Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Killer 26 foot Wave Kills Two On Cruise Liner Off French Coast


Sky News
Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:21 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Manu FernandezWorkers clean up broken windows on the Cypriot-owned Louis Majesty cruise ship at Barcelona's port, Spain, on Thursday, March 4, 2010. Waves of up to 26 feet (8 meters) high smashed into the Mediterranean cruise ship flooding people's cabins and breaking windows in an ordeal that claimed two lives. The ship was carrying 1,350 passengers and 580 crew.
Two cruise-ship passengers have been killed after a 26ft wave smashed into the ship off the coast of France.

A Greek coast guard statement says another six people suffered light injuries on board the Cypriot-owned Louis Majesty.

It says the accident occurred near the French Mediterranean port of Marseilles as the ship was sailing from Barcelona to Genoa in Italy with 1,350 passengers and 580 crew.

Comment: Return of the freak waves?

Freak wave 'hot spots' identified
US: Freak Waves Swamp Maine's Boothbay Harbor, Baffling Experts
New theory (and old equations) may explain causes of ship-sinking freak waves
Freak waves may be real cause of many ship sinkings

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Bizarro Earth

Chilean Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days

Alan Buis
NASA
Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:15 UTC
earth
This view of Earth comes from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite
The Feb. 27 magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile may have shortened the length of each Earth day.

JPL research scientist Richard Gross computed how Earth's rotation should have changed as a result of the Feb. 27 quake. Using a complex model, he and fellow scientists came up with a preliminary calculation that the quake should have shortened the length of an Earth day by about 1.26 microseconds (a microsecond is one millionth of a second).

Perhaps more impressive is how much the quake shifted Earth's axis. Gross calculates the quake should have moved Earth's figure axis (the axis about which Earth's mass is balanced) by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters, or 3 inches). Earth's figure axis is not the same as its north-south axis; they are offset by about 10 meters (about 33 feet).
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Bizarro Earth

Cuba: Magnitude 4.3 Earthquake


USGS
Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:31 UTC
USGS: Cuba 4.0 Earthquake Map
© USGS

Earthquake Details

Magnitude 4.3

Date-Time
* Wednesday, March 03, 2010 at 03:35:36 UTC
* Tuesday, March 02, 2010 at 10:35:36 PM at epicenter
* Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location 19.929°N, 75.624°W

Depth 31.4 km (19.5 miles)

Region CUBA REGION

Distances
25 km (15 miles) ESE of Santiago de Cuba, Cuba
50 km (30 miles) WSW of Guantanamo, Cuba
780 km (485 miles) ESE of HAVANA, Cuba
800 km (495 miles) SE of Miami, Florida

Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 9.6 km (6.0 miles); depth +/- 19.1 km (11.9 miles)

Parameters NST= 13, Nph= 13, Dmin=53.8 km, Rmss=0.95 sec, Gp= 86°,
M-type=body wave magnitude (Mb), Version=8

Source
* USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
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Bomb

Northwest at risk of megaquake like one in Chile

Alicia Chang
Associated Press
Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:57 UTC
Los Angeles - Just 50 miles off the Pacific Northwest coast is an earthquake hotspot that threatens to unleash on Seattle, Portland and Vancouver the kind of damage that has shattered Chile.

The fault has been dormant for more than 300 years, but when it awakens - tomorrow or decades from now - the consequences could be devastating.

Recent computer simulations of a hypothetical magnitude-9 quake found that shaking could last 2 to 5 minutes - strong enough to potentially cause poorly constructed buildings from British Columbia to Northern California to collapse and severely damage highways and bridges.

Such a quake would also send powerful tsunami waves rushing to shore in minutes. While big cities such as Portland and Seattle would be protected from severe flooding, low-lying seaside communities may not be as lucky.

The Pacific Northwest "has a long geological history of doing exactly what happened in Chile," said Brian Atwater, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and University of Washington. "It's not a matter of if but when the next one will happen."
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Bizarro Earth

The Earthquake Beyond Chile


Inexplicata
Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:14 UTC
Chile area map
© Unknown
Our colleague Christian Quintero of Planeta UFO sent us a report on the Chilean Earthquake, dealing with the impact of this seismic event beyond that country's borders:

"In Perú, Walter Flores, Chief of the Navy's Department of Oceanography, reported that the sea withdrew approximately 150 meters (300 feet approx.) from the coast of the Cerro Azul recreation area in Cañete (Peru), but assured the population that fluctuations resulting from the normalization of the water level would not result in large waves. Moreover, the Chief of the Port Authority for Southern Peru ordered the preventive closure of the beaches at Naplo and Pucusana after abnormal tides were detected.
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Igloo

Ice Age Cometh: Coldest Irish winter since 1963


Irish Independent
Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:50 UTC
Image
© UnknownView of Dublin from the Dublin Mountains, February 7th
Ireland suffered its coldest winter in almost five decades as the country shivered in the big freeze, it was revealed.

