Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

Rhode Island flooding: 'Worst is still yet to come'


CNN
Wed, 31 Mar 2010 09:19 UTC
Battered by a rainstorm that shut down roads, forced evacuations and prompted President Obama to declare a state of emergency, Rhode Island may be in for more misery Wednesday.

"We have some historic flooding going on in places we've never had flooding before," said Cranston, Rhode Island, police Lt. Stephen Antonucci. "We have numerous streets that are closed, and they're telling us the worst is still yet to come."

All eyes were on the Pawtuxet River, which runs through Cranston. The river stood at 20.64 feet as of about 7 a.m. ET -- nearly 12 feet above flood stage of 9 feet. It is forecast to crest at 20.7 feet Wednesday morning, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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Snowman

Colder than Moscow: Britain is battered by blizzards and gale-force winds


Daily Mail
Wed, 31 Mar 2010 08:21 UTC
Image
© PAOops: A Stirling council gritting lorry got stuck in the snow after trying to pass an abandoned animal feed lorry which was itself stuck near Carronbridge, central Scotland
Parts of Britain were waking up under several inches of snow today as a flash of winter weather in spring made some areas colder than Moscow.

Up to 48,000 homes were without power as blizzards, gale-force winds and torrential rain hit both Scotland and Northern Ireland, knocking down power lines and causing widespread transport havoc.

In the worst-hit part of the province, around 300 people - including children on a school bus - had to be rescued from vehicles trapped in snow overnight on the Glenshane Pass near Londonderry.

While some parts of the UK were below freezing, temperatures in Moscow reached a mild 13c (55f).
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Blackbox

A killer in the bat cave

Shaoni Bhattacharya
New Scientist
Tue, 30 Mar 2010 23:23 UTC
Corpse upon corpse they lie, a carpet of emaciated, fungus-ridden carcasses. Where once healthy animals hung in slumber from the cave roof, now there is a mass grave on the floor. It is a scene that is repeated throughout the eastern US, from Vermont to West Virginia. America's bats are in crisis, under threat from a mysterious killer.

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Propaganda

US oil company donated millions to climate sceptic groups, says Greenpeace

John Vidal
Guardian.co.uk
Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:41 UTC
Report identifies Koch Industries giving $73m to climate sceptic groups 'spreading inaccurate and misleading information'

A Greenpeace investigation has identified a little-known, privately owned US oil company as the paymaster of global warming sceptics in the US and Europe.

The environmental campaign group accuses Kansas-based Koch Industries, which owns refineries and operates oil pipelines, of funding 35 conservative and libertarian groups, as well as more than 20 congressmen and senators. Between them, Greenpeace says, these groups and individuals have spread misinformation about climate science and led a sustained assault on climate scientists and green alternatives to fossil fuels.

Greenpeace says that Koch Industries donated nearly $48m (£31.8m) to climate opposition groups between 1997-2008. From 2005-2008, it donated $25m to groups opposed to climate change, nearly three times as much as higher-profile funders that time such as oil company ExxonMobil. Koch also spent $5.7m on political campaigns and $37m on direct lobbying to support fossil fuels.

Comment: Once again, the British Guardian is the stalwart defender of the indefensible. This "$73 million to conservative and libertarian groups", namely right-wing political groups that jumped on the Climategate bandwagon after the man-made global warming nonsense went into free-fall, is pittance against the $7 billion (and counting) fraud reaped by the "carbon trading" scam whose existence wholly depends on the theory that humanity's carbon emissions are responsible for "warming" the planet:

European fraudsters steal $7B in carbon credit scam
Fraud within Europe's carbon credit trading system has cost taxpayers more than $7 billion in the last 18 months, European police said Friday.
In fact, the above list of financial backers supporting skepticism supports our contention that the political backlash against "anthropogenic global warming" has been co-opted and will be channelled for political gain:
So why are Neocons supporting the global warming skeptics? It is obviously not because they value the truth. Instead, they seem to want to be free to pollute the atmosphere as much as they like by taking advantage of the shift in public opinion Hayward labels "apocalypse fatigue." In other words, there's not a problem, so what's the problem? And the Neocons aren't the only cons using the Climategate revelations for their own benefit. Sarah Palin, Dominionist front-woman and psychopath, is also jumping on the bandwagon. [...]

With several competing factions operating behind the scenes of power and policy-making, Climategate, if properly managed, will provide the Tea-Party/Right-wing/Dominionist takeover with tremendous energy for slingshotting a Palin into the White House, and for Harper or a similar drone to extend control over the Canadian parliament. At that point, it will be unnecessary to cover up their religious extremism and the mask will come off.


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Bizarro Earth

Mysterious Whale Die-Off Is Largest on Record

Jeremy Hsu
LiveScience
Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:10 UTC
Mass death among baby right whales has experts scrambling to figure out the puzzle behind the largest great whale die-off on record.

