Earth ChangesS

Attention

Indonesia mud volcano breaches barrier, sparks panic

A mud volcano that forced more than 15,000 people to abandon their homes on the Indonesian island of Java in 2006 has breached the barriers built to contain it, causing further damage, police said.

Residents in Porong in East Java province fled from their homes in panic late on Thursday when hot, foul-smelling mud began to flow into the area, covering the nearby railway tracks and a main road.

Attention

Alaskan sea drilling plans criticized

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - The federal government will open up nearly 46,000 square miles off Alaska's northwest coast to petroleum leases next month, a decision condemned by enviromental groups that contend the industrial activity will harm northern marine mammals.

Snowman

Global cooling soon to replace global warming

Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world.

Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.

Snowman

State of emergency: Heavy snow blankets Romania and Bulgaria

Heavy snow blanketed Romania and Bulgaria on Thursday, cutting power to hundreds of towns and villages, blocking roads and forcing Bucharest's two airports and some Black Sea ports to close.

Meteorologists said the snow, which had been falling for two days, was expected to continue throughout Romania until late on Thursday, with temperatures expected to fall as low as minus 16 degrees Celsius (3 degrees Fahrenheit).

Butterfly

Australia: Wet and wild conditions continue to lash Queensland

Wet and wild conditions are continuing across Queensland, with severe weather warnings issued, including flash flooding and damaging winds. A new low pressure system forming off the Sunshine Coast is due to intensify the stormy weather which has lashed the southern coastline for the past week.

Question

Trees absorbing less CO2 as world warms, study finds

The ability of forests to soak up man-made carbon dioxide is weakening, according to an analysis of two decades of data from more than 30 sites in the frozen north.

The finding published today is crucial, because it means that more of the CO2 we release will end up affecting the climate in the atmosphere rather than being safely locked away in trees or soil.

Magnify

Nature and Man Jointly Cook Arctic

WASHINGTON - There's more to the recent dramatic and alarming thawing of the Arctic region than can be explained by man-made global warming alone, a new study found. Nature is pushing the Arctic to the edge, too.

Snowman

Snow and cold weather grips much of Canada - but Atlantic Canada suffers most

As residents of Atlantic Canada dug out Wednesay from the fourth winter storm in a week, the man considered Canada's unofficial weather guru said it appears Mother Nature is repeatedly taking aim at the region.

Snowman

Southern U.S. Farmers Fret As Cold Sets In

ORLANDO, Florida - A wintry system that added inches to record snow accumulations in some Northern states sent temperatures plummeting Wednesday in the South, where farmers scrambled to protect their crops.

Temperatures were expected to drop into the 20s and teens in parts of Florida by Thursday morning, following the 30-degree temperatures some northern parts of the state saw Wednesday.

The cold spell could prove devastating to the state's citrus industry, which is the nation's largest and already has suffered from years of disease and hurricanes.

Bizarro Earth

Villagers flee volcano eruption in Chile



©EPA
A view of the Llaima volcano in the La Araucania region of southern Chile.

Hundreds of residents fled their homes and spent the night out in the open after a volcano in southern Chile erupted, spewing lava and ash.

The director of the government's emergency bureau, Carmen Fernandez, today said that a state of alert remained in the area of the Llaima volcano 650km (400 miles) south of Santiago, but that no mass evacuation was yet necessary.