Earth ChangesS


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Medieval Warm Period seen in western USA tree ring fire scars


Watts Up With That?
Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:49 UTC
Here is just one more indication that despite what some would like you to believe, the Medieval Warm Period was not a regional "non event".
Image
© Unknown
From a University of Arizona press release,
Giant Sequoias Yield Longest Fire History from Tree Rings

California's western Sierra Nevada had more frequent fires between 800 and 1300 than at any time in the past 3,000 years, according to a new study led by Thomas W. Swetnam, director of UA's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.
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Footprints

An Inconvenient Fraud?

Gerard Van der Leun
Penthouse Magazine
Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:13 UTC
Image
© Zachary Pullen, Penthouse.
Al Gore and his pals in the science establishment want us to totally change our lives because of a theory that might not even be true. Have the sacred cows of global warming been gored beyond repair?

It was good to be Al Gore in the last part of the last decade. In the year 2000 he was the world's biggest loser. By 2009 he was one of the world's biggest winners after becoming the master of disaster. Flummoxed by his non-invention of the internet and his non-election as president of the United States, Gore found a winning hand in predicting the end of the world. In the process, he received an Oscar for his film An Inconvenient Truth, the Nobel Peace Prize, and millions of dollars through his interests in companies that dealt in "carbon credits." Gore became more of a "Comeback Kid" than Bill Clinton ever was. For most of 2009, it was still good to be King Al. But late in the year, Al Gore's beloved internet betrayed him.

On November 17, 2009, someone, somewhere, copied some 4,000 emails and documents from a password-protected server at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in England and put them up on a free and open server in Russia for all the world to read. Whoever made these documents available was an unknown soldier of the truth. Taking the handle of FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), he or she stated, "We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it. This is a limited time offer, download now."
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Alarm Clock

World votes to continue trading in species on verge of extinction

Ben Webster and Frank Pope
TimesOnline
Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:03 UTC
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African elephants remain at risk from poacher

Their sheer size and strength have made them among the most celebrated of endangered species, yet they have all been betrayed - by vested interests at a UN meeting on wildlife protection.

Proposals to ban trade in bluefin tuna and polar bears were overwhelmingly rejected yesterday at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), meeting in Doha, Qatar.

A plan for a 20-year ban on ivory sales, to protect African elephants, is also likely to fail in the coming days - partly because Britain and other members of the EU are refusing to support it. Delegates are instead expected to approve a weak compromise, which would encourage poaching by allowing the sale of ivory being stored by several African nations.
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Cloud Lightning

Heavy rains swamp camps holding Haiti's homeless

Mike Melia
Associated Press
Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:46 UTC
Port-au-Prince - One of the heaviest rainfalls since Haiti's Jan. 12 earthquake swamped homeless camps Friday, sweeping screaming residents into eddies of water, overflowing latrines and panicking thousands.

The overnight downpour sent water coursing down the slopes of a former golf course that now serves as a temporary home for about 45,000 people.

There were no reports of deaths in the camp, a town-size maze of blue, orange and silver tarps located behind the country club used by the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne as a forward-operating base.

But the deluge terrified families who just two months ago survived the collapse of their homes in the magnitude-7 earthquake and are now struggling to make do in tent-and-tarp camps that officials have repeatedly said must be relocated.
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Target

The Biggest Dump in the World

Ed Cumming
Telegraph.co.uk
Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:13 UTC
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© Algalita Marine Research FoundationA shark carcass on Kamilo Beach, Hawaii, where plastic particles outnumber sand grains until you dig down about a foot.
As large as the USA, the Great Pacific Waste Patch is the biggest dump in the world. Ed Cumming discovers that it keeps getting bigger, and could be poisoning us all.

The world's biggest rubbish dump keeps growing. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch - or the Pacific Trash Vortex - is a floating monument to our culture of waste, the final resting place of every forgotten carrier bag, every discarded bottle and every piece of packaging blown away in the wind. Opinions about the exact size of this great, soupy mix vary, but some claim it has doubled over the past decade, making it now six times the size of the UK.

Dr Simon Boxall, a physical oceanographer at the National Oceanography Center at the University of Southampton, goes even further:
"It's the size of North America. But although the patch itself is extremely large, it's only one very clear representation of the much bigger worldwide problem."

