Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

US: Tornado Cuts Swath Across Southern Georgia

Terry Dickson and Teresa Stepzinski
Jacksonville.com
Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:28 UTC
A gas station was "ground zero" Thursday for a tornado that dropped out of a line of severe thunderstorms that cut a swath across southern Glynn County, toppling trees, downing power lines and launching part of a dock across neighboring yards.

The Sunoco Fuel Center at Interstate 95 Exit 29 took a direct hit from the 4 p.m. storm. The front windows crashed inward, the back wall blew out and water gushed out the rear of the building after the twister ruptured a pipe and tore off part of an awning.

Cashier C.J. Larry and several customers were inside the store when the storm hit.

"The front doors were flapping, then all the plate glass fell in," he said.

The power went out just as the storm hit and ceiling tiles and light fixtures were knocked out or pushed up into the ceiling.
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Better Earth

Cameron Davis Appointed as Great Lakes Czar


Associated Press
Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:18 UTC
Traverse City, Mich. -- Cameron Davis, leader of a Chicago-based environmentalist group, has been appointed to oversee President Barack Obama's initiative to clean up the Great Lakes.

Davis is president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, one of many organizations that have pushed for a restoration program expected to cost more than $20 billion. He was appointed by Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

''I'm excited, and this is a real testament to the passion and work that so many citizens are doing to put the Great Lakes on the map,'' Davis said Thursday. He said he couldn't comment further until after beginning his job as special adviser to Jackson next month.

He will coordinate efforts of about a dozen federal agencies working on the administration's Great Lakes project, which deals with issues such as invasive species, polluted harbors, sewage overflows and degraded wildlife habitat.
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Fish

Estrogen in Waterways Worse than Thought

Allison Winter
Scientific American
Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:51 UTC
Image
© FLICKR/VELO STEVEFISHY WATERS: Some male bass have been growing eggs, which researchers attribute to the presence of estrogen in the rivers.
Exposure to estrogen puts fish at greater risk of disease and premature death, according to a new federal study.

The U.S. Geological Survey study showed that estrogen exposure reduces a fish's ability to produce proteins that help it ward off disease and pointed to a possible link between the occurrence of intersex fish and recent fish kills in the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers.

The report, published in the current issue of Fish & Shellfish Immunology, adds to a growing body of research pointing to problems with estrogen in the nation's waterways.
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Meteor

Earth more habitable because of meteorites


United Press International
Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:48 UTC
British scientists say large bombardments of meteorites four billion years ago might have made early Earth and Mars more habitable for life.

Imperial College London researchers said millions of meteor strikes during what's called the Late Heavy Bombardment approximately 3.9 billion years pelted Earth and Mars during a period of about 20 million years, possibly modifying the atmosphere on both planets.
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Fish

Revealed: The Bid to Corner World's Bluefin Tuna Market

Martin Hickman
The Independent
Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:28 UTC
Image
© Getty ImagesBluefin tuna is being over-fished and its numbers can't be sustained, scientists say
Japan's sprawling Mitsubishi conglomerate has cornered a 40 per cent share of the world market in bluefin tuna, one of the world's most endangered fish.

A corporation within the £170bn Mitsubishi empire is importing thousands of tonnes of the fish from Europe into Tokyo's premium fish markets, despite stocks plummeting towards extinction in the Mediterranean.
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Better Earth

How Antarctica grew its ice - and lost its hanging gardens


New Scientist
Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:03 UTC
Image
© Martin Siegert et al.Put together, the images reveal a striking landscape of sharp peaks and hanging valleys surrounding a deep gorge carved out by ice
Up to 3000 metres beneath the ice, at the coldest point on Earth, towering peaks, hanging valleys and deep gorges have been frozen in ice for 14 million years. Now the first detailed view of this frozen landscape is revealing how the world's biggest chunk of ice - the Antarctic ice sheet - was born.

