Earth Changes

Giant underground blob of magma puzzles scientists

Becky Oskin
LiveScience
Tue, 17 Sep 2013 16:48 UTC

The Afar Rift in Ethiopia is marked by enormous gashes that signal the breakup of the African continent and the beginnings of a new ocean basin, scientists think.

The fractures appear eerily similar to seafloor spreading centers, the volcanic ridges that mark the boundaries between two pieces of oceanic crust. Along the ridges, lava bubbles up and new crust is created, slowly widening the ocean basin.

But a look deep beneath the Afar Rift reveals the birth announcements may be premature. "It's not as close to fully formed seafloor spreading as we thought," said Kathy Whaler, a geophysicist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Whaler and her colleagues have spotted 120 cubic miles (500 cubic kilometers) of magma sitting in the mantle under the Afar Rift. Hot liquids like magma like to rise, so the discovery is a conundrum.

"We didn't expect this, because magma wants to pop up like a cork in water; it's too buoyant compared to the surrounding medium in the mantle," Whaler told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

Fukushima is an "unprecedented crisis" and it is "getting worse", says Japan Atomic Energy Commission

BBC
Tue, 03 Sep 2013 17:06 UTC

Japan is to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into building a frozen wall around the Fukushima nuclear plant to stop leaks of radioactive water.

Government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said an estimated 47bn yen ($473m, £304m) would be allocated.

The leaks were getting worse and the government "felt it was essential to become involved to the greatest extent possible", Mr Suga said.

The plant was crippled by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The disaster knocked out cooling systems to the reactors, three of which melted down.

Water is now being pumped in to cool the reactors, but storing the resultant large quantities of radioactive water has proved a challenge for plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco).

'Closely watching'

Under the government plan, a wall of frozen earth will be created around the reactors using pipes filled with coolant to prevent groundwater coming into contact with contaminated water being used to cool fuel rods.

Comment: See:

Leaking Fukushima nuclear plant dumped more than 1,000 tons of polluted water into the sea after Typhoon Man-yi raked the facility

5,000 dead fish foul Carlsbad lake, New Mexico

Emily Younger
KRQE
Fri, 06 Sep 2013 17:10 UTC

Another mass die-off of New Mexico wildlife has been reported, this time in the Pecos River.

But unlike the mysterious kills of an elk herd in northeastern New Mexico and dozens of catfish at Ute Lake, investigators with the New Mexico Department Game and Fish believe they know what killed the nearly 5,000 bass.

Chaos as floods submerge Mexico's Acapulco, death toll rises to at least 55

Luis Enrique Martinez and Alberto Fajardo
Reuters
Tue, 17 Sep 2013 16:48 UTC

© Reuters/Oscar Martinez
Soldiers search for survivors after a bus and two nearby houses were buried by a mountain landslide in Altotonga in Veracruz state, along Mexico's Gulf coast, September 16, 2013.

Mexico's famous beach resort of Acapulco was in chaos on Tuesday as hotels rationed food for thousands of stranded tourists and floodwaters swallowed homes and cars after some of the worst storm damage in decades killed at least 55 people across the country.

Television footage showed Acapulco's international airport terminal waist deep in water and workers wading out to escape floods that have prevented some 40,000 visitors from leaving and blocked one of the main access routes to the city with mud.

Downpours, hailstorm leave 7 dead in north west China

China Daily
Tue, 17 Sep 2013 16:39 UTC

Seven people died and another went missing after downpours and hailstorms lashed Northwest China's Gansu province late Monday, local authorities said Tuesday.

The heavy rain hit parts of Dingxi city, Gannan Tibetan autonomous prefecture and the provincial capital Lanzhou from 7 pm to 11 pm Monday, said the provincial government.

Twenty-six people were injured. Nearly 20,000 people were affected and 213 houses collapsed.

Leaking Fukushima nuclear plant dumped more than 1,000 tons of polluted water into the sea after Typhoon Man-yi raked the facility

SBS.com
Tue, 17 Sep 2013 09:09 UTC

The operator of the leaking Fukushima nuclear plant said Tuesday that it dumped more than 1,000 tons of polluted water into the sea after a typhoon raked the facility. Typhoon Man-yi smashed into Japan on Monday, bringing with it heavy rain that caused flooding in some parts of the country, including the ancient city of Kyoto.

The rain also lashed near the broken plant run by Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), swamping enclosure walls around clusters of water tanks containing toxic water that was used to cool broken reactors. Some of the tanks were earlier found to be leaking contaminated water.

"Workers measured the radioactive levels of the water collected in the enclosure walls, pumping it back into tanks when the levels were high," said a TEPCO official. "Once finding it was mostly rain water they released it from the enclosure, because there is a limit on how much water we can store."