Comment: The growing problem of trashing the world's oceans with toxic rubbish is clearly defined in the following article:

The world's rubbish dump: a garbage pit that stretches from Hawaii to Japan

The world's rubbish dump: a garbage pit that stretches from Hawaii to Japan
Plastic is believed to constitute 90 per cent of all rubbish floating in the oceans. The UN Environment Programme estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic.

Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said yesterday:
"The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States."
Dr Eriksen said:
"The slowly rotating mass of rubbish-laden water poses a risk to human health, too. Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles - the raw materials for the plastic industry - are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple,"
Additional articles about the ocean being the 'Biggest Dump in the World':

What is the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch?

Pacific Ocean garbage patch worries researchers

Plastic trash vortex menaces Pacific sealife: study

Huge Garbage Patch Found in Atlantic Too

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Bizarro Earth

New Zealand: 5.7 quake felt in Southland


Stuff.co.nz
Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:54 UTC
An earthquake measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale shook Southland tonight.

GNS Science said the quake happened at 7.28pm, 360km southwest of Invercargill at a depth of 33km. It was felt in Riverton.
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Bizarro Earth

5-magnitude earthquake jolts Taiwan


People's Daily Online
Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:53 UTC
A 5-magnitude earthquake struck Taiwan Thursday, said the local weather bureau.

The quake occurred at 5:01 p.m. about 26.3 km southeast of Suao in the northeastern Ilan county, with its epicenter 31.5 km underground, according to the bureau.

The tremor was felt in Taipei.
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Attention

Climate Change - The mystery deepens: Where did that decline go?

Joanne Nova
JoNova
Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:30 UTC
Image
© Joannenova
Frank Lansner has done some excellent follow-up on the missing "decline" in temperatures from 1940 to 1975, and things get even more interesting. Recall that the original "hide the decline" statement comes from the ClimateGate e-mails and refers to "hiding" the tree ring data that shows a decline in temperatures after 1960. It's known as the "divergence problem" because tree rings diverge from the allegedly measured temperatures. But, Frank shows that the peer reviewed data supports the original graphs, and that real measured temperatures did decline from 1960 onwards...sharply. Yet, in the GISS version of that period, temperatures from the cold 1970's were repeatedly "adjusted" years later, and progressively made warmer.

The most mysterious period is from 1958 to 1978, when a steep 0.3C decline was initially recorded in the Northern Hemisphere. Years later, this was reduced so far it became a mild warming against the detailed corroborating Raobcore evidence. Raobcore measurements are balloon readings. How accurate are they? They started in 1958, twenty years before satellite temperature records (which are renowned for their accuracy). Put the two methods side-by-side, and they tie together neatly, telling us that both of them are accurate, reliable tools.
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Bizarro Earth

Magnitude 5.6 - South of the Fiji Islands


US Geological Survey
Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:14 UTC
Fiji
© USGSEarthquake Location
Date-Time:
Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 09:14:07 UTC

Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 09:14:07 PM at epicenter

Location:
23.352°S, 177.195°W

Depth:
168.3 km (104.6 miles)

Distances:
315 km (195 miles) SW of NUKU'ALOFA, Tonga

335 km (210 miles) SSE of Ndoi Island, Fiji

620 km (385 miles) SSW of Neiafu, Tonga

1680 km (1050 miles) NNE of Auckland, New Zealand
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Magnify

High Levels of Mercury Found in Cataraqui River, Kingston, Ontario, Canada


ScienceDaily
Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:00 UTC
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© Michael OnesiStudent Nathan Manion took part in the Queen's study that examined the sediment of the Cataraqui River.
The Inner Harbour on the Cataraqui River in Kingston, Ont., has mercury levels in sediment more than two times the Canadian government's most severe effect limits, according to a Queen's University study.

"Mercury levels in this part of the river have never been studied before," says biology professor Linda Campbell. "Now we know the sources of the problem and just how widespread it is."

Most of the western shore of the Cataraqui River south of Belle Park and above the LaSalle Causeway Bridge had levels of contamination, with the worst area around the Cataraqui Canoe Club, just south of the former Davis Tannery.

Over the past century, the area has been home to many industries, such as a coal gasification plant, tannery and lead smelter, municipal dump, textile mill and fuel depot. The report found rain is washing contaminated shoreline soil near the canoe club into the river, adding to the sediment already contaminated by decades of industry.
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