Earth Changes

Bees dying at an alarming rate in Pennsylvania; could impact food supply

John Shumway
pittsburgh.cbslocal.com
Thu, 23 Jun 2016 14:02 UTC

Honey bee

For many of us, bees are something to avoid; but for the agricultural community, bees are all about success or failure of their crops.

To the farmer or grower, an active bee hive ready to mass pollinate is a thing of beauty.

"Every flower needs it, so every piece of fruit needs a bee to get to it," says Reed Soergel, of Soergel's Orchards. "So, to the crop, it's huge."

But bees in Pennsylvania are dying at an alarming rate.

"About 60 percent of colonies dying off here in our state," says Stephen Riccardi, of Penn Environment.

"It's getting into a situation where we're going to start running out of food," said Kevin Hermman, the executive chef at The Porch at Schenley.

'A firefight of epic proportions': Two killed in California's Erskine wildfire

RT
Sat, 25 Jun 2016 13:54 UTC

A furious wildfire has ripped through an area of California, killing an elderly couple as they tried to flee from the deadly flames. At least 80 houses have been destroyed in southern Sierra Nevada, with strong winds fanning the flames further.

Kern County Sheriff, Donny Youngblood, told reporters that at least two people were confirmed to have been killed in the inferno, warning that more victims could be found.

Up to 800 firefighters struggled against the so-called Erskine Fire, which broke out on Thursday in the foothills of Kern County. It roared through sun-drenched trees in the mountains of central California and eventually went out of control. On Friday, local authorities told over 3,000 residents in Lake Isabella to be prepared to evacuate, Reuters reported.

"The forces of nature collided with a spark," Kern County Fire Chief, Brian Marshall, told a news conference on Friday. "The mountainous terrain, five years of drought and wind gusts of over 20mph all drove a fire over 11 miles in 13 hours.

Great White shark attacks fisherman near Cape Agulhas, South Africa

Lizeka Tandwa
news24.com
Sat, 25 Jun 2016 13:07 UTC

A shark, apparently a Great White, attacked a spear fisherman near Cape Agulhas on Thursday, the NSRI said.

A fellow spear fisherman brought the 43-year-old man to Arniston harbour around noon and used the rubber bands from their spear guns as a tourniquet on the wounds, National Sea Rescue Institute Agulhas station commander Reinard Geldenhuys said in a statement.

"It was reported that he was safe in the harbour and suffering bite wounds following a reported shark encounter, believed to be with a Great White shark, while spearfishing off-shore of Ryspunt."

The man had multiple lacerations, a tear to his left leg, and lacerations to his right hand, caused by trying to fight the shark off.

NSRI medics and Fire and Rescue Services paramedics treated the man before he was taken to Bredasdorp hospital, where he was stabilised. He was airlifted to a Cape Town hospital in a serious but stable condition.

Arctic rosy snow may be warning sign

RT
Sat, 25 Jun 2016 12:50 UTC

To some, pink snow sounds like a child's fantasy come true. To others, it sounds like a dangerous new drug. But in reality, pink snow exists... and it isn't a good sign. The blush-toned hue is the chemical reaction of algae that causes Arctic melt.

Rosy snow is commonly seen at high altitudes when normally green algae turn red from absorbing ultraviolet rays. However, the reddish snow could also be increasing the speed of glacial melt.

The simplest way to understand this is to think about wearing a black shirt on a hot day. People typically try not to do that because darker colored objects absorb a higher amount of incoming light than light-colored objects, which tend to reflect light. Here, it's like a glacier putting on a red shirt, the Washington Post explained.

Lakes and rivers mysteriously disappearing increase around the world

Strange Sounds
Fri, 24 Jun 2016 05:51 UTC

The Atoyac river disappears overnight in Mexico

Within the last 3 months or so, newspapers have started reporting increasingly about rivers and lakes that mysteriously and suddenly disappear around the world. Here a compilation of the most baffling incidents.

Let's start this compilation with the Atoyac River, which disappeared overnight drained by a giant 30 meters by 20 meters fissure in the riverbed. The large sink hole cut the water supply to more than 10,000 families for a few days.

One month later, in April 2016, two other rivers flowing through the exact same mountainous region of the eastern state of Veracruz, Mexico also began to dry up due to the formation of sinkholes.

Comment: Mysterious indeed. Elsewhere scientists have been baffled by the relentless rise of two Caribbean lakes and off northwest England a new island formed. What is going on?

700 mile wide storm over the Midwest produces more than 1 million lightning events in 18 hours

Kori Rumore and Jonathon Berlin
Chicago Tribune
Fri, 24 Jun 2016 19:22 UTC

Wednesday night's storm stretched 700 miles across the Midwest and produced more than 1 million lightning strokes and flashes.

