© YouTube/Андрей Щетинин (screen capture)
The rooftops of houses are barely visible following blizzards in Kazakhstan this month.
The rooftops of houses are barely visible following blizzards in Kazakhstan this month.
Earth Changes
Sperm whale
Davie Rea, from Our Lady's Island, said the dead whale appeared to be in reasonable condition apart from the battering it had taken coming in over the rocks.
'I couldn't believe it when I saw it,' said Davie, who daily walks the shoreline between Nethertown and Carnsore Point.
Kevin MacCormick, from the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group, said the dead whale was a sperm whale that weighed around 11 tonnes.
© Georgina Goodwin/Barcroft Media
One in five species now face extinction, but that figure could rise to as many as half within 80 years.
One in five species now face extinction, but that figure could rise to as many as half within 80 years.
"The living fabric of the world is slipping through our fingers without our showing much sign of caring," say the organisers of the Biological Extinction conference held at the Vatican this week.
Threatened creatures such as the tiger or rhino may make occasional headlines, but little attention is paid to the eradication of most other life forms, they argue. But as the conference will hear, these animals and plants provide us with our food and medicine. They purify our water and air while also absorbing carbon emissions from our cars and factories, regenerating soil, and providing us with aesthetic inspiration.
"Rich western countries are now siphoning up the planet's resources and destroying its ecosystems at an unprecedented rate," said biologist Paul Ehrlich, of Stanford University in California. "We want to build highways across the Serengeti to get more rare earth minerals for our cellphones. We grab all the fish from the sea, wreck the coral reefs and put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We have triggered a major extinction event. The question is: how do we stop it?"
© Kodiak Greenwood
A mudslide triggered by the recent heavy rains has damaged Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge on Highway 1 in Big Sur beyond repair.
A mudslide triggered by the recent heavy rains has damaged Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge on Highway 1 in Big Sur beyond repair.
The Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge spans a valley that has exploded with the cracking of falling redwood trees and the crash of rocks as the condemned bridge slides slowly toward the sea.
Two weeks ago, local James Wolfenden, 71, was out hiking when he spotted a jagged crack in the bridge's underbelly. It has since slid downhill several feet — though Caltrans isn't sure just how much because rain washed its markers away. Its northern end is visibly buckling and sagging like a roller coaster stopped in time.
The body of Moses was found with multiple injuries after the incident which police confirmed happened last Saturday. The incident occurred in Plumtree, a town located in the Bulilimamangwe district in southwestern Zimbabwe.
The state-owned Chronicle newspaper reports that the deceased in the company of two other friends, Mutheseli Sibanda and Magezi Nyathi, saw three elephants in a bushy area and tried to drive them to a clearly in order to take photos with them.
The elephants - a bull along with two males - reportedly charged at the three. The two others managed to safely escape whiles Moses who the male elephant caught up with died after he was trampled upon.
Bored with bamboo?
The meter-long panda was spotted by locals climbing down from a mountain near Muping village and wandering for 20 minutes before it attacked a goat.
Pictures taken by a local showed the bloody bones of a goat at the scene of the attack. The goat belonged to another local.
Employees of the Mabian County Forestry Bureau traveled to Muping after receiving a report of the attack and collected some of the panda's excrement.
A 3.9 magnitude earthquake rocked the notorious Song Tranh Hydropower reservoir at 11:20 a.m. on February 26; local authorities described it as the strongest measured in a year.
Vietnam's Institute of Geophysics says the quake originated roughly 10 km below the ground in Nam Tra My District.
"The quake lasted five seconds, shook many houses and was followed by the shock of explosion," said the District Chairman Ho Quang Buu. "Many people rushed out of their houses in fear."
© VnExpress/Tri Tin
The Song Tranh 2 Hydropower Plant in Nam Tra My District, Quang Nam Province. The dam is suspected of having caused a series of minor earthquakes several years ago.
The Song Tranh 2 Hydropower Plant in Nam Tra My District, Quang Nam Province. The dam is suspected of having caused a series of minor earthquakes several years ago.
Dead dwarf sperm whale
Fisherman Cocoy Saa said two whales were earlier spotted near the shore, and one of the whales seemed to push the other to shallow waters before it left.
According to Laboratory Analyst John Roy Obsines of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources' (BFAR) region 10 office, the dead whale might have suffered from stress, and was the victim of a shark attack.
The small whale had several injuries--its wounds were round, and seemed to be cookiecutter shark bites.
© Getty Images
A man boards a bus on a flooded street as a powerful storm moves across Southern California on February 17, 2017 near Sun Valley, California.
A man boards a bus on a flooded street as a powerful storm moves across Southern California on February 17, 2017 near Sun Valley, California.
Also, the state's Central Valley region where agriculture is dominant continued to show improvement from abnormally dry conditions.
"The precipitation that fell this week continued to reduce long-term drought in California," the monitor said Thursday. "Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, which have been the epicenter of drought in California in recent weeks, received much-needed rainfall."
The monitor said more than 8 inches of rain was reported at two stations near Santa Barbara and almost 7 inches nearby at Ojai. Ventura County's community of Thousand Oaks also experienced well over 6 inches of rain.
"It's been raining a lot and gone a tremendous way towards eliminating surface drought conditions in California," said Richard Heim, a meteorologist with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 's National Centers for Environmental Information and the author of this week's monitor.
Added Heim, "We felt it was time that the extreme drought [category] went away." He said this week's monitor is the first time since Aug. 6, 2013, that California is free of "extreme" drought conditions.
© INSIVUMEH, MTU
Eruption at Fuego volcano, Guatemala on February 1, 2017.
Eruption at Fuego volcano, Guatemala on February 1, 2017.
Explosive ejection of incandescent fragments of new viscous lava is reaching up to 300 m (984 feet) and falling up to 500 m (1 640 feet) from the crater. The eruptive behavior is producing constant moderate to strong rumble.
This activity is feeding two lava flows, one towards the Barranca Santa Teresa nad the second towards Las Lajas, INSIVUMEH reported in a special bulletin released February 25, 2017.
There is a possibility that pyroclastic flows are generated, so it is not advised to stay in or near the main canyons, the agency warned.
At 09:45 UTC today, the Washington VAAC reported satellite imagery showed one volcanic ash cloud up to 5.8 km (19 000 feet) a.s.l., extending 130 km (80 miles) NE of the summit, and another 1.5 km (5 000 feet) extending 139 km (86 miles) to the SSW.
Comment: One suspects that Ehrlich couldn't be happier if billions of humans simply vanished. This author of the Population Bomb has been scaremongering about global warming and overpopulation for years.