Earth ChangesS


Better Earth

It's raining males, if you're a buffalo

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© Friedrich von Horsten/AlamyWho you calling a distorter?
Eat red meat if you want a boy baby, fish and vegetables for a girl... Myths about how women can influence the sex of their baby abound, but for African buffalo, such effects are more science than fiction, and the main driver is the pitter-patter of tiny raindrops.

During wet periods, about 55 per cent of conceptions are male, but this falls to 45 per cent in dry seasons, says Pim van Hooft of Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He analysed data from more than 3000 buffalo culled over 20 years in South Africa's Kruger National Park.

Van Hooft found that some males carry a "sex-ratio distorter" gene which ensures that more males are conceived in the wet season, when food is abundant, making the fathers fitter and their sperm quality higher. Other would-be fathers carry a "sex-ratio suppressor" which does the opposite, producing a slight boost in female offspring conceived in the barren dry season.

Better Earth

Elephant-speak for 'Beware of the bees'

Entire elephant families bolt when they hear recordings of trumpetings made by other elephants fleeing from bees.

This is the first demonstration that elephants may make specific sounds to warn of particular threats, although they have also been observed "roaring" when threatened by lions.


Bizarro Earth

Magnitude 6.3 - Bering Sea

Bering Sea Earthquake
© USGSEarthquake Location
Date-Time:
Friday, April 30, 2010 at 23:11:44 UTC

Friday, April 30, 2010 at 02:11:44 PM at epicenter

Location:
60.644°N, 177.901°W

Depth:
15.1 km (9.4 miles)

Distances:
474 km (294 miles) SW (225°) from Gambell, AK

478 km (297 miles) SSW (212°) from Provideniya, Russia

1510 km (938 miles) W (280°) from Anchorage, AK

Meteor

Adults in Charge? NASA #2 Lori Garver is a published Neo-Catastrophist

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Current Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver
Hazards due to Comets and Asteroids, Current Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver, et. al., 1994

Excerpts

Our understanding of the history of Earth and its inhabitants is undergoing a radical change. The gradual processes of geologic change and evolution, it is now clear, are punctuated by natural catastrophes on a colossal scale - catastrophes resulting from collisions of large asteroids and comets with Earth. It is, to use the popular term, a "paradigm shift."

This "new catastrophism," is not unlike the revolutions brought about by the heliocentric solar system of Copernicus, or Darwinian evolution, or the big bang. In retrospect, such revolutionary ideas always seem obvious. On reading the Origin of Species, Thomas Huxley remarked simply: "Why didn't I think of that." Now, looking at the Moon, we find ourselves wondering why it took so long to ask whether the process that cratered its surface is still going on. [...]

The long time scale between major impacts has implications for public policy. Governments do not function on geologic time. On the North Dakota prairie near the town of Grand Forks, lie the abandoned ruins of America's ballistic missile defense system. ... Built in accordance with the ABM treaty, the Grand Forks facility was meant to defend our retaliatory capacity. It was declared operational in 1975 - and decommissioned the same year. National leaders had been persuaded by some scientists that the Grand Forks facility would meet the threat to our intercontinental ballistic missile fleet, even though other scientists warned that the system was dangerous and ineffective. It was closed because the money to operate it was needed for other projects that were deemed to be more urgent.

Meteor

Younger Dryas Glacial Rebound and 'Cosmic Showers': Climate shifted suddenly from present day warmth to Ice Age cold

ice sheet north america
Rod Chilton, author of the most recent (and perhaps only) comprehensive review of Younger Dryas science, was kind to contribute this fine critique of David Morrison's recent paper in Skeptical Enquirer. I am reading Rod's excellent book and look forward to reviewing it soon.
The debate continues as to the cause of the more than 1,000 year-long cold interval known as the Younger Dryas. Falling on the heels of the Last Ice Age, or more correctly immediately after the two warm intervals known as the Bolling and Allerod interstadials, the Younger Dryas onset appears now to have started in as little time as one to three years. The climate shifted that suddenly from near present day warmth to near Ice Age cold. A second important feature to be noted is that apparently most of the planet was affected, and that the teleconnection between various parts of the planet was swift. This suggests strongly that the forcing mechanism resided in the atmosphere, rather than in the Ocean (where a much slower teleconnection would have been evident). The Younger Dryas however was very different from another alleged cosmic encounter, that of the great Cretaceous extinction event of approximately 65 million years ago. At this time, a huge bolide struck the Gulf of Mexico. Likely measuring as much as ten kilometres' across, the demise of the dinosaurs seems to have been assured.

