Earth ChangesS


Info

Western Australia hit by 4.8 quake - again!

AN earthquake measuring 4.8 on the Richter scale has rocked parts of southern WA - and has been felt as far away as Perth.

©Geoscience Australia


Comment: Perth is not within the circle on the map, but a further 135km away.


Comment: This is normally a very stable area with few earthquakes, yet it is only 6 weeks ago that there was an earthquake of similar magnitude. See Here


Bizarro Earth

3,000 evacuated after China landslide blocks river

Beijing -- More than 3,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in southwestern China after a huge landslide dammed a river, creating a menacing lake that threatened to burst, state media reported Monday.

Document

New Study Shows Genetically Engineered Corn Could Pollute Aquatic Ecosystems

A study by an Indiana University environmental science professor and several colleagues suggests a widely planted variety of genetically engineered corn has the potential to harm aquatic ecosystems. The study is being published this week by the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.

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.