Earth ChangesS


Fish

Deep-sea worms fire glowing bombs

In the depths of the Pacific Ocean, newly discovered species of free-swimming worms have a unique method of distracting predators. They deploy "bombs" that burst in a flare of green light.


Cloud Lightning

Hurricane Bill churns closer to Bermuda

Hurricane Bill1
© BBCHurricane Bill is expected to pass between Bermuda and the eastern coast of the United States.
Miami, Florida -- While Hurricane Bill looked less organized early Friday, a tropical storm warning remains in effect for Bermuda.

Tropical storm conditions, including winds of at least 39 mph (63 kph), are expected on the island within 24 hours. A hurricane watch was also in effect, meaning hurricane conditions, including winds of at least 74 mph (119 kph), are possible within 36 hours.

As of 5 a.m. ET Friday, Bill's center was about 425 miles (680 kilometers) south of Bermuda, and about 865 miles (1,390 kilometers) southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, the hurricane center said.

The storm was moving northwest at near 17 mph (28 kph), and is expected to continue that motion overnight, with a gradual turn to the north-northwest on Friday followed by a turn toward the north on Saturday.

"The core of the hurricane is expected to pass between Bermuda and the east coast of the United States on Saturday," forecasters said.

Bug

Australia: Mice 'plague' threatens mid-west crops

A mid-west Western Australian agronomist says mice numbers in the northern agricultural region have reached near plague proportions.

Growers in Yuna, Binnu and Mullewa have reported increased mice activity in their paddocks over recent weeks.

The mice cause significant damage by eating the nodes of flowering and early podding canola and lupin crops.

Cloud Lightning

US: Tornado, storms cause heavy damage in Midwest

Minneapolis - Powerful winds slammed parts of four Midwestern states on Wednesday, leaving behind shattered windows, toppled power lines and a handful of injuries. At least a half dozen suspected tornadoes were reported.

The National Weather Service received reports of a possible tornado near downtown Minneapolis, where winds tore off part of a 90-year-old metal church steeple. Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois were also hit, though the only confirmed tornado as of Wednesday night was in Hastings, about 30 miles southeast of Minneapolis, where a 100-yard-long swath of trees was flattened.

Better Earth

Killer whales spotted in Ireland and Scotland

Image
© Unknown
Two killer whales have been spotted off the Mullet peninsula.

Dúlra Nature Tours was conducting a survey of whales, dolphins and sharks, when 'Comet' and 'Puffin', male and female members of the west coast community in Scotland, were seen near the Inishkea Islands.

Machiel Oudejans, a marine biologist working with Dúlra Nature Tours, said the killer whales were identified using photographs of the dorsal fins and the white saddle patch behind the dorsal fin.

"By matching the photos to an online database in Scotland, the whales were identified. These whales are commonly observed near the Hebrides, west of Scotland. Little is known about the distribution of these whales, which occasionally travel long distances and visit the Irish coastal waters," said Mr Oudejans.

Better Earth

New York salmon resurgence indicates species recovery

For the first time in more than a century, scientists have found wild-born Atlantic salmon in a Lake Ontario tributary that once teemed with the fish, suggesting that the native species is recovering after many years of reproductive failure.

Jim Johnson, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said Wednesday that 41 yearling wild Atlantic salmon were collected this summer in the Salmon River at the eastern end of the lake in New York. He attributes the increase to changes in the lake's food chain.

Atlantic salmon were once abundant in Lake Ontario and its tributaries, with reports from the 1800s of fishermen catching thousands of 15- to 20-pound fish per night from the Salmon River. By the turn of the century, overfishing, dams, deforestation and pollution had wiped out the population.

Radar

Hurricane Bill looms in Atlantic at Category 4

Miami Hurricane Bill became a dangerous Category 4 storm Wednesday as it howled through the open Atlantic's energizing waters, which could further boost the storm's power as it moves north.

Forecasters said Bill should begin pushing large swells toward Bermuda and parts of the southeastern U.S. coast by the weekend, but it wasn't yet clear how close the storm will come to land.

The National Hurricane Center also said people in the Leeward Islands should keep an eye on the storm, though its core was expected to pass well to the northeast of the chain in the next 24 hours. Fishermen in Antigua were advised to dock their boats.

Bizarro Earth

Earthquake Magnitude 5.1 - Assam, India

Image
© USGS
Date-Time:
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 10:45:14 UTC
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 04:15:14 PM at epicenter

Location:
26.565°N, 92.486°E

Depth:
10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program

Distances:
85 km (55 miles) ENE of Gauhati, Assam, India

125 km (80 miles) NNE of Shillong, Meghalaya, India

610 km (375 miles) NE of Kolkata (Calcutta), West Bengal, India

1530 km (950 miles) E of NEW DELHI, Delhi, India

Chess

The Great Modelling Fraud

Enough data has already been released to unequivocally prove scientific fraud. All of the global temperature datasets that include the actual physical measurements of the global temperature clearly demonstrate that there was a rapid rise in global temperature from around 1910 to about 1942, followed by a slow drop in global temperature from 1942 to 1975, at which time the world reverted to warming which all global temperature datasets clearly show ended after 1998, with a cooling trend that is still continuing.

Global emissions increased by just half a billion tonnes of CO2 per year during the global warming of about half a degree C from 1910 to 1942. This equates to each gigatonne increase in CO2 emissions causing a one degree C rise in global temperature.

As a result of increased CO2 emissions from post-war industrialization, from 1942 to 1975 global emissions increase from under 4 billion tonnes of CO2 per year in 1942 to over 20 billion tonnes of CO2 by 1975.

During the cooling that occurred from 1942 to 1975 the global emissions increase by 16 billion tonnes of CO2 per year and based on the previous warming this should have caused 16C of global warming but instead there was nothing but cooling.

Binoculars

Who is Really Making Up the Facts?

In a Time/CNN story by Michael Grunwald "Steven Chu, A Political Scientist" on Chu's mission to China, attempting to convince them to cooperate on emissions reductions in the December Copenhagen UN conference to discuss the next step after Kyoto (the Chinese are laughing all the way to the bank because they know our pain would be their gain).

Grunwald noted "When I asked Chu about the earth-is-cooling argument, he rolled his eyes and whipped out a chart showing that the 10 hottest years on record have all been in the past 12 years and that 1998 was the hottest. He mocked the skeptics who focus on that post-1998 blip while ignoring a century-long trend of rising temperatures: "See? It's gone down! The earth must be cooling!" But then he got serious, almost plaintive: "You know, it's totally irresponsible. You're not supposed to make up the facts.""

I agree with the very last sentence. NOAA, NASA GISS and Hadley though are guilty of exactly that. They have created or enhanced man-made global warming by careless and possibly fraudulent methods. They started by dropping 80% of the world's stations from their calculations, most rural, by not ensuring the instruments are not improperly sited (90% of the approximately 1000 surveyed and photographed by Anthony Watt's team of volunteers do not meet the government's own published standards), by not adjusting properly for the urbanization warming that has taken place as the world's population rose for 1.6 to 6.7 billion people since 1900 (in the case of the US data, actually removing a very good urban adjustment), by employing and using instruments not really meant for precision temperature measurements or with warm biases, and most recently by eliminating ocean data sources like satellite or not using promising new sources like the Argo buoys because they are showing a cold 'bias' or cooling when the goal is to show warming in agreement with the models and their forecasts.