Observers have found 308 dead whales in the waters around Peninsula Valdes along Argentina's Patagonian Coast since 2005. Almost 90 percent of those deaths represent whale calves less than 3 months old, and the calf deaths make up almost a third of all right whale calf sightings in the last five years.

"This is the single largest die-off event in terms of numbers and in relation to population size and geographic range," said Marcela Uhart, a medical veterinarian with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). She represents an associate director in Latin America for the WCS Global Health Program.
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Bizarro Earth

Pakistan: Hailstorm hits twin cities

Mobarik A. Virk
The News
Tue, 30 Mar 2010 17:58 UTC
Islamabad - An unusual weather phenomenon caused widespread hailstorm in the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad on Monday afternoon. Following duststorm in which the wind velocity touched 96 kilometres per hour in Rawalpindi and 55 kilometres per hour in Islamabad, thick grey clouds swarmed the skies and after a slight spell of drizzle the hailstorm struck.

Meteorological Office Director Dr. Mohammad Hanif told The News that hailstorms in the transitional period between winter and spring is not unusual because of sudden change in temperature. "But the slightly unusual phenomenon was that the hailstorm that struck the twin cities engulfed a vast area."

Usually hailstorms in such transitional periods remain confined to small pockets but on Monday it was widespread covering vast areas over Rawalpindi and Islamabad. At many places, the intensity of the hailstorm was unusually high," he said.
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Igloo

Snow storms and high winds leave 20,000 homes without power across Scotland


The Daily Record
Tue, 30 Mar 2010 17:50 UTC
Image
A car is pushed in the snow at Denny, Stirlingshire
Twenty thousand homes were left without power today as high winds, snow storms and rain battered Scotland and ice gripped overhead power lines.

Ten lorries were also stranded on the M90 as temperatures plunged below freezing. Police urged drivers to take care on some of the water-swamped roads this evening and forecasters predicted the cold snap would last for another two days.

The 20,000 homes without power are in central and southern Scotland, said ScottishPower.

Ayrshire was worst hit, with 7,000 homes in Largs and Fairlie affected.

A spokesman said some of the 20,000 homes affected throughout today were only without electricity for a few minutes.
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Bizarro Earth

Magnitude 6.6 - Andaman Islands, India Region


US Geological Survey
Tue, 30 Mar 2010 14:37 UTC
Andaman Earthquake
© USGSEarthquake Location
Date-Time:
Tuesday, March 30, 2010 at 16:54:48 UTC

Tuesday, March 30, 2010 at 10:24:48 PM at epicenter

Location:
13.616°N, 92.858°E

Depth:
45.4 km (28.2 miles)

Distances:
215 km (135 miles) N of Port Blair, Andaman Islands, India

405 km (250 miles) SSW of Pathein (Bassein), Myanmar

825 km (510 miles) W of BANGKOK, Thailand

2310 km (1440 miles) SE of NEW DELHI, Delhi, India
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Cloud Lightning

Massachusetts, Rhode Island Declare Rain Emergencies

Aaron Clark
Bloomberg
Tue, 30 Mar 2010 14:25 UTC
Massachusetts and Rhode Island declared emergencies and Boston recorded unprecedented rainfall as storms pounded the U.S. Northeast for a second day today.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick mobilized about 1,000 National Guard troops because of the threat of "beach erosion, major flooding and widespread road closures," according to a statement on his Web site yesterday.

"In some cases there has been two months of rain in the matter of a few days," Tom Kines, a senior meteorologist for AccuWeather Inc., said in a telephone interview. "When you get that much rain over a few-day period, that spells trouble."

Boston's Charles River is set to break the record crest of 9.24 feet reached in August 1955 after two hurricanes dumped more than 26 inches of rain on the region in less than two weeks, according to the National Weather Service.
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Sun

The Sun Points Radio-Active Sunspot at Earth

Ian O'Neill
SpaceWeather.com
Tue, 30 Mar 2010 03:11 UTC
Sunspot
© Discovery News
As the sun continues to ramp up in activity after a long period in the doldrums, solar astronomers have been treated to an up-tick in sunspot numbers, solar prominences and flares.

And now, radio astronomers have joined the fun, listening to the roar of a particularly "noisy" sunspot currently pointing in our direction.

Not all sunspots emit strong radio emissions, but sunspot 1057 certainly isn't shy. As reported by SpaceWeather.com, a radio astronomer in New Mexico received a mix of Type III and Type V radio emissions:
"It was sunspot 1057. All day long it had been producing small radio bursts around 21 MHz. Then, at 1813 UT, it let loose a big one. The burst only lasted a minute, but it saturated the radios." --Thomas Ashcraft, radio astronomer.
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