Earth ChangesS


Butterfly

Rare Chicken-Guinea Fowl Hybrid has Four Wings

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© Sam Furlong/SWNSRare breed: Tulip the "guin" has two extra wings at the front but cannot fly.
What has four wings, pretty blue eyes and walks with a swagger?

No, it's not a joke - it's a real bird and it's called a guin.

The strange-looking fowl is a hybrid of a chicken and a guinea fowl.

The chick, named Tulip, hatched in Lyn Newman's coop.

Mrs Newman had brought in two guinea fowl to act as a warning system for foxes, but did not know they could breed with her hens.

Mrs Newman, 59, raises a number of fowl in Defford, Worcestershire, but she was astonished when one of her eggs hatched into an odd looking bird even she couldn't identify.

The tiny bird was covered in clumps of feathers and - most strangely of all - had four wings.

Binoculars

"Ash Cloud" May Hit Flights Again

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© The Sunday TimesIceland could be at the start of a surge in volcanic activity that may produce more eruptions
Parts of British airspace could be closed for up to three days from today because of volcanic ash from Iceland.

The ash could close some of the busiest airports in southeast England until Tuesday, the transport department warned yesterday.

At greatest risk today are Northern Ireland and Scotland, with more widespread airport closures possible on Monday.

Philip Hammond, the transport secretary, said the situation was "fluid", but that passenger safety was the government's top priority

Bizarro Earth

Earth is Dead?

Earth
© Salon
According to Bill McKibben, the respected environmentalist and author of the pioneering End of Nature, the planet Earth, as we know it, is already dead.


Comment: Mark Twain said once: "The report of my death is an exaggeration."


Over a million square miles of the Arctic ice cap have melted, the oceans have risen and warmed, and the tropics have expanded 2 degrees north and south. Global warming has caused such pervasive and irreversible changes, he argues, that we now live on a new planet with a new set of environmental and climatic realities - and, as such, it deserves a new name: Goodbye, Earth. Hello, "Eaarth."


Comment: As regular readers of SOTT know, "man-made Global Warming" is a scam. Have a look at just the latest real evidence that Global Cooling (an understatement!) is underway.


McKibben's hair-raising new book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, is a scrupulous and impassioned account of the severely compromised globe on which we now live. He lays out the myriad ways in which climate change has remade our world, but he also goes much further, chronicling its current and future human toll. He explains how droughts in Australia helped precipitate the 2008 food crisis and put 40 million people at risk of hunger, and how the rapidly melting glaciers of the Andes and Himalayas may soon threaten the water supply of billions. Our only hope of survival, McKibben suggests, is a reversion to small-scale, local ways of life. "We simply can't live on the new earth as if it were the old earth," he writes. "We've foreclosed that option."

Comment: Earth is going through a natural cycle, moving rapidly toward the next Ice Age. Sure, it will wipe out most of humanity - maybe all - but considering the last 7K years, maybe that's not a bad thing?


Alarm Clock

Odd Smells in New Orleans, Thoughts of the Gulf

At almost 300 years old, somewhat moldy from the remnants of Hurricane Katrina and surrounded by muddy water and swamps, this city is not exactly known for being lemony fresh.

The signature scent around Bourbon Street, after all, is the smell of spilled liquor.

But from the French Quarter to New Orleans East, people here have been complaining about a tinge to the air that is unsettling even by local standards.

Many suspect that it has something to do with the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, which has already leaked millions of gallons of crude about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. The authorities involved in the cleanup of the fallen Deepwater Horizon oil rig have been burning oil on the surface of the gulf and using chemical dispersants around the leak.

Could New Orleans possibly be smelling that, from more than 100 miles away? Many say yes. But the mystery odor, which is stronger on some days and in some areas than others, is hard for residents to describe.

Magic Wand

Dogs and Whales Enjoy Mysterious Connection

Many animal experts believe that a primitive communication system unites virtually all mammals. Beyond that, a special connection appears to exist between dogs and whales. Check out this footage, for example, of a dog interacting with a killer whale. The orca, which could have easily grabbed the dog for dinner, appears to be displaying submissive, playful behaviors, such as exposing its underside to the dog.

Bug

Are Honey Bees Being Killed Off by Chemically Coated Crop Seeds?

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© iStockphotoHoney Bee
A class of insecticide that is applied to seeds and taken up into plant tissue may be responsible for much of the widespread decline in honeybee populations, increasing numbers of researchers and environmentalists are suggesting.

Starting in 2005, beekeepers in the United States first reported large numbers of bees mysteriously disappearing, and since then the problem has spread to different parts of the world. No one cause of the collapse has been identified, although front-running theories include parasites, viruses, stress from long-distance transport of hives for pollination, and pesticides.

"We do feel like pesticides are playing a role in pollinator decline," said researcher Maryann Frazier of Penn State University. "We know that the pesticides are there. We don't know yet exactly what role they're playing."

Bizarro Earth

Asphalt volcanoes discovered off California

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© Dana Yoerger/Woods Hole Oceanographic InstitutionBathymetric image of asphalt volcanoes off the coast of Santa Barbara
Seven small undersea "volcanoes" that once spewed asphalt into the Pacific Ocean have been mapped off the coast of California. They could be the cause of a prehistoric marine dead zone thought to exist in the area.

David Valentine and colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara, surveyed the sea floor and discovered the mounds, the largest of which rises 20 metres above the seabed, made from tar. Some were still releasing methane. It is the first time that asphalt volcanoes have been identified in the area. Valentine says they formed as sticky hydrocarbons seeped from the seabed around 40,000 years ago.

Methane would also have been released at a rate that greatly exceeds today's output, with devastating consequences for the local ecosystem. The gas would have attracted bacteria that metabolise methane and deplete oxygen. That fits with analysis of sea-floor sediments, which suggests that a dead zone of around 600 square kilometres formed here about 40,000 years ago.

Cloud Lightning

In the shadow of the volcano, where day becomes night under a blanket of ash

With thick rubber boots and protective masks covering their mouths and noses, two young girls play amid the carpet of ash that covers everything in the Icelandic region of Eyjafjoll.

Their tights and clothes are covered in the fine black powder, but they certainly seem to be enjoying their late-night frolic.

Except for the fact that it is in the middle of the day.
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Playing in the dark: Two girls, their faces covered by industrial masks, play in the thick layer of ash that has dumped on the Eyjafjoll region of Iceland after the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano

Umbrella

Flashback Photo Survey: Flood hits Austria

Flood in Vienna
A woman walks in a flooded street in Klosterneuburg at the northern border of Vienna June 24, 2009. After heavy rain in the past days, rivers burst their banks, flooding parts of lower Austria. [Agencies]

Bad Guys

Indians Warn of War Against Amazon Mega-Dam

Kayapó Indians
© T TurnerKayapó dance at an anti-dam protest in 2006.
Kayapó Indian leader Raoni Metuktire arrived in Europe last week and has appealed for support for his tribe, which is campaigning against the Belo Monte dam on the Xingu river in the Brazilian Amazon.

Raoni said, 'I have always prevented my people from fighting, but I am very worried now. It is time that we take back what belongs to us'.

He added that '3,000 warriors' are ready to take up arms.

Raoni met French ex- President Jacques Chirac and asked that he and the current President Nicolas Sarkozy urge President Lula of Brazil not to allow the dam to be built.

If constructed, the dam would be the third largest in the world and it would flood a large area of land, dry up certain parts of the Xingu river, cause huge devastation to the rainforest and reduce fish stocks upon which Indians in the area depend for their survival.