Earth ChangesS


Umbrella

Climate Change. Australia - The sunburnt country is awash

Record-breaking rain means huge Australian arid-land lakes are visible from space.

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© ABC NewsCows caught in the flood
Australia has one of the most unpredictable rainfall patterns in the world, and this is one of those unpredictable years. For the past few months, the repeated downfalls have left large pools of water lying in arid lands in Western Queensland. It's great news for farmers. The water will, over the next year, flow south through the Darling River system, restoring parched watercourses, swamps, and dams. The Darling River system flows from Queensland through New South Wales and into South Australia.

Earlier this month, the Bureau of Meteorology announced that the rains were "exceptional":
The most remarkable aspect of this event was the area covered by the heavy rainfall and the total volume of rainfall that fell. Daily totals exceeded 100 mm over 1.7% of Australia on 1 March and 1.9% on 2 March. The latter is the largest area of 100 mm-plus daily totals on a single day in the Australian meteorological record, breaking the previous record of 1.7% set on 22 December 1956. 28 February was the wettest day on record for the Northern Territory with an NT-wide average of 29.23 mm, while 2 March set a new record for Queensland with a Statewide average of 31.74 mm1.
And after that record-breaking rain, the rain kept falling .

Info

More than 50 million hit by drought in south of China

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© ReutersA man stands on a dried-up pond on the outskirts of Kunming in the Yunnan province. Forecasters see no signs of drought abating in the short term.
Hong Kong - China was ravaged by extreme forces of nature as the country's south wrestled with the worst drought in decades that has brought hardship to 51 million people, while a powerful sandstorm in the north turned Beijing's sky orange.

The drought in the provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan, as well as the Guangxi Autonomous Region and the city of Chongqing, has forced local governments to tap underground water sources and use cloud seeding to produce rain for agricultural production.

More than 20 million people throughout the southern region are dealing with water shortages and about 16 million acres of cropland are suffering from drought, the China Daily newspaper reported. Many areas have declared a state of emergency.

China's State Commission of Disaster Relief said the drought had left more than 16 million people and 11 million livestock with drinking-water shortages.

Bizarro Earth

Iceland volcano eruption could set off bigger blast: expert

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© AP Photo/Ragnar Axelsson
Reykjavik - A small volcano eruption that forced more than 600 people to flee their homes in Iceland over the weekend could conceivably set off a larger volcano, experts warned Monday.

"Historically, we know of three eruptions in (the large volcano) Katla linked to eruptions in Eyjafjallajokull," Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, a professor of geophysics and civil protection advisor, told AFP, adding however that there so far was no indication of volcanic activity at Katla.

A volcanic eruption near the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in southern Iceland forced hundreds to flee their homes early Sunday, but no casualties were reported.

It was the first volcanic eruption in Iceland since 2004, and the first in the vicinity of the Eyjafjallajokull glacier since 1823.

Bizarro Earth

Strong quake hits off Papua New Guinea

Port Moresby - A strong 6.6 magnitude quake struck off Papua New Guinea's coast on Monday, US geologists said, but there was no tsunami warning and the epicentre's depth lessened the likelihood of damage.

The quake struck at 1400 GMT with its epicentre located 93km north of the town of Rabaul on New Britain island and at a depth of 415 kilometres, the United States Geological Survey said.

There was no immediate alert from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre, based in Hawaii.

Wolf

Wolves on the prowl again in Western Europe

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© Unknown
Wolves are again howling through the woodlands of western Germany for the first time in 150 years, after spreading back into Western Germany now that most of their natural enemies have disappeared, conservationists say.

Wolf sightings have been common in Poland and eastern Germany for several years, but never in the heavily urbanised and industrial heartland of the Ruhr Valley and the Rhineland - until now.

Front-page tabloid headlines shocked city dwellers recently with reports that at least one wolf is on the prowl in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany's most populous state and a region which borders on France.

Fish

Fearless Fish Forget Their Phobias

Imagine if your fear of spiders, heights or flying could be cured with a simple injection. Research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Behavioral and Brain Functions suggests that one day this could be a reality.

