Earth ChangesS

Cloud Lightning

Thousands left homeless after storm surge sweeps Bangladesh

Paul Simons
The Times Online
Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:02 UTC
Bangladesh was battered by a super-cyclone yesterday, with winds of about 150mph (240km/h) - some of the worst on record in the region. At least 28 fishermen were feared drowned.

As Cyclone Sidr slammed into the southwestern coast, destroying thousands of houses, 650,000 villagers fled to shelters. Officials said that another 3 million people would have to be moved. In the coastal districts of Barguna, Bagerhat, Barisal and Bhola thousands of flimsy straw and mud huts were flattened as the cyclone flooded lowlying areas and uprooted trees and electricity and telephone poles. Road, rail and river transport was also affected.
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Bizarro Earth

Most of U.S. to have above-normal Dec-Feb temps: Gov't

Tom Doggett
Reuters
Thu, 15 Nov 2007 22:14 UTC
Most of the United States, including the Northeast heating oil market except for Maine, will see above-normal temperatures from December through February, government forecasters predicted Thursday.

In its 90-day outlook, the National Weather Service said there were equal chances of above-normal and below-normal temperatures in the West, in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and the northern half of Nevada and California.
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Bizarro Earth

Update: Big earthquake kills two in Chile and hits mining

Pav Jordan
Reuters
Thu, 15 Nov 2007 01:01 UTC
A powerful earthquake hit mineral-rich northern Chile on Wednesday, killing at least two people, injuring more than 100 and halting output at some of the world's largest copper mines.

©REUTERS/Stringer
Residents point to a roof that collapsed on a car after an earthquake in Antofagasta, northwest of Santiago, November 14, 2007.
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Bizarro Earth

Central Vietnam struggles with new flood disaster

Ho Binh Minh
Reuters
Tue, 13 Nov 2007 01:08 UTC


©Hoang Dinh Nam/AFP/Getty

Tens of thousands of homes were submerged in central Vietnam, the fifth major floods since August in which hundreds of people have died, roads and railways inundated, crops damaged and water-borne diseases spread. Relief workers delivered emergency supplies of household kits, clean water containers and mosquito nets in the coastal cities of Hue and Danang and the provinces of Quang Tri, Quang Ngai and Binh Dinh.
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Evil Rays

U.S. Navy Ordered to Lessen Sonar's Harm


Associated Press
Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:29 UTC
San Francisco - A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered the U.S. Navy to lessen the harm its high-power sonar does to whales and other marine life during exercises off the Southern California coast.
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Snowman

Polar bears in danger? Is this some kind of joke?

James Delingpole
The Times
Mon, 12 Nov 2007 17:31 UTC
polar bears
© BBCAnd polar bears? For once, they are not mentioned, but scientists agree that they are doing well, with a rebound in their numbers of up to 500 per cent since hunting was banned in the 1970s
Why don't polar bears eat penguins? Because their paws are too big to get the wrappers off, obviously. It's not a joke you hear so often these days, though, because polar bears are now a serious business. They're the standard-bearers of a tear-jerking propaganda campaign to persuade us all that, if we don't act soon on climate change, the only thing that will remain of our snowy-furred ursine chums will be the picture on a pack of Fox's glacier mints.

First there came the computer-generated polar bear in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth; then that heartrending photo, syndicated everywhere, of the bears apparently stranded on a melting ice floe; then the story of those four polar bears drowned by global warming (actually, they'd perished in a storm).
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Attention

7.7 Magnitude Earthquake Rattles Chile


CNN
Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:33 UTC
A major earthquake hit northern Chile on Wednesday, and local television showed cars crushed under a section of collapsed building and terrified, confused residents in the streets.

©TVN Chile
A car lies crushed under part of a building Wednesday in Antofagasta.

Ricardo Lagos Weber, minister of government affairs, who spoke from Santiago an hour after the quake hit, said there were no immediate reports of injuries. But he said information from isolated areas in the far north had yet to come in.
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Cloud Lightning

As China's mega dam rises, so do strains and fear

Chris Buckley
Reuters
Wed, 14 Nov 2007 01:20 UTC
The slopes of Chenjialing Village have shuddered and groaned lately, cracking and warping homes and fields, and making residents fear the banks of China's swelling Three Gorges Dam may hold deadly perils.

©REUTERS/David Gray
A boat sails past on the Yangtze River as an old lady sits in the courtyard of her apartment block in the area known as Old Badong county in the Hubei Province near the town of Badong in central China, Nov. 5, 2007.
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Better Earth

Strange Space Weather over Africa

Dr. Tony Phillips
Science at NASA
Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:13 UTC
Something strange is happening in the atmosphere above Africa and researchers have converged on Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to discuss the phenomenon. The Africa Space Weather Workshop kicked off Nov. 12th with nearly 100 scientists and students in attendance.
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Cloud Lightning

Cyclone Sidr: It Gets Worse

Chris Mooney
thedailygreen
Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:16 UTC
Cyclone Sidr, currently in the Bay of Bengal and headed towards India or Bangladesh, recently became the 15th Category 4 or 5 storm of 2007, with sustained winds estimated at 115 knots or more than 130 miles per hour. Now, it's all a matter of where and when.

©Naval Research Laboratory
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