Met Eireann said temperatures were around two degrees lower than average during the season, making it the coldest winter recorded since 1963.

Arctic conditions experienced at the end of last year continued through January and February, with widespread spells of frost, sleet and snow.

Temperatures plummeted to below minus 10C in some places, with minus 16.3C recorded at Mount Juliet, Co Kilkenny, on January 7.
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Umbrella

Australia: Hundreds Evacuated From Flood-Bound Charleville


ABC News
Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:47 UTC
Queensland Floods 2
© ABC: Paul LockyerCooper Creek has been in flood since heavy rain in western Queensland late last year
Hundreds of people will be evacuated from flood-affected Charleville in Queensland's south-west, as heavy rain and flooding continues across the state's inland region.

A monsoonal low has dumped more than 130 millimetres of rain over parts of south-west Queensland overnight.

That has led to flooding in Bradley's Gully, which cuts through the centre of Charleville.

Emergency Services Minister Neil Roberts says around a third of Charleville will be evacuated.

"For the town today ... expect potentially up to 500 people to be evacuated from their homes, which is quite significant," he said.
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Frog

Common weed-killer chemically castrates frogs: study


Agence France-Presse
Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:26 UTC
chemicals castrating frogs
© AFP/File/Jeff PachoudFile photo shows a frog at the Besancon Natural History Museum. One of the most common weed-killers in the world, atrazine, causes chemical castration in frogs and could be killing off amphibian populations worldwide, a study published showed.
One of the most common weed-killers in the world, atrazine, causes chemical castration in frogs and could be killing off amphibian populations worldwide, a study published showed.

Researchers compared 40 male control frogs with 40 male frogs reared from the moment they hatched from eggs until full sexual maturity in atrazine concentrations in the range that animals experience year-round in areas where the chemical herbicide is found.

Ninety percent of the male frogs exposed to atrazine had low testosterone levels, decreased breeding gland size, feminized laryngeal development, suppressed mating behavior, reduced sperm production and decreased fertility, while the control group showed features typically found in male frogs.

And what happened to the remaining 10 percent of atrazine-exposed frogs was deemed "the most dramatic finding" of the study by the researchers, led by Tyrone Hayes of the University of California at Berkeley: they developed into females that copulated with males and produced eggs.

The larvae from those eggs were all male, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found.

"Many studies have focused on death from disease and its role in global amphibian declines and sudden disappearances of populations, but virtually no attention has been paid to the slow, gradual loss of amphibian populations due to failed recruitment," the study said.
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Radar

Tsunami sweeps away entire towns on Chilean coast

Michael Warren and Roberto Candia
The Associated Press
Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:57 UTC
boat marooned by tsunami
© AP Photo/ Natacha PisarenkoA boat lies marooned on a street in Talcahuano, Chile, Monday, March 1, 2010. An 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck central Chile early Saturday triggering a tsunami that hit coastal communities.
Talcahuano - When the shaking stopped, Marioli Gatica and her extended family huddled in a circle on the floor of their seaside wooden home in this gritty port town, listening to the radio by a lantern's light.

They heard firefighters urging Talcahuano's citizens to stay calm and stay inside. They heard nothing of a tsunami - until it slammed into their house with an unearthly roar about an hour after Saturday's magnitude 8.8 quake.

Gatica's house exploded with water. She and her family were swept below the surface, swirling amid loose ship containers and other massive debris that smashed buildings into oblivion all around them.

"We were sitting there one moment and the next I looked up into the water and saw cables and furniture floating," Gatica said.

She clung to her 11-year-old daughter, Ninoska Elgueta, but the rush of water ripped the girl from her hands. Then the wave retreated as suddenly as it came.
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Better Earth

Best of the Web: BBC Horizon - How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?

David Attenborough
YouTube
Sat, 12 Dec 2009 13:22 UTC
"In a Horizon special, naturalist Sir David Attenborough investigates whether the world is heading for a population crisis.

Comment: The other parts are here:
BBC Horizon - How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth ? Part 2
BBC Horizon - How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth ? Part 3
BBC Horizon - How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth ? Part 4
BBC Horizon - How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth ? Part 5
BBC Horizon - How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth ? Part 6

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