Earth ChangesS


Cult

Propaganda: Climate change causes 315,000 deaths a year-report

London - Climate change kills about 315,000 people a year through hunger, sickness and weather disasters, and the annual death toll is expected to rise to half a million by 2030, a report said on Friday.

The study, commissioned by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF), estimates that climate change seriously affects 325 million people every year, a number that will more than double in 20 years to 10 percent of the world's population (now about 6.7 billion).

Economic losses due to global warming amount to over $125 billion annually -- more than the flow of aid from rich to poor nations -- and are expected to rise to $340 billion each year by 2030, according to the report.

"Climate change is the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time, causing suffering to hundreds of millions of people worldwide," Kofi Annan, former U.N. secretary-general and GHF president, said in a statement.

"The first hit and worst affected are the world's poorest groups, and yet they have done least to cause the problem."

Comment: Expect more and more extreme and outlandish pronouncements as the Conference of the Parties (COP15) nears in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Expect more and more marginalization, defamation, vitriolic ad hominem attacks directed at scientists not towing the line of man-made CO2 global warming.

This is one of the few things you can count on in a psychologically compromised world.


Fish

Rare Pink Dolphin Turns Heads Off Louisiana

Image
© Stephen Fournet / APA rare albino dolphin in the lower Calcasieu Ship Channel south of Lake Charles, La.
New Orleans - What's pink, has red eyes and leaps around a Louisiana shipping channel long enough for you to believe your eyes? A rare albino bottlenose dolphin.

Bottlenose dolphins are common in the lower Calcasieu Ship Channel, feeding in the deep water and riding on top of boats' waves. And when the pink one jumps amid four dark gray dolphins, it's easy to spot.

The albino is just the 14th reported worldwide, and the third in the Gulf of Mexico, according to biologist Dagmar Fertl of Plano, Texas.

Sun

Solar cycle computer model with 98 percent forecasting accuracy a complete failure

This is an official NCAR News Release (National Center for Atmospheric Research) Apparently, they have solar forecasting techniques down to a "science", as boldly demonstrated in this press release. - Anthony

Scientists Issue Unprecedented Forecast of Next Sunspot Cycle

Boulder - The next sunspot cycle will be 30-50% stronger than the last one and begin as much as a year late, according to a breakthrough forecast using a computer model of solar dynamics developed by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Predicting the Sun's cycles accurately, years in advance, will help societies plan for active bouts of solar storms, which can slow satellite orbits, disrupt communications, and bring down power systems.

The scientists have confidence in the forecast because, in a series of test runs, the newly developed model simulated the strength of the past eight solar cycles with more than 98% accuracy. The forecasts are generated, in part, by tracking the subsurface movements of the sunspot remnants of the previous two solar cycles. The team is publishing its forecast in the current issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

"Our model has demonstrated the necessary skill to be used as a forecasting tool," says NCAR scientist Mausumi Dikpati, the leader of the forecast team at NCAR's High Altitude Observatory that also includes Peter Gilman and Giuliana de Toma.

Understanding the cycles

The Sun goes through approximately 11-year cycles, from peak storm activity to quiet and back again. Solar scientists have tracked them for some time without being able to predict their relative intensity or timing.

Comment: Computer models with a 98% accuracy fail to forecast reality. The IPCC global warming computer models cannot reproduce any historical climatic history. The IPCC computer models cannot model oceanic thermal oscillations, volcanic activity, total solar irradiance, cosmic radiation flux, cloud cover, or much else that is vital to understanding climate science, forward or backward in time. Yet the global psychological machine is ready to impose controls on the entire population of the world that may kill millions and millions of people by denying them heat and fuel and food and jobs.

Why are these intimidators not equated as terrorists? They incite catastrophic fear in the population. They bully and intimidate other scientists. They demean and slander. They spin derogatory language to dehumanize those who try to speak up and show their reasoning is falsifiable if not down right lies in some cases. And the media such as is displayed in the above article is their willing accomplice, their tool.

We live in an insane world run by psychologically compromised minds.


Ark

Cooler decades ahead, researcher says

Syun-Ichi Akasofu
© Ned RozellSyun-Ichi Akasofu pictured at the
Elvey Auditorium May 22, 2009.

Syun-Ichi Akasofu has a forecast for the average global temperature during the next few decades-cool.

Akasofu, the former director of the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute and International Arctic Research Center, was known as an aurora expert for most of his career. Now, people are citing his opinions on global warming. Rush Limbaugh and syndicated columnist Cal Thomas recently mentioned Akasofu, who thinks it's likely that the planet will cool down until about 2030, and then warm slightly thereafter. That notion is contrary to the prediction of steadily increasing warmth made by members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Unlike those scientists, Akasofu thinks natural forces affect climate much more than carbon dioxide, which warms the globe by trapping heat.

Bulb

Global warming advocates swiftly becoming political terrorists

It is well known that many university staff list to port and try to engineer a brave new world. The cash cow climate institutes now seem to be drowning in their own self-importance.

In a wonderful gesture of public spiritedness, seven academics who include three lead authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a former director of the World Climate Research Program wrote to Australian power generating companies on April 29 instructing them to cease and desist creating electricity from coal.

