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Bizarro Earth

Dead Catfish at Boyne River Mouth

David Sparkes
The Gladstone Observer, Australia
Wed, 04 Apr 2012 18:07 UTC
Dead Catfish
© David Sparkes / The ObserverMore than 100 dead catfish have been found at the Boyne River Mouth in recent days.

Mystery surrounds the appearance of more than a hundred dead catfish washed up at the Boyne River Mouth.

Residents have been finding the fish since Monday. Along the high tide line on Boyne Island, dead catfish were strewn every few metres along the high tide line from the morning before.

A spokesperson from the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection (DEHP) confirmed staff had inspected a section of the Boyne River on Monday and yesterday following reports of dead fish.

"Departmental staff have found over 100 dead catfish between the mouth of the Boyne River and the Bruce Highway bridge, approximately 20 kilometres south of Gladstone.

"The cause of death is currently unknown. Departmental staff are investigating and have conducted water quality monitoring and sampling.

"The water quality monitoring undertaken on 4 April 2012 identified reduced salinity levels due to freshwater inflow. All other monitoring results have found water quality is consistent with those of a healthy waterway."
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Igloo

Carbon Dioxide Linked to End of Last Ice Age

Wynne Parry
Live Science
Wed, 04 Apr 2012 12:01 UTC
CO2 and Ice Age
© Jeremy ShakunThis graph shows Antarctica warming up slightly before atmospheric carbon dioxide rose and well before global temperatures warmed. In a new study, researchers explain that a change in the Earth's orbit resulted in a change in ocean circulation that prompted the Antarctic to warm before the rest of the planet.

The circumstances that ended the last ice age, somewhere between 19,000 and 10,000 years ago, have been unclear. In particular, scientists aren't sure how carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, played into the giant melt.

New research indicates it did in fact help drive this prehistoric episode of global warming, even though it did not kick it off. A change in the Earth's orbit likely started of the melt, setting off a chain of events, according to the researchers.

The ambiguity about the end of the ice age originates in the Antarctic. Ice cores from the continent reveal a problematic time lag: Temperatures appeared to begin warming before atmospheric carbon dioxide increased. This has led scientists to question how increasing carbon dioxide - a frequently cited cause for global warming now and in the distant past - factored into the end of the last ice age. Global warming skeptics have also cited this as evidence carbon dioxide produced by humans is not responsible for modern global warming.

But the data from Antarctica alone offer too narrow a perspective to represent what was happening on a global scale, according to lead study researcher Jeremy Shakun of Harvard University.

"These ice cores only tell you about the temperatures in Antarctica where they are from, and if you think about today the same way, you don't want to look at one thermometer record from London or New York to prove or disprove global warming," Shakun said during a press conference on Tuesday (April 3).
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Attention

Deadly Bacteria Lurk in Deepwater Horizon Tar Balls

Stephanie Pappas
Live Science
Wed, 04 Apr 2012 07:21 UTC
Tarball
© Neal Parry, Regional Coordinator – Gulf of Mexico & Caribbean, Marine Debris Program, Office of Response and Restoration, National Ocean ServiceBird footprints over tarball, taken on 19 Aug 2010, Mississippi Sound (Petit Bois Island).
Nearly two years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster gushed millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, tar balls from the spill still turn up on Alabama's shores after storms. Now, one researcher is recommending that people steer clear of these tar balls after studies find them chock-full of potentially deadly bacteria.

In research published online November 2011 in the journal EcoHealth, Auburn University microbiologist Cova Arias and colleagues discovered that Deepwater Horizon tar balls found months after the spill contained high levels of bacteria, including 10 times the level of Vibrio vulnificus as found in the surrounding sand, a finding first reported by the Associated Press. V. vulnificus is the leading cause of seafood-borne disease fatalities nationwide, and it has a fatality rate of 20 to 30 percent when it infects skin wounds.

"We don't know what the real risk is at this point," Arias told LiveScience. But to be safe, beachgoers should avoid handling the tar balls, she said.

About 4.9 million barrels of oil, or 205 million gallons, spilled from a riser pipe in the seafloor after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank in late April 2010. Some of that oil persists in the Gulf in the form of tar balls.
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Blackbox

Exploding Kitchen Tiles, Ground SWELLING in Watertown, WI


YouTube
Wed, 04 Apr 2012 08:40 UTC
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Binoculars

Tornado-Wrecked Dallas Begins Assessing Damage


ABC News 13
Wed, 04 Apr 2012 03:38 UTC
Image
© ABC News Click Here to Watch Video
US: Dallas, Texas - The tornado hurtled toward the nursing home. Physical therapist Patti Gilroy said she saw the swirling mass barreling down through the back door, after herding patients into the hallway in the order trained: walkers, wheelchairs, then beds.

"It wasn't like a freight train like everybody says it is," said Gilroy, who rounded up dozens to safety at Green Oaks Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. "It sounded like a bomb hit. And we hit the floor, and everybody was praying. It was shocking."

A destructive reminder of a young tornado season Wednesday left thousands without power and hundreds of homes pummeled or worse Wednesday, after the National Weather Service said as many as a dozen twisters touched down in a wrecking-ball swath of violent weather that stretched across Dallas and Fort Worth. Despite the intensity of the slow-moving storms, as of late Tuesday no fatalities or serious injuries had been reported, though there were several less serious injuries.

The exact number of tornadoes Tuesday wasn't expected to be known until surveyors fanned across North Texas, looking for clues among the debris that blanketed yards and rooftops peeled off slats.

