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Mon, 25 Oct 2021
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State of Emergency declared in the Seychelles after tropical cyclone Felleng

Seychelles map
© Al Jazeera
A state of emergency has been declared in three districts of Mahe, the largest island in the Seychelles
Flooding and landslides have destroyed well over a hundred houses on the main island of Mahe.

Parts of the Seychelles have been declared a state of emergency after severe weather hit the country.

Fortunately no casualties have been reported, but flooding, landslides and rock falls have hit the main island of Mahe. Over 150 houses have been damaged by the extreme conditions.

Pointe Au Sel in the southeast of the island reported 184mm of rain in a 24 hour period. This is nearly half the amount of rain which is expected in the entire month of January, which is the wettest month of the year.

Many other parts of the island also received well over 100mm, easily enough to generate flooding. With the ground fully saturated, landslides were inevitable.

Windsock

Tropical cyclone Felleng strongest of the season so far

Cyclone Felleng
© Joint Typhoon Warning Center
Category-4 equivalent Tropical Cyclone Felleng as of 1130 UTC Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013. To the west lies Madagascar; Reunion and Mauritius to the southeast (lower right).
Tropical Cyclone Felleng has become the strongest cyclone of the South Indian 2012-2013 storm season and the strongest storm in this tropical cyclone region since last February.

Highest sustained winds rose to an estimated 115 knots, or about 215 km/h, as of 1200 UTC Wednesday, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) said.

The dangerous storm, equivalent to a Category-4 hurricane, was centered less than 400 miles northwest of Reunion and within 360 miles east-northeast of Antananarivo, Madagascar. Storm movement was towards the south-southwest 13 knots, or 24 km/h.

Official forecasts tracking Felleng have been consistent since the first of the week, inasmuch as they have shown the southward-veering cyclone tracking "safely" between Madagascar and Reunion before racing southward over open water.

Blackbox

Global warming propaganda: Humans have already set in motion 69 feet of sea level rise?

Last week, a much discussed new paper in the journal Nature seemed to suggest to some that we needn't worry too much about the melting of Greenland, the mile-thick mass of ice at the top of the globe. The research found that the Greenland ice sheet seems to have survived a previous warm period in Earth's history - the Eemian period, some 126,000 years ago - without vanishing (although it did melt considerably).


Comment: Indeed, the Earth naturally heats and cools and the desire to blame such natural occurrences on humans is unfounded and shifts the attention away from the truth, that our planet, and our whole solar system, could be in a natural heating up stage and that "human caused global warming" is just a distraction away from that.


But Ohio State glaciologist Jason Box isn't buying it.

At Monday's Climate Desk Live briefing in Washington, D.C., Box, who has visited Greenland 23 times to track its changing climate, explained that we've already pushed atmospheric carbon dioxide 40 percent beyond Eemian levels. What's more, levels of atmospheric methane are a dramatic 240 percent higher - both with no signs of stopping. "There is no analogue for that in the ice record," said Box.

And that's not all. The present mass scale human burning of trees and vegetation for clearing land and building fires, plus our pumping of aerosols into the atmosphere from human pollution, weren't happening during the Eemian. These human activities are darkening Greenland's icy surface, and weakening its ability to bounce incoming sunlight back away from the planet. Instead, more light is absorbed, leading to more melting, in a classic feedback process that is hard to slow down.


Comment: This article is obviously bent on spewing the 'human caused global-warming' schtick. The reader may enjoy more Climate Change Swindlers and the Political Agenda. And as far as worrying about 'sea rise flooding', read
Forget About Global Warming: We're One Step From Extinction!


Info

Do increasing temperatures lower crop yields?

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Figure 1. Changes in global grain yields and global temperatures 1961-2011
Data Sources: FAO, BEST, Photo


I keep reading these claims that we're all going to starve because of global warming. People say it's going to be the death of agriculture, that increasing temperatures will cause significant drops in crop yields. Here's a typical bit of alarmism (emphasis mine):
A study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), indicates that climate change would hit developing countries the hardest, leading to massive decline in crop yields and production.
Whoa, a massive decline in crop yields due to increasing temperatures, sounds scary. So I thought I'd review the facts. Here is the global situation, showing the global yields of rice, corn, and wheat, along with the change in global temperature.

Evil Rays

Dead robins found in Northeast Portland

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© Lynne Terry/The Oregonian
A few berry-studded bushes sit near the intersection of Northeast Russell and Rodney, where more than 30 dead robins have been found in recent days. The question is: Did they die of berry binge drinking?
The dead robins are back.

More than 30 carcasses have been found on the ground in Northeast Portland in the past week. Wildlife experts don't know for sure what killed them but one possible cause is a berry binge -- just like in February 2008.

That month, the carcasses of more than 50 American robins were found around Mount Tabor in Southeast Portland. When scientists opened them up, they found their bellies full of holly berries.

"They had gorged themselves on fermenting berries," said Bob Sallinger, conservation director at the Audubon Society of Portland.

The robins had died of alcohol poisoning.