In their final paragraph, they state with breathtaking arrogance:
The unfortunate reality is that genuine action on climate change will require the existing coal-fired power stations to cease operating in the near future.

We feel it is vital that you understand this and we are happy to work with you and with governments to begin planning for this transition immediately.

The warming of the atmosphere, driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases, is already causing unacceptable damage and suffering around the world.
No evidence is provided for this statement and no signatory to this letter has published anything to support this claim.

These university staff are unctuously understanding about the plight of those who face employment extinction in the smokestack towns of Australia.

They write:
We understand that this will require significant social and economic transition that will need to be managed carefully to care for coal sector workers and coal-dependent communities.
This love for fellow workers brings tears to the eyes.

Bizarro Earth

Dozens of whales beach on South African shore

Dozens of pilot whales beached this morning near the storm-lashed tip of South Africa, prompting a massive rescue operation.

Rescuers were using six bulldozers to push the 55 whales back into the water, but "as soon as we put them back into the sea, they swim back to the beach again," said National Sea Rescue Institute spokesman Craig Lambinon.

One whale has died, and high winds and rough seas were frustrating the rescue attempts.

"It's not a very easy situation," Lambinon said.

Pilot whales, about 3 meters (10 feet) long, are fairly common around South Africa. There was no immediate explanation as to why they were beaching.

Binoculars

Still More on Diminished Solar Activity and Global Cooling

Sun storm
© NASASunspot activity captured by the TRACE spacecraft. The bright glowing gas flowing around the sunspots has a temperature of over 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit.

As more and more real scientific data comes in, and we are able to move further and further beyond the mythology and high-hopes of global warming high priest Al Gore, it becomes clearer and clearer that the public has been fed a massive campaign of hooey for the past 20 years.

Just a few days ago we looked at the extensive report from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine which showed the correlation between temperature change and solar activity. Not only does current science show this, but the examination of historical climate data shows up-and-down climate cycles across the earth long before SUVs and power plants were ever dreamed of.

Just yesterday Space Daily featured an article about the recent diminished solar activity:
According to the forecast, the sun should remain generally calm for at least another year. From a research point of view, that's good news because solar minimum has proven to be more interesting than anyone imagined. Low solar activity has a profound effect on Earth's atmosphere, allowing it to cool and contract.

Better Earth

Starfish defy climate change gloom

Image
© D. Gordon E. Robertson, Wikimedia Commons
A species of starfish has confounded climate change doom-mongers by thriving as sea temperatures and acidity increase - a scenario that is likely as the world gets warmer.

Most studies have concluded that sea animals with calcified shells or skeletons, such as starfish, will suffer as carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels dissolves in the sea, making the water more acidic and destroying the calcium carbonate on which the creatures depend.

But the sea star Pisaster ochraceus may ride out the climate storm. Rebecca Gooding and colleagues at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, exposed sea stars to rising temperatures and water acidity. They thrived in temperatures of up to 21 °C and atmospheric CO2 concentrations of up to 780 parts per million - beyond predicted rises for the next century (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: link).

Heart

'Crazy Turtle Woman' Transforms Graveyard into Maternity Ward

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© Kathleen Toner/CNNSuzan Lakhan Baptiste's efforts have turned a beach from a leatherback turtle graveyard to a nesting colony.
Matura, Trinidad -- With its white sand and clear, blue water, Trinidad's Matura Beach looks like a postcard. It's a far cry from its recent past, when leatherback sea turtle carcasses littered the ground and kept tourists away.

"Twenty years ago, this was a graveyard," Suzan Lakhan Baptiste said of the six-mile stretch of beach near her home.

"The stench was horrendous. You could smell it for miles," she said.

Saddened and frustrated, Baptiste launched a crusade to help end the slaughter of the gentle giants. Today, she and her group are succeeding: What was once a turtle graveyard is now a maternity ward -- one of the largest leatherback nesting colonies in the world.

Better Earth

Huge undersea mountain with potentially catastrophic power found off Indonesia

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© UnknownThis aerial view shows new homes being constructed to the north of Banda Aceh on the island of Sumatra in 2006. A massive underwater mountain discovered off the Indonesian island of Sumatra could be a volcano with potentially catastrophic power, a scientist said Friday.
A massive underwater mountain discovered off the Indonesian island of Sumatra could be a volcano with potentially catastrophic power, a scientist said Friday.

Indonesian government marine geologist Yusuf Surachman said the mountain was discovered earlier this month about 330 kilometres (205 miles) west of Bengkulu city during research to map the seabed's seismic faultlines.

The cone-shaped mountain is 4,600 metres (15,100 feet) high, 50 kilometres in diameter at its base and its summit is 1,300 metres below the surface, he said.

"It looks like a volcano because of its conical shape but it might not be. We have to conduct further investigations," he told AFP.

He denied reports that researchers had confirmed the discovery of a new volcano, insisting that at this stage it could only be described as a "seamount" of the sort commonly found around the world.

"Whether it's active or dangerous, who knows?" he added.