Wolf

The $10 Trillion Climate Fraud

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© Associated Press"Let me tell you somethin', I'm gonna make a mint outta this." Al Gore is co-founder of an investment management firm that is now the fifth-largest shareholder in the Chicago Climate Exchange.
Cap-And-Trade: While senators froth over Goldman Sachs and derivatives, a climate trading scheme being run out of the Chicago Climate Exchange would make Bernie Madoff blush. Its trail leads to the White House.

Lost in the recent headlines was Al Gore's appearance Monday in Denver at the annual meeting of the Council of Foundations, an association of the nation's philanthropic leaders.

"Time's running out (on climate change)," Gore told them. "We have to get our act together. You have a unique role in getting our act together."

Gore was right that foundations will play a key role in keeping the climate scam alive as evidence of outright climate fraud grows, just as they were critical in the beginning when the Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001 provided the seed money to start the Chicago Climate Exchange. It started trading in 2003, and what it trades is, essentially, air. More specifically perhaps, hot air.

Bizarro Earth

US: Earthquake Magnitude 5.0 hits Northern California's Napa Valley

A magnitude 5.0 earthquake struck northern California's Napa region on Friday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.


Comment: Oddly, at the time of this writing there is nothing listed on USGS.


The quake hit 7 miles/11 km northeast of Napa at a depth of 3 miles (5 km). The temblor could not be felt in San Francisco, a witness said.


Arrow Down

Many Endangered Turtles Dying on Texas Gulf Coast

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© Pat Sullivan/AP PhotoA rescued Kemp's ridley turtle is readied for release on the beach.
Flies buzz everywhere and the stench is overwhelming as biologist Lyndsey Howell stops to analyze the remains of yet another endangered sea turtle washed up from the Gulf of Mexico.

"It's been on the beach for a while," Howell says, flipping over the decomposing, dried-out shell.

More than 30 dead turtles have been found stranded on Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula south of Houston this month - an unusually high number that has puzzled researchers, in part because most are so decomposed that there are few clues left about why they died.

The number of strandings on these shores is double what scientists and volunteers normally see as the turtles begin nesting in April, says Howell, who patrols the beaches as part of her job with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Of the 35 turtles found, all but three were dead. Thirty-three were Kemp's ridleys, an endangered species researchers have spent decades trying to rehabilitate.

Radar

Oil leak in Gulf of Mexico may reach coast by weekend

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© NASA Earth Observatory
New Orleans, Louisiana - The estimated amount of oil leaking from a sunken rig in the Gulf of Mexico has increased to as much as 5,000 barrels a day -- five times more than what was originally believed, a Coast Guard official said.

Rear Adm. Mary Landry told reporters late Wednesday that the increased estimate is based on analysis from the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"This is not an exact science when you estimate the amount of oil," Landry said, noting there are a lot of variables in calculating the rate of the spill.

"However, NOAA is telling me now that they prefer we use the 5,000 barrels [210,000 gallons] a day as an estimate of what has actually leaked from this well and will continue to leak until BP secures the source."

Some 250,000 gallons of oily water has been collected from the scene, she said.

Blackbox

Now I'm a chick! Gianni the gender-bending rooster starts to lay eggs, baffling scientists

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© Caters News AgencyGianni the former rooster has taken to laying eggs and trying to hatch them
Gianni started life as a red-blooded cockerel and would often wake his Italian owners up crowing on his farm in Tuscany.

But when a fox raided Gianni's enclosure and killed all of the hens inside, Gianni felt it was time for a change. Within days the bird was laying eggs and trying to hatch them as he began his new life as a hen.

The sex-change chicken has baffled scientists at the UN's Farm and Agriculture Organisation, who are now planning to study Gianni's DNA to see what made him change.

An expert at the centre said: 'It may be a primitive species survival gene. With all the females gone he could only ensure the future of his line by becoming female.'

Comment: Hmm...perhaps this sheds some light on this poor rooster's plight: "Scientists are warning that manmade pollutants which have escaped into the environment mimic the female sex hormone oestrogen" from Men under threat from 'gender bending' chemicals.