in yellow alert due to the increased activity of the volcano Santiaguito.

According to the National Institute for Seismology, Vulcanology, Meteorology and Hydrology of Guatemala (Insivumeh), the increase is manifested in the number of explosions per hour.

Cloud Lightning

See a tornado? Don't grab camera

Wilson tornado
© UknownThis still is taken from a video filmed by Steve Hoag of a tornado in Wilson, N.C.

The video Steve Hoag shot of an April tornado bearing down on him in Wilson, N.C., is taking the Internet by storm.

More than 1 million viewers have watched the video and heard his calm narration as an EF2 twister blew up a transformer, exploded a building and then swirled debris around him on April 16.

Gutsy? Idiotic? Crazy?

Accident, Hoag said.

And it's not something amateurs should try, say storm experts - and Hoag himself.

"If I came upon a similar situation today, I'd see if I could turn around and drive the other way," Hoag said in an interview Thursday.

But it's also something that apparently is becoming more common in this digital age, when it seems that just about everyone has a camera as close as a cellphone.

That was apparent again last week when more than 300 tornadoes touched down in six Southern states and killed at least 318 people. Some amateur videos taken during that outbreak have added to concerns being voiced by National Weather Service officials.

Bug

US: Heavy rains raise concerns over wheat scab

wheat scab
© social_buttons

Heavy rain the past month, particularly in Southern Illinois, has wheat growers on high alert for an outbreak of fusarium head blight (FHB), commonly known as scab.

Steve Stallman, a wheat grower from Chester in Randolph County and president of the Illinois Wheat Association, last week contracted for aerial applications of fungicide on his wheat fields.

"We have the perfect conditions for a widespread outbreak of scab and disease problems," Stallman said. "I'm going to do whatever I can to protect my crop."

Fish

Horrific prehistoric fish landed off the Norway coast

This unusual specimen might look like something out of a horror movie, but it proved to be one of the highlights of Peter Bailey's most recent trip to the prolific waters off the north of Norway.
wolf fish
Peter Bailey with the ugly, prehistoric wolf fish

The prehistoric-looking wolf fish, which pulled the scales around to 16lb 15oz, is one of the biggest landed on rod and line so far this year.

It was caught on a baited pirk when Peter braved strong winds and snow in an area around Kokelv - which is perhaps better known for producing monster cod to well over 70lb in recent months.

Sun

Halo around the sun Friday

halo,sun

Friday afternoon from about noon to 1 p.m. some folks in west central Minnesota looked up in the sky and saw a mysterious halo around the sun.

"What does it mean?" observers inquired.

"It's an angel," one person commented.

"Nah, it's some scientific thing," said another.

"I think it's God," declared another.

Meteor

SOTT Focus: New Light on the Black Death: The Viral and Cosmic Connection

This article was first published in issue 13, volume 1 / 2011 of The Dot Connector Magazine, official publication of Sott.net.
"Comets are vile stars. Every time they appear in the south, they wipe out the old and establish the new. Fish grow sick, crops fail, Emperors and common people die, and men go to war. The people hate life and don't even want to speak of it." -Li Ch'un Feng, Director, Chinese Imperial Astronomical Bureau, 648, A.D.
Image
In 2007, a meteorite fell in Puno, Southeastern Perú. José Macharé - scientist of the Geologic, Mining and Metallurgic Institute in Perú - said that the space rock fell near a muddy area by Lake Titicaca, making the water boil for around ten minutes, and mixing with the soil and emanating a gray cloud, the components of which remain unknown. Having discarded radioactive poisons, this toxic cloud is said to have caused headaches and respiratory problems in at least 200 persons from a population of 1500 inhabitants. Other than this event, how often do we hear about people getting sick due to a rock coming from space? How about birds, fish or other animals? Ancient astrologers cite comets as ill omens of death and famine, but are there any other causes other than the ones due to physical/mechanical consequences of comet impact devastation in our fragile environment of which we should be aware?

As a physician, I usually concentrate strictly on medical and health-related issues, not history or catastrophism. However, like so many other people, I see signs of atmospheric changes on our planet which, according to many experts, may well be due to increasing comet dust loading. When I read about increasing reports of fireballs all around the world, and I know that these factors must have an effect on the health of individuals and societies, it motivates me to do the research to find the connections so that I am better prepared for what may lie in our future. If our planet is entering a new cometary bombardment cycle, and if these comets harbor new species of microbes unknown to mankind's collective immunological systems (as may well be the case), then being forewarned is being forearmed.

According to the late Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe of the University of Wales at Cardiff, viruses can be distributed throughout space by dust in the debris stream of comets. Then as Earth passes though the stream, the dust and viruses load our atmosphere, where they can stay suspended for years until gravity pulls them down. They compare numerous plagues throughout our history which coincide with cometary bodies in our skies. These researchers are certain that germs causing plagues and epidemics come from space.

In a letter to Lancet [1],Wickramasinghe explains that a small amount of a virus introduced into the stratosphere could make a first tentative fallout east of the great mountain range of the Himalayas, where the stratosphere is thinnest, followed by sporadic deposits in neighboring areas. Could this explain why new strains of the influenza virus that are capable of engendering epidemics, and which are caused by radical genetic mutations, usually originate in Asia? Wickramasinghe argues that if the virus is only minimally infective, the subsequent course of its global progress will depend on stratospheric transport and mixing, leading to a fallout continuing seasonally over a few years; even if all reasonable attempts are made to contain an infective spread, the appearance of new foci almost anywhere is a possibility.

Comment: See also:

Black Death found to be Ebola-like virus

New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection

Related:

Happy New Year 2014?

SOTT Talk Radio show #70: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?