The utility said about 1,130 tons of water with low levels of radiation -- below the 30 becquerels of strontium per litre safety limit imposed by Japanese authorities -- were released into the ground. But the company also said at one site where water was found contaminated beyond the safety limit workers could not start the water pump quick enough in the torrential rain, and toxic water had leaked from the enclosure for several minutes.

Snowiest January through September on record in Boulder, Colorado

Steven Goddard
Real Science
Tue, 17 Sep 2013 07:00 UTC

Climate experts say that Boulder was in a drought prior to last week's rain.

The first 8-1/2 months of the year have been the snowiest on record in Boulder, with almost nine feet of snow already this year.

The weather prophets should be chucked in the deep end

Boris Johnson
The Telegraph, UK
Sun, 23 Jun 2013 05:23 UTC

Homeowners lumbered with useless swimming pools know precisely who they should blame

The great thing about flying into London is that you get bags of time to see the countryside below. The congestion at Heathrow is so bad that many passengers circle above the Home Counties for half an hour, allowing themselves to be penetrated by the splendours of Surrey while their planes spew thousands of tons of CO2 into the upper air.

You can observe the way we live in the peri-urban world: the golf courses, the landfill sites, the pleasant whorls of detached houses; and over time the embourgeoisement of the British people has added an amenity that the Romans first introduced to this island. Look down on southern England, and you see the little winking ultramarine oblongs of the swimming pools - perhaps the greatest triumph of hope over experience in the history of English domestic architecture.

In Roman times, a swimming pool was a sign of taste, style and affluence, and in some of the biggest Romano-British villas you can see where Roman nobs frolicked and enjoyed the pleasures of water and nakedness. These days it would be fair to say that a swimming pool is a luxury - but not an unheard-of luxury. In the past 10 years there have been plenty of middle-class punters who have decided that they want a touch of Beverly Hills about their homes - and I know why they did it. They thought it would be nice for the kids and the grandchildren. They thought it might conceivably add to the value of their homes. In their secret hearts they hoped, forgivably, that it might provoke the envy of their neighbours.

Global warming? No, actually we're cooling, claim scientists

Hayley Dixon
The Telegraph, UK
Sun, 08 Sep 2013 04:56 UTC

A cold Arctic summer has led to a record increase in the ice cap, leading experts to predict a period of global cooling.

There has been a 60 per cent increase in the amount of ocean covered with ice compared to this time last year, the equivalent of almost a million square miles.

In a rebound from 2012's record low, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia's northern shores, days before the annual re-freeze is even set to begin.

The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific has remained blocked by pack-ice all year, forcing some ships to change their routes.

A leaked report to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) seen by the Mail on Sunday, has led some scientists to claim that the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century.

If correct, it would contradict computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming. The news comes several years after the BBC predicted that the arctic would be ice-free by 2013.

Fire and Ice: The Day After Tomorrow

Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Signs of the Times
Wed, 10 Jan 2007 11:07 UTC

Comment: To better set the tone of the new perspective that SOTT is taking, and in consideration of the current state of the planet, we are re-running this prescient article written by Laura Knight-Jadczyk back in 2007. We hope that our readers realize that what is happening on Earth in the Cosmic sense, is far more important than politics.

You can get the politics here, too, but it is no longer our focus. There has been a One World Government running the show for many years now, the conflicts are just the "bread and circuses" they use to control the masses.

Political change may still happen, but it is no longer possible for it to prevent Earth Changes that are significant and cataclysmic. If the only thing that happens is global cooling, that, alone, can bring about the deaths of billions of people. Global warming, on the other hand, would have been a boon to mankind. But that was all a fraud, a distraction, a cruel game played by psychopaths on you, humanity.

So, read on and see what it is that is on our minds: preparing you for what is to be - what is already happening.

A few months ago a member of the SOTT Forum posted a link to the following article about investigations into climate change. I wasn't too sure what the contradictory term "Tropical Ice Cores" meant, but the article seemed to explain all that:

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Earth Changes

Giant underground blob of magma puzzles scientists

Fukushima is an "unprecedented crisis" and it is "getting worse", says Japan Atomic Energy Commission

5,000 dead fish foul Carlsbad lake, New Mexico

Chaos as floods submerge Mexico's Acapulco, death toll rises to at least 55

Downpours, hailstorm leave 7 dead in north west China

Leaking Fukushima nuclear plant dumped more than 1,000 tons of polluted water into the sea after Typhoon Man-yi raked the facility

Snowiest January through September on record in Boulder, Colorado

The weather prophets should be chucked in the deep end

Global warming? No, actually we're cooling, claim scientists

Fire and Ice: The Day After Tomorrow

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