Cloud Lightning

2 dead after storms rake U.S. South, take aim at East

Kandi Cash trudged in rain through the splintered debris of her grandparents' home, hoping to salvage photos and other keepsakes after violent storms and tornadoes scoured the Southeast, leaving two people dead before the system advanced on the Northeast. The demolished home was one of many in the Georgia city of Adairsville splintered by a massive storm front as it punched across the Southeast on Wednesday and then headed across the densely populated Eastern seaboard on Thursday.
Image
© AP Photo/David Goldman
A vehicle lies on a road after a tornado moved through Adairsville, Ga. on Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013. A fierce storm system that roared across northwest Georgia has left at least one person dead and a trail of damage that included demolished buildings in downtown Adairsville and vehicles overturned on Interstate 75 northwest of Atlanta.
The vast storm front stretching on a slanting north-south arc for hundreds of miles shattered homes and businesses around the Midwest and South with tornadoes and high winds earlier in the week. By Thursday, it had spread power outages from the Carolinas to Connecticut, triggered flash floods and forced water rescues in areas outside Washington, D.C.

In the Northeast, utilities reported power outages affecting 74,000 users in Connecticut, nearly 25,000 others in Rhode Island and some 24,000 in upstate New York. Authorities in Rhode Island said gusting winds blew the roof off a building in Central Falls. A wind gust of 63 mph was recorded in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York as temperatures plunged with the cold air mass creeping up behind the front. Forecasters said snowfall was possible from the Great Lakes to the Northeast - some of it lake-effect snow.

Bizarro Earth

Indonesia's Mount Lokon volcano shaken by double eruptions

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Mount Lokon in Tomohon, North Sulawesi, erupted twice throughout Thursday (31/01/2013) afternoon. Head Volcano Observation Post Lokon and Mahawu, Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG) Bandung Geological Agency, Ruskanda Farid Bina, said the first explosion occurred at 6:54 pm and was followed by a second explosion at 10:44 pm, and that was followed by a boom that sounded up to the settlements located around the crater.

"We could not observe the height of the eruption of dust because of the condition of the fog around the crater. At first eruption eruption dust altitude of about eight hundred yards," said Farid. He said the series of eruptions occurred after an increase in seismicity that occurred on Wednesday (30/1) at 22:54 pm. "Until now the status is still at alert level three," he said. - Inilah translated

Bizarro Earth

Russian scientists voice concerns about dangers of a supervolcano erupting in Italy

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It looks like we may be in for an earth-shattering explosion. A dormant super volcano appears to be stirring under the Phlegraen Fields of Naples in Italy. Rising soil temperatures and surface deformation in the area have alarmed seismologists. In the distant past, volcanic super eruptions caused global climate change responsible for mass extinctions of plant and animal species. So far, scientists are unable to model the potential consequences of an awakening supervolcano. Latest studies show that the Phlegraen Fields have actually been swelling above sea level at a rate of 3 cm per month. Micro quakes and large amounts of gases accumulated in soil indicate that the volcano may be preparing to erupt, says Vladimir Kiryanov, Assistant Professor of Geology at the St. Petersburg University.

"The Phlegraen Fields is a supervolcano. Yellowstone in the United States and Toba in Indonesia are also supervolcanoes capable of spewing more than 1,000 cubic km of magma. These are catastrophic eruptions. There was a huge volcanic eruption in the Phlegraen Fields some 30,000-40,000 years ago. Volcanic ash from that eruption is still found in the Mediterranean, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and even in Russia. We are now seeing the expansion of a magma pocket, which means that there might be an eruption at a certain time."

Bizarro Earth

USGS: Earthquake Magnitude 6.0 - 101km W of Craig, Alaska

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© USGS
Event Time:
2013-01-31 09:53:43 UTC
2013-01-31 00:53:43 UTC-09:00 at epicenter

Location:
55.584°N 134.745°W depth=9.7km (6.0mi)

Nearby Cities:
101km (63mi) W of Craig, Alaska
303km (188mi) S of Juneau, Alaska
316km (196mi) WNW of Prince Rupert, Canada
409km (254mi) WNW of Terrace, Canada
571km (355mi) S of Whitehorse, Canada

Ice Cube

Wikipedia climate fiddler William Connolley part of IPCC "short list" team?

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Apparently Mr. Connolley has edited 5428 Wikipedia articles, most about climate. Die Kalte Sonne:
Unbelievable but true: The Wikipedia umpire on Climate Change was a member of the UK Green Party and openly sympathized with the views of the controversial IPCC. So it was not a referee, but the 12th Man of the IPCC team.
I'm not sure how accurate the translation is, but it suggests he was somehow part of the IPCC "short list" team. See it here at Die Kalte Sonne via this Google Translate link.

With over 5000 articles he's edited, it makes you wonder if Mr. Connolley was employed by someone or some organization specifically for the task.

Comment: A 2009 report revealed that a British scientist and Wikipedia administrator rewrote climate history, editing more than 5,000 unique articles in the online encyclopedia to cover traces of a medieval warming period - something Climategate scientists saw as a major roadblock in the effort to spread the global warming message. Connolley, one man in the nine-member team who is a U.K. scientist, a software engineer and Green Party activist, took control of Wikipedia's entries to see that any trace of the true climate history would be erased.
Wikipedia History of climate gets 'erased' online