Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Indonesian Volcano Spews Ash and Lava


Agence France-Presse
Sun, 23 May 2010 18:11 UTC
Lombok - An active volcano has erupted in Indonesia, spewing ash and lava at least 1,500 metres into the sky, damaging crops but not threatening villagers, an official said today.

Mount Baru Jari on Lombok island, near Bali, has been active for several months but yesterday's eruption was "big," the island's volcano monitoring official Mutaharlin told AFP.

"From yesterday evening to early today, the volcano erupted three times and was accompanied by tremors. The first eruption spewed ash and lava 1,500 to 2,000 metres high," he added.

Lava flowed into a lake, pushing its temperature to 35 degrees Celsius, up from 21 degrees Celsius, Mutaharlin said.

"The smoke had spread as far as 12 kilometres and dozens of acres of crop land were covered in ash," he said.

"But the eruptions haven't reached dangerous levels yet, so we're not evacuating villagers," he added.
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Arrow Down

At Least 10 Killed as Landslide Cause Passenger Train to Derail in China


RIA Novosti
Sun, 23 May 2010 07:45 UTC
Image
© Maria Chapligina/RIA NovostiRescuers fear the death toll might further rise.
At least 10 people were killed when a landslide caused a train from Shanghai to the tourist city of Guilin in south China, to derail on Sunday, Xinhua said citing rescue sources.

At least 55 people were injured, two severely, as the locomotive and eight carriages of the train went off tracks in the southeastern Jiangxi province.

Rescuers fear the death toll might further rise.

"We are afraid the casualty may soon rise, as four of the derailed train cars were severely deformed in the accident," a police officer told Xinhua.

"Each of the train carriages has 118 seats. It is not yet immediately known how many passengers were on board," he added.
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Fish

Cracking Down on the Ocean's Pirate Fishermen

Bryan Walsh
TIME
Thu, 20 May 2010 20:35 UTC
overfishing
© Reuters/Pichi Chuang A fisherman carries a yellowfin tuna out of his boat at the fishing port of Donggang, Pingtung county, southern Taiwan May 19, 2010. The UN Environment Program's green economy initiative warned on Monday that the world might be fishless by 2050 unless fishing fleets are slashed and stocks allowed to recover
The oceans are being emptied of fish. A forthcoming United Nations report lays out the stark numbers: only around 25% of commercial stocks are in a healthy or even reasonably healthy state. Some 30% ocf fish stocks are considered collapsed, and 90% of large predatory fish - like the bluefin tuna so prized by sushi aficionados - have disappeared since the middle of the 20th century. More than 60% of assessed fish stocks are in need of rebuilding, and some researchers estimate that if current trends hold, virtually all commercial fisheries will have collapsed by mid century.

"Fisheries across the world are being plundered, or exploited at unsustainable rates," said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme.

In some respects, Steiner could have stopped at "plundered," because as much damage as the legal, commercial fishing trade has wrought on the oceans, it's the illegal trade that could spell their doom. Legal fishermen - the everyday farmers of the seas - have licenses they must protect and laws they must obey. But illegal fishing - often done on the high seas where regulations are lax and catch limits can be exceeded with impunity, or in the coastal waters of developing nations, which lack the ability to fight back - abides by rules of its own. Now, a team led by Stefan Flothmann of the Pew Environment Group has published a study in the May 20 issue of Science showing just how hard stopping the illegal fishing scourge will be.
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Question

Sri Lanka: Frogs Signalling Possible Earthquake?

Cassandra Mascarenhas
The Sunday Leader
Sat, 22 May 2010 20:03 UTC
Environmentalists are dismissing rumours of an impending earthquake in the country that were sparked off after thousands of small frogs swarmed residences in Moratuwa last week.

Residents of Indibeda, Moratuwa panicked when thousands of frogs converged in the area, entering the houses and roaming the streets. A similar phenomenon had occurred in China a couple of years back and was dismissed as a natural migration but just a few days later, the region was rocked by a 7.8 magnitude quake. This information resulted in several wild theories of an earthquake in Sri Lanka within the next couple of days.

Noted environmentalist Jagath Gunewardene dismissed these rumours and assured that investigations had been carried out into the phenomenon. Environmentalists have now come to the conclusion that it was the drastic climate change that was the cause for the incident.

"It is really a climate change that triggers this sort of thing - this sort of phenomenon has been recorded before in other countries where a large number of amphibians come out their habitats and go in search of new habitats in anticipation of a weather change. This occurred early in the morning and sure enough, torrential downpours in Colombo followed just a couple of hours later", Gunewardene explained.

There have been no reports of any more swarming occurring after the initial report last week.
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Alarm Clock

A New Oil Rush Endangers the Gulf of Mexico and the Planet

Michael Klare
Global Research/TomDispatch
Tue, 18 May 2010 19:01 UTC
earth, oil
Yes, the oil spewing up from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico in staggering quantities could prove one of the great ecological disasters of human history. Think of it, though, as just the prelude to the Age of Tough Oil, a time of ever increasing reliance on problematic, hard-to-reach energy sources.

