Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Most of U.S. warmer than normal this winter

The United States will have warmer-than-normal temperatures this winter in most of the country, except for the northern Plains and Northwest states, government weather experts predicted on Tuesday.

As for precipitation, it will be drier than average across the Southwest and the Southeast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projected in its winter forecast.

Question

More smoke! Greenhouse gas emissions hit danger mark

The global economic boom has accelerated greenhouse gas emissions to a dangerous threshold not expected for a decade and could potentially cause irreversible climate change, said one of Australia's leading scientists.

Tim Flannery, a world recognized climate change scientist and Australian of the Year in 2007, said a U.N. international climate change report due in November will show that greenhouse gases have already reached a dangerous level.


Comment: There is agreement that the Earth is warming, but there is a lot of disagreement about the extent to which human activity is causing it and what the consequences are of this warming. As the climate debate is politically driven, there should be a big question mark to the conclusions coming out from the IPCC panel.


Comment: See also Climate Change Swindlers and the Political Agenda


Document

Researchers find evidence of warming climate in Ohio

COLUMBUS , Ohio -- Summer nights in Ohio aren't cooling off as much as they used to -- and it's likely a sign of climatic warming across the state, researchers say.

Jeffrey Rogers, professor of geography at Ohio State University, led the new study, which found that average summer nighttime low temperatures in Ohio have risen by about 1.7 degrees Celsius (about 3 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 1960s.

Arrow Up

Toronto Reaches Record-Breaking Thanksgiving Temperature

If you had a Thanksgiving turkey in the oven Monday, your kitchen was probably just as hot as it was outside.

In fact, Monday was Toronto's warmest Thanksgiving on record, a day that didn't just break the previous record, but shattered it.

Bizarro Earth

Moderate quake hits northern Japan

TOKYO - An earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale shook northern Japan early Tuesday but there were no immediate reports of damage, meteorological and municipal officials said.

Smiley

Record 22C temperatures in Arctic heatwave

Parts of the Arctic have experienced an unprecedented heatwave this summer, with one research station in the Canadian High Arctic recording temperatures above 20C, about 15C higher than the long-term average. The high temperatures were accompanied by a dramatic melting of Arctic sea ice in September to the lowest levels ever recorded, a further indication of how sensitive this region of the world is to global warming. Scientists from Queen's University in Ontario watched with amazement as their thermometers touched 22C during their July field expedition at the High Arctic camp on Melville Island, usually one of the coldest places in North America.

Cloud Lightning

Storm drenches China with heavy rains

A storm drenched China's southeast on Sunday after killing five people on Taiwan and prompting the evacuation of 1.4 million people on the mainland, officials said. In Vietnam, the death toll from a separate storm rose to 55.

Krosa came ashore as a typhoon in China's Zhejiang and Fujian provinces, but weakened and was soon downgraded to a tropical storm, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Bizarro Earth

Typhoon Krosa lands in east China, forcing evacuation of one million

Powerful Typhoon Krosa made landfall in east China on Sunday afternoon, forcing the evacuation of more than one million people in provinces Zhejiang and Fujian.

Krosa, the 16th typhoon this year, landed at 3:30 p.m. on Sunday near the borders of Zhejiang's Cangnan County and Fujian's Fuding City, packing winds of up to 126 km per hour, the Zhejiang Provincial Flood Prevention and Drought Relief Headquarters said.

Cloud Lightning

Typhoon Batters Taiwan; 4 Dead

A typhoon lashed Taiwan Saturday with intense winds and rains, killing four people and cutting power to thousands of homes. But the storm weakened as it moved toward mainland China, where authorities ordered hundreds of thousands to higher ground.

Two people were still missing in Taiwan, the Disaster Relief Center said.

Typhoon Krosa was forecast to strike China's southern Zhejiang and northern Fujian provinces late Sunday, China's national flood control office said in a notice on its Web site.

Bad Guys

Big Banks Are Selling Us Out on Climate Change


Comment: While we all should support the efforts to turn to clean energy and getting rid of those companies who pollute our environment, let us not forget that it has been scientifically proven that climate change is, indeed, a cyclical phenomena. One that has happened over and over throughout the history of the earth. For more on this, read the SOTT Focus article Fire and Ice: The Day After Tomorrow


Whether we avert catastrophe with climate change may actually be decided by Citibank and Bank of America.

We're nearing the end of the window of opportunity we have to avert the catastrophic effects predicted from the earth's changing climate. We're either going to sink or swim. Our best hope at this time is to drastically reduce our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, like carbon dioxide.

Global leaders are putting their heads together to come up with solutions. Across the world, countries and municipalities are passing legislation to limit GHG emissions; people are cutting consumption; new technologies are being developed to further alternative energy sources. And yet, in the United States, the coal industry has us poised to move in the absolute wrong direction. Right now, there are about 150 new coal-fired power plants on the drawing board. The amount of polluting emissions they will release is staggering -- between 600 million and 1.1 billion tons of CO2 emissions every year, for the next 50 years. And this, according to Rainforest Action Network (RAN), will basically negate every other effort currently being considered to fight climate change.