Earth Changes
Severe floods continue
Flooding persisted across the Northeast and some central provinces, with one death attributed to flooding in worst-hit Sakon Nakhon, as heavy rain continued on Saturday.
18 districts of Sakon Nakhon have been inundated, with water levels ranging from 70 to 200 centimetres. People in some residential areas and critically ill patients at Tao Ngoi Hospital in Tao Ngoi district were evacuated.
One person was killed in Kut Bak district and two were reported missing in Muang district in the worst flooding to hit the northeastern province in two decades.
In Khon Kaen, blind students were evacuated from their school where one metre of water covered the property in Muang district. However, water levels were stabilising overall.
In Nakhon Ratchasima, an earth weir burst and flooded about 10,000 rai of residential and farm properties in 151 villages of Prathai district.
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The condition of the woman, who has not been identified, wasn't immediately clear, and Assistant Police Commissioner Stephen Dean said that they did not have enough details about the woman's condition at the time. Authorities also did not reveal the type of shark that attacked the woman, however, the Bahamas has seen several similar incidents recently, mostly involving bull and tiger sharks.
Last month, a North Carolina mother of three was attacked by a shark while snorkeling in the Bahamas, The woman, identified as Tiffany Johnson was snorkeling in a shallow reef while her husband remained back on the boat. Johnson had part of her right arm amputated from the attack.
Kawika Matsu, a surfer who grew up in Hawaii, was attacked when he fell from his paddle board, 30 metres from the shore. Despite severe injuries, he was able to climb back on to the board to wait for rescue.
The attack happened on Tuesday in English Bay, where a British woman was badly bitten in April as her distraught children watched from the shore. Frankie Gonsalves was saved when her husband punched the shark and two St Helenian men swam out to pull her ashore.
No attacks on humans had previously been recorded in the remote UK territory, in the South Atlantic. Large numbers of sharks have begun coming close to shore since last year, apparently in search of fish.
Cape Cod National Seashore Chief Ranger Leslie Reynolds said she first learned of the dead whale Thursday afternoon, around 2 p.m. At that time, it was floating about a half mile out from Nauset Light Beach.
"The life guards were watching it...we have a lot of people on the beach this time of year," she said.
The whale washed ashore around 6:30 p.m. Reynolds went and took a look at the 40-foot female humpback, and said she saw no obvious signs of trauma.
The Indian River Shores Public Safety Department is investigating the death, with aid from the Indian River County Sheriff's Office, said Public Safety Director Rich Rosell.
The incident happened shortly before 8 p.m. at a home in River Club, a gated community near State Road A1A, Rosell said. The man's name was not released Friday night.
Paramedics have not ruled out a medical issue as the cause of the man's death, Rosell said.
Friday afternoon's thunderstorms killed a man near Satellite Beach and wounded a second person, authorities in Brevard County said. The two were at SPRA Park when they were hit.
Brevard County Lifeguard Captain Ashley Nolan was the first to respond to help the men. The men were hit at SPRA Park in the 400 block of State Road A1A at the end of Berkeley Street.
"I was just heading home and you could see the lightning strikes and how close it was to the beach," Nolan said. "I see a gentleman darting directly out into traffic, waving for help. I knew instantly that someone had been struck."
Nolan gave CPR to the man and checked his pulse until paramedics arrived.
"I knew he had been down for less than a minute," she said.
Tony Thomas finds an academic (Matthew Liao) who suggests that given the climate change risk it might be more ethical to shrink our kids by 6 inches, or drug people with oxytoxin to make them more compliant. Jo Nova thinks it might be more ethical to fund skeptical scientists instead of unskeptical ones and figure out whether a man-made disaster is actually coming before we start shrinking kids.
The idea is that people would accept bizarre climate-saving imposts willingly if only we could give them the "love drug" oxytocin. He calls it "Pharmacologically induced altruism". Oxytocin increases altruism and empathy, but I would guess that only altruistic or empathetic people would willingly take it "for the sake of the planet". The rest of the population might be a little suspect that they might be more prone to being duped and conned while "under the influence".
The initial paper Human Engineering and Climate Change, came out five years ago. But in academic circles, Liao wasn't laughed out of town, and hasn't apparently issued a more comprehensive update.













Comment: See also: Lightning bolt hits two men, killing one near Satellite Beach, Florida