Make no mistake: we're entering the danger zone. And brace yourself, the fate of the planet could be at stake.

It may never be possible to pin down the precise cause of the massive explosion that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on April 20th, killing 11 of its 126 workers. Possible culprits include a faulty cement plug in the undersea oil bore and a disabled cutoff device known as a blow-out preventer. Inadequate governmental oversight of safety procedures undoubtedly also contributed to the disaster, which may have been set off by a combination of defective equipment and human error.

But whether or not the immediate trigger of the explosion is ever fully determined, there can be no mistaking the underlying cause: a government-backed corporate drive to exploit oil and natural gas reserves in extreme environments under increasingly hazardous operating conditions.
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Meteor

Scientists: Timor Sea metorite altered Earth's climate


Agence France-Presse
Sat, 22 May 2010 11:00 UTC
Sydney - Australian scientists have discovered a crater deep beneath the Timor Sea made during a heavy meteor storm which may have altered the Earth's climate, the lead researcher said Thursday.

Australian National University archaeologist Andrew Glikson said seismic activity led experts to the Mount Ashmore 1B site, and a study of fragments showed a large meteorite hit just before the Earth's temperatures plunged.

"The identification of microstructural and chemical features in drill fragments taken from the Mount Ashmore drill hole revealed evidence of a significant impact," Glikson said, adding it was at least 50 kilometres (31 miles) wide and about 35 million years old.
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Life Preserver

Six dead as heavy flooding swamps Eastern, Central Europe


Deutche Welle
Wed, 19 May 2010 08:12 UTC
Image
© AP/Krzysztof LokajA rescuer hands a loaf of bread to residents of a flooded area in the village of Trzesn, south east Poland, Friday, May 21, 2010.
Central and Eastern European countries were struggling Wednesday to cope with floodwaters swamping a host of towns and rivers. In Poland, high waters claimed a sixth life as parts of Krakow were overwhelmed.

Parts of Eastern and Central Europe succumbed to heavy flooding on Wednesday as emergency services scrambled to rescue stranded people and minimize collateral damage in towns.

Areas in Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Serbia were reportedly hit by the flooding caused by heavy rains. The Vistula River broke its banks at Krakow reaching a height of nearly 10 meters (33 feet), its highest level in 40 years.

Some 500 people were reportedly evacuated from the Polish city when flood barriers overflowed Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
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Umbrella

Flash floods force over 2,000 Hungarians to evacuate

Gergely Szakacs; Reed Stevenson
Reuters
Mon, 17 May 2010 15:01 UTC
Image
© Reuters
Over 2,000 people were forced from their homes in northern Hungary by Monday as flash floods triggered by heavy weekend rains blocked off villages and cut power in parts of the European country. Unusually bad weather, with heavy gusts of wind and two months' worth of rain in some areas, sent water levels surging to record highs on smaller rivers, forcing the evacuation of 2,093 people, news agency MTI reported.

"It's hard to predict when the situation will normalise because of the weather, we have not seen such floods in the valleys of the (rivers) Sajo and Hernad since 1974," said Csaba Csont, a spokesman for the water management authority in northern Hungary.

In Hungary's third-biggest city of Miskolc in the northeast, the mayor imposed emergency tap water restrictions and residents were building makeshift dams using logs, rocks and debris.
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Umbrella

Sril Lanka Floods Affect Half A Million, Displace Thousands


Eurasia Review
Fri, 21 May 2010 07:46 UTC
More than 17,000 people remain displaced because of flooding this week in Sri Lanka and are staying in disaster relief centres, the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) reports.

The floods were caused by days of torrential early monsoon rains that began on 14 May.

More than 524,000 people were affected in the south, west and central parts of the country, the agency reported on 21 May.

In the western district of Gampaha, the worst affected, more than 12,500 people and 3,600 families were displaced, Pradeep Kodippily, the DMC's assistant director, told IRIN in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo.

More than 1,500 homes were damaged or destroyed throughout the affected areas of the island, with 24 deaths and 50 injuries, mostly in Gampaha, he said.
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Umbrella

Pcinja river submerges 4,000 hectares arable land in NE Macedonia


MINA
Sun, 16 May 2010 07:30 UTC
flood Macedonia
Overnight heavy rains and increased water level have caused Pcinja river to overflow flooding nearby villages. 4,000 hectares of arable land is inundated and smaller damages have been registered in the region of Kriva Palanka and Kratovo.

Minister of Defense Zoran Konjanovski visited these areas today. - This kind of storm hadn't hit the area in 30 years. The Government will assist the mayors to handle the situation. Local residents will not be left on their own. We'll make efforts to repair the damages caused by the natural disaster as soon as possible, said DM Konjanovski.

Early in the morning, the Protection and Rescue Directorate in cooperation with the Interior Ministry intervened in the region of Kumanovo where Pcinja river overflowed leaving eight people cut off.
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