The cerebellum, an area of the brain thought to be involved with the development of our fears, was studied in goldfish by researchers at the University of Hiroshima in Japan. Using classical conditioning, Masayuki Yoshida and Ruriko Hirano taught their fish to become afraid of a light flashed in their eyes. By administering a low voltage electric shock every time a light was shone, the fish were taught to associate the light with being shocked, which slowed their hearts -- the typical fish reaction to a fright.

Yoshida explains, "As you would expect, the goldfish we used in our study soon became afraid of the flash of light because, whether or not we actually gave them a shock, they had quickly learned to expect one. Fear was demonstrated by their heart beats decreasing, in a similar way to how our heart rate increases when someone gives us a fright."

Bad Guys

Uncontacted Tribes Threatened by "Thousands of Explosions"

Nahua
© SurvivalA Nahua man shortly after first contact in 1984. More than 50% of the Nahua died following contact.
A pioneer scientific study has revealed how some of the world's last uncontacted tribes are threatened by 'the detonation of thousands of seismic explosives' on their land.

The study says that seventeen large areas in the Peruvian Amazon where oil and gas companies can work include land inhabited by uncontacted Indians.

The potential impacts on the tribes and their land are 'severe and extensive', says the study. These impacts include: 'hundreds of heliports', 'the cutting of hundreds of kilometres of seismic lines', 'the detonation of thousands of seismic explosives', oil spills and leaks, new roads, and the 'unique potential of advancing the agricultural, cattle and logging frontiers', all of which could be disastrous for the tribes 'whose lack of resistance or immunity make them extremely vulnerable to illnesses brought by outsiders.'

Footprints

Flashback 35 Inconvenient Truths - The errors in Al Gore's movie

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© Unknown
A spokesman for Al Gore has issued a questionable response to the news that in October 2007 the High Court in London had identified nine "errors" in his movie An Inconvenient Truth. The judge had stated that, if the UK Government had not agreed to send to every secondary school in England a corrected guidance note making clear the mainstream scientific position on these nine "errors", he would have made a finding that the Government's distribution of the film and the first draft of the guidance note earlier in 2007 to all English secondary schools had been an unlawful contravention of an Act of Parliament prohibiting the political indoctrination of children.

Al Gore's spokesman and "environment advisor," Ms. Kalee Kreider, begins by saying that the film presented "thousands and thousands of facts." It did not: just 2,000 "facts" in 93 minutes would have been one fact every three seconds. The film contained only a few dozen points, most of which will be seen to have been substantially inaccurate. The judge concentrated only on nine points which even the UK Government, to which Gore is a climate-change advisor, had to admit did not represent mainstream scientific opinion.

Ms. Kreider then states, incorrectly, that the judge himself had never used the term "errors." In fact, the judge used the term "errors," in inverted commas, throughout his judgment.

Next, Ms. Kreider makes some unjustifiable ad hominem attacks on Mr. Stewart Dimmock, the lorry driver, school governor and father of two school-age children who was the plaintiff in the case. This memorandum, however, will eschew any ad hominem response, and will concentrate exclusively on the 35 scientific inaccuracies and exaggerations in Gore's movie.

Ms. Kreider then says, "The process of creating a 90-minute documentary from the original peer-reviewed science for an audience of moviegoers in the U.S. and around the world is complex." However, the single web-page entitled "The Science" on the movie's official website contains only two references to articles in the peer-reviewed scientific journals. There is also a reference to a document of the IPCC, but its documents are not independently peer-reviewed in the usual understanding of the term.

Bizarro Earth

Three killed in quake collapse in northern Haiti: UN

Port-au-Prince - A small earthquake struck northern Haiti, collapsing an apartment building and killing at least three people, a UN spokesman said.

Residents said the tremor struck Haiti's second-largest city of Cap-Haitien shortly after midnight yesterday, collapsing the four-story building. Some nearby structures were damaged by the collapse but no other quake effects were reported.

Bizarro Earth

Iceland volcano eruption triggers fears for glacier

A volcano that has been dormant for almost 200 years has erupted in Iceland

Authorities evacuated hundreds of people after a volcano erupted beside a glacier in southern Iceland, Iceland's civil protection agency said on Sunday, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

The eruption occurred beside the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, the fifth largest in Iceland. Authorities initially said the eruption was below the glacier, triggering fears that it could lead to flooding from glacier melt, but scientists conducting an aerial survey in daylight located the eruption and said it did not occur below ice.