Wednesday night's storm, which stretched more than 700 miles from eastern Iowa to northern Virginia, produced more than 1 million lightning events over 18 hours -- more than 236,000 of them occurring in Illinois and over Lake Michigan, and is blamed for a house fire in Evanston.

Since 1989, every stroke and flash of lightning that happens in the continental U.S. has been recorded in real time by the Vaisala-owned National Lightning Detection Network, based in Tucson, Ariz., which monitors lightning activity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This includes the time, location and polarity of cloud-to-ground lightning and cloud pulses, which can stay in a cloud or be connected to cloud-to-ground lightning.

Vaisala estimates the Chicago area had 12-20 flashes of lightning per square mile each year from 2005-14. During the same time period, Illinois had the eighth-highest cloud-to-ground lightning flash density among U.S. states at 14.2 per square mile. Florida had the most -- 21 per square mile.

Evacuations ordered and highways closed as Erskine wildfire spreads quickly in central California

Phys.org
Fri, 24 Jun 2016 00:00 UTC

Erskine Fire in Kern County, Calif., June 2016

A fast-spreading fire in central California has destroyed at least 80 buildings and is threatening 1,500 more, prompting the evacuation of 10 neighborhoods, the authorities said Thursday night.

The fire three hours north of Los Angeles—dubbed the Erskine fire—had spread to an estimated 5,000 acres (20 square kilometers), prompting the mobilization of hundreds of firefighters, the news website Inciweb said.

The authorities closed several highways and evacuated two schools and a retirement home in the agricultural and oil region after the blaze started Thursday afternoon due to unknown causes.

The blaze is "extremely dangerous, extremely volatile," Kern County Fire Captain Tyler Townsend told the Los Angeles Times. "It's one of the most devastating I've ever seen."

Comment: Could 2016 be California's worst wildfire season?

Girl killed by leopard as she slept next to her parents in India

Sarah Dean
Daily Mail
Fri, 24 Jun 2016 18:24 UTC

Leopards now attacking humans in their houses

A 12-year-old girl has been killed by a leopard after it dragged her away while she slept next to her parents.

The child's mutilated body was found covered in mud in the backyard of the family home in a village near Udaipur, in India.

Local media named the girl as Ravina and said she was sleeping with her father Ranjit Singh and mother on the terrace of their house on Wednesday, when a leopard grabbed the child by her neck around midnight.

The girl's mother did not realise she was missing until around 4am, when they launched a frantic search, the Udaipur Kurin reports.

Teethmarks were found on the girl's body and villagers are reportedly angry that authorities have not done more to stop leopard attacks.

It is the second terrifying incident this month and police and forest authorities have been called in to search for the animal.

Leopards are frequently sighted in the area and pugmarks were found on the ground.

A large search party turned out to find the girl but they discovered her body in the family's backgarden

Locked, loaded and ready to roll: Area around the San Andreas fault is rising and sinking

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
Wed, 22 Jun 2016 16:15 UTC

If you reside on the west coast, you are living on borrowed time. As you will see below, stress has been building up along the San Andreas fault for more than a century, and scientists tell us that southern California is way overdue for a major earthquake. When that stress is finally released, the U.S. Geological Survey says that we could be looking at hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. If you follow my work regularly, then you already know that there has been unusual shaking all along the "Ring of Fire" so far in 2016. But thankfully the west coast of the United States has been spared from a major disaster up to this point. Unfortunately, scientists assure us that it is only a matter of time before one strikes, and that is why it is so alarming that the ground surrounding the San Andreas fault has been "rising and sinking." The following comes from the Los Angeles Times...

For the first time, scientists have produced a computer image showing huge sections of California rising and sinking around the San Andreas fault.

The vertical movement is the result of seismic strain that will be ultimately released in a large earthquake.

Governor declares state of emergency in 44 counties following floods in West Virginia; 7 inches of rain in 3 hours

Richard Davies
Floodlist
Fri, 24 Jun 2016 15:00 UTC

Severe flooding in parts of West Virginia has prompted Governor Early Ray Tomblin to declare a state of emergency for 44 counties in the state. Local media are reporting that 2 people have died in the floods and a young child is missing. The flooding has damaged buildings, roads and bridges. Evacuations have been carried out in some areas, and emergency service have carried out dozens of flood rescues.

Initially the worst affected counties were Greenbrier and Nicholas, where Governor Tomblin declared the state of emergency on 23 June. A statement from the Governor's office said that the "severe storm event has caused rockslides, mudslides, and flooding and has damaged home, businesses, roads and bridges. Certain portions of Nichols and Greenbrier have been rendered inaccessible because of public infrastructure damage."

Later the state of emergency was expanded to include 44 counties in total. All but the counties in the Northern and Eastern Panhandles in West Virginia have been severely affected and are now under a state of emergency.