The Red Cross put a preliminary estimate of damaged homes at 650. In the southern Dallas suburb of Lancaster, where damage was especially widespread, around 150 people remained in a shelter Tuesday night.
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Cloud Lightning

Update: Storm Lashes Japan, Killing 4, Grounding Flights


ABC News 13
Wed, 04 Apr 2012 03:20 UTC

A powerful storm lashed Japan with heavy rain and strong winds, killing four people and paralyzing air and train traffic in Tokyo, officials said Wednesday.

The spring storm swept across Japan's main island of Honshu on Tuesday, with winds of more than 144 kilometers (89 miles) per hour -- typhoon strength. The Meteorological Agency said the storm had left the region by Wednesday, but it urged caution as strong winds would persist in parts of northern Japan.

Two people were killed in separate warehouse collapses in Toyama in the north and Kagawa in the south on Tuesday. Police reported two more deaths overnight -- an elderly man who fell off a roof in Iwate and a woman crushed to death by a fallen tree in nearby Miyagi.

Officials said hundreds more were injured across the country.
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Nuke

Fukushima: Dangerous Risks Being Ignored to Cut Costs

Takao Yamada
The Mainichi Daily News
Mon, 02 Apr 2012 22:51 UTC
Unit 4 of the crippled Fukushima
© Air Photo Service Co. Ltd., JapanThis March 24, 2011 aerial photo shows damaged Unit 4 of the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
The government continues to take regressive steps in spite of the torrent of criticism it has received and the lessons that should have been learned since the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear disaster.

This is evidenced in the fact that starting this week, which marks the beginning of a new fiscal year, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) and the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan (NSC) have no budget. The new nuclear regulatory agency that was supposed to begin operations on April 1 in NISA's stead is now floundering amid resistance in the Diet from opposition parties. In other words, government agencies overseeing nuclear power now have an even more diminished presence.

According to Japan's general budget provisions, funds for a new government organization can be diverted to existing government organizations if the money is being used for its original purpose. The situation doesn't do much for morale, however. Back-scratching relationships between government ministries, the indecision of both the ruling and opposition parties, and the unchanging fact that much of the current crisis is still left in the hands of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) remains the same.

One of the biggest issues that we face is the possibility that the spent nuclear fuel pool of the No. 4 reactor at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant will collapse. This is something that experts from both within and outside Japan have pointed out since the massive quake struck. TEPCO, meanwhile, says that the situation is under control. However, not only independent experts, but also sources within the government say that it's a grave concern.
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Snowflake

Hot and cold: A Britain of two halves as heavy snowfall covers Scotland in white - while England still enjoys unseasonal warmth

Tom Gardner
Daily Mail
Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:14 UTC
Snow is predicted to fall in northern England and Ireland and possibly in the Midlands and Wales, after around eight inches (19cm) came down across parts of Scotland.

snow Scotland
© Gordon Jack / Scotimage.comTreacherous: The driving conditions became dangerous as more than six inches of snow hit parts of Scotland, forcing emergency services to attend a number of accidents, including a seven vehicle pileup on the Newmill and Canthill Road near Shotts
It is very much a 'Tale of Two Britains' today, as Scotland and England bask and shiver respectively in very different weather.

While England continues to enjoy warm spring conditions, Scotland is facing sub-zero temperatures and heavy snowfall.

England should not feel too smug - the icy weather is likely to forge south, bringing an end to the burst of unseasonal warmth that has lit up the country over the last week.

But this will not be enough to alleviate the much-publicised drought in England. A hose-pipe ban is still set to be introduced on Thursday.
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Cloud Lightning

Typhoon-strength storm kills two in Japan, brings chaos

Hiroshi Hiyama
Agence France-Presse
Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:50 UTC
Japen storm damage
© AFP/Jiji PressTwo trucks lie on their sides on a bridge at Toyama city
A typhoon-strength storm brought travel chaos to Japan on Tuesday, as violent winds and rain killed at least two people and left tens of thousands of people stranded.

Gusts of up to 150 kilometres (93 miles) per hour have been recorded in western Japan, with coastal areas likely seeing even stronger winds, Japan's weather agency said.

At least 163 people suffered injuries across the country, knocked over by sudden gusts or hit by flying debris, public broadcaster NHK said.

With the agency warning of possible tornadoes in the western part of Japan, airlines grounded over 550 flights and a number of train services were suspended.
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Attention

Thousands of Dolphins Dying in Gulf Waters

Tim Wall
Discovery News
Tue, 03 Apr 2012 05:01 UTC
Bottlenose dolphin
© NASA, Wikimedia CommonsBottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) A dolphin surfs the wake of a research boat on the Banana River near the Kennedy Space Center.

The dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico are in the midst of a massive die-off. The reasons why remain a complicated and mysterious mix of oil, bacteria, and the unknown.

Normally an average of 74 dolphins are stranded on the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico each year, especially during the spring birthing season. But between February 2010 and April 1, 2012, 714 dolphins and other cetaceans have been reported as washed up on the coast from the Louisiana/Texas border through Franklin County, Florida, reported the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 95 percent of the mammals were dead.

Since many of the dead dolphins sink, decompose or are eaten by scavengers before washing up, NOAA biologists believe that 714 represents only a fraction of the actual death count. NOAA declared the die-off an "Unusual Mortality Event" as per the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.

Although the timing of die-off largely coincides with BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill and its aftermath, the deaths actually started increasing about two months before the April 20, 2010 explosion which started the months long oil spill.

Before the spill, 112 dolphins had already been reported stranded on the shore.
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