The radar images suggest that Antarctica "grew" its ice cap in three stages, carving out the rock below in distinct ways as glaciers expanded, retracted, and flowed downstream.

The images were collected between 2004 and 2008 by researchers who drove huge trains of caterpillar tractors in tight lines over Dome A, a plateau of ice at the heart of Antarctica. The tractors carried radars that pinged down through the ice and sent back profiles of the frozen rock landscape below.

Dome A, the highest point on the continent, is also one of the coldest places on Earth, with temperatures as low as -90 °C. Far beneath its frozen surface lie the Gamburtsev mountains, where glaciologists believe the Antarctic ice sheet was born. Its distance to the ocean and high altitude would have made it the coolest spot on the continent 34 million years ago, when the ice began to grow.
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Light Sabers

US: Oil, gas drillers in Pennsylvania fight environmental study

Dan Nephin
Associated Press
Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:19 UTC
Oil and gas drillers in Pennsylvania predict environmental studies required by the federal government to tap into reserves under the Allegheny National Forest would effectively halt the more-than-a-century-old drilling operations there.

A recent settlement of a lawsuit by environmentalists against the Forest Service requires environmental analysis of drilling projects under the federal National Environmental Protection Act.

But the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Association, Minard Run Oil Co., and Warren County sued the U.S. Forest Service and several environmental groups Tuesday seeking to lift the requirement.
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Hourglass

Climate Change: Science Manipulated

Syun Akasofu
Hawaii Reporter
Wed, 03 Jun 2009 03:38 UTC
Natural causes of global warming are much more significant than manmade changes

1. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wants to claim that the global average temperature has unexpectedly and abruptly increased during the 20th century after a gradual cooling from the year 1000, and that this unexpected increase of the temperature is mostly man-made-the greenhouse effect of CO2.

2. For their purpose, the IPCC ignored the fact that the Earth went through a cold period called "the Little Ice Age" from 1400 to 1800.

3. The Earth has been recovering from the Little Ice Age from 1800 to the present. A recovery from a cold period is warming. It is mostly this warming that is causing the present climate change and it is not man-made. If they admit the existence of the Little Ice Age, they cannot claim that the global average temperature unexpectedly increased from 1900.

3a. In addition to the steady recovery from the Little Ice Age, there are superposed oscillatory changes. The prominent one is called the multi-decadal oscillation.

3b. In fact, most of the temperature change from 1800 to 2008 can be explained by the combination of the recovery from the Little Ice Age and the multi-decadal oscillation. If the recovery from the Little Ice Age continues, the predicted temperature rise will be less than 1°C (2°F) by 2100, not 3~6°C.
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Cloud Lightning

Freak storms pummel Southern California

Carol J. Williams
Los Angeles Times
Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:07 UTC
Two women in the Inland Empire are killed and another injured in lightning-related incidents. Lightning also ignites more than a dozen brush fires.

Thunder rumbled through the Southland and freak storms pelted the region with hail, lightning and unseasonal rain, killing two women in the Inland Empire, bedeviling aviation and touching off more than a dozen brush fires on the parched mountain slopes ringing Los Angeles County.
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Sun

Sunspot Minimum at Hand

Joseph D'Aleo
IceCap
Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:48 UTC
sun spot
© NASA/SOHO

The sun has become more active in recent days with cycles 24 spots in middle latitudes. See sunspot group number 11019 for group of red spots. This is slightly diminished since yesterday. The dark green areas are coronal holes out of which the solar wind escapes at higher velocity.

Peter Lawrence has a close up view of that sunspot posted on spaceweather.com.
sun spopt
© NASA/SOHO

There is a loop of the sunspots develop and rotate around the solar disk the last few days here.

This activity came late enough in the month of May, to keep the monthly number for May below the value of 14 months ago of 3.2 which it is replacing in the 13 month running mean. That means the solar cycle minimum can't be earlier than November 2008, making it at least a 12.5 year long cycle 23.
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