Earth ChangesS


Umbrella

Ferocious snow storm hits US east coast


New Zealand Herald
Tue, 03 Mar 2009 14:23 UTC
A ferocious storm packing freezing rain, heavy snow and furious wind gusts paralyzed most of the East Coast, sending dozens of cars careening into ditches, grounding hundreds of flights and closing school for millions of kids.

The devastating effects of the storm were seen up and down the coast. A crash caused a 15-mile (25-kilometer) traffic jam in North Carolina, forcing police and the Red Cross to go car-to-car to check on stranded drivers. The storm was blamed for more than 500 crashes in New Jersey, and a Maryland official counted about 50 cars in the ditch on one stretch of highway.

By Monday, the storm had moved north into New England, and most areas in the storm's wake expected to see up to 12 inches (30 centimeters) of snow. The weather contributed to four deaths on roads in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and on Long Island.
Read More...
Evil Rays

Human factor suspected in mass beaching of whales in Australia

Lewis Smith
Times Online
Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:16 UTC
Conservationists are demanding an immediate and thorough inquiry into what they say is the suspicious stranding of 200 whales and dolphins.

Fears that the mass stranding on an Australian beach on Sunday was caused by human disturbance were raised because two species of cetacean came ashore simultaneously.

Most of the animals were pilot whales, but a number of bottlenose dolphins were also among the pod.
Read More...
Fish

Pink dolphin appears in US lake


UK Telegraph
Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:29 UTC
The world's only pink Bottlenose dolphin which was discovered in an inland lake in Louisiana, USA, has become such an attraction that conservationists have warned tourists to leave it alone.

Pink dolphin
© Caters NewsPinky the rare albino dolphin has been spotted in Lake Calcasieu in Louisiana, USA
Charter boat captain Erik Rue, 42, photographed the animal, which is actually an albino, when he began studying it after the mammal first surfaced in Lake Calcasieu, an inland saltwater estuary, north of the Gulf of Mexico in southwestern USA.

Capt Rue originally saw the dolphin, which also has reddish eyes, swimming with a pod of four other dolphins, with one appearing to be its mother which never left its side.
Read More...
Fish

South Korea: Strange Humanoid Carp Found in Pond


Weird Asia News
Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:46 UTC
humanoid carp
© Unknown
The hybrid descendants of a carp and a leather carp (tangerine fish) are the new sensation in the small South Korean town of Chongju because of their "humanoid" facial features.

The look suddenly appears after observing the front part of their heads for a moment or two. Two lines and two dots on their heads bear some resemblance to human eyes.

The local newspapers managed to snap some sensational pictures of the fish, which are about 80 centimeters long (more than three feet) and 50 centimeters (almost two feet) in circumference.
Read More...
Attention

Polar regions found warming fast, raising sea levels


Reuters
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:25 UTC
Geneva - The Arctic and Antarctic regions are warming faster than previously thought, raising world sea levels and making drastic global climate change more likely than ever, international scientists said on Wednesday.

New evidence of the trend was uncovered by wide-ranging research in the two areas over the past two years in a United Nations-backed programme dubbed the International Polar Year (IPY), they said.

"Snow and ice are declining in both polar regions, affecting human livelihoods as well as local plant and animal life in the Arctic as well as global atmospheric circulation and sea-level," according to a summary of a report by the researchers.

An assessment of the findings of the research was still being refined, said the IPY's "State of Polar Research" report.

"But it now appears certain that both the Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass and thus raising sea level, and that the rate of ice loss from Greenland is growing," it said.

"New data also confirm that warming in the Antarctic is much more widespread than it was thought prior to IPY."


Comment: Alarmist journalism at its best. This new data that confirms Antarctic warming is a complete mess, see this link here. This great evidence, even if there is a snowball's chance in heck of it standing up to scrutiny would show nothing more than a cycle in Antarctica just as has happened dozens of times in the past. But the new great evidence appears to be just another Michael Mann "Hockey Stick" piece of work where the authors chose the data parameters and algorithms for the specific purpose of generating warming evidence where none exists.

The effectiveness of the propaganda machine is evidenced by the very existence of this piece of info-entertainment journalism. It does however accomplish its purpose of spoon feeding the public that something never seen before in billions of years of the history of the planet's climate is now taking place which is utter nonsense.


More than 63 countries and some 10,000 scientists took part in the $1.5 billion programme, which began in March 2007 and ends next month.

Comment: The above article and this similar one are great examples of the sleeping press, propagating the global warming signal to the public.

Read More...
Better Earth

Flashback Greenland's Ice Sheet is Growing

Fraser Cain
European Space Agency
Fri, 04 Nov 2005 17:58 UTC
Greenland Icesheet growing
© European Space AgencyMap of Greenland with temperature changes.

Researchers have utilised more than a decade's worth of data from radar altimeters on ESA's ERS satellites to produce the most detailed picture yet of thickness changes in the Greenland Ice Sheet.

A Norwegian-led team used the ERS data to measure elevation changes in the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2003, finding recent growth in the interior sections estimated at around six centimetres per year during the study period. The research is due to be published by Science Magazine in November, having been published in the online Science Express on 20 October.

ERS radar altimeters work by sending 1800 separate radar pulses down to Earth per second then recording how long their echoes take to bounce back 800 kilometres to the satellite platform. The sensor times its pulses' journey down to under a nanosecond to calculate the distance to the planet below to a maximum accuracy of two centimetres.

Comment: As it stands today (March 2, 2009) Cryosat2 is scheduled to launch later this year. Interesting how such a great tool (CryoSat1) that would have helped examine the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets should have been tragically (conveniently for some) lost.

The loss of the recent CO2 emissions analyzing satellite is similarly interesting. The High Risks involved in space launches seems to find a way to target some of our most promising data sensors for "Global Warming" research.

Read More...
Fish

Woman Injured by Humpback Whale Near Hawaii


Kitsap Sun
Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:00 UTC
A 61-year-old Bremerton woman was injured Friday when a whale fin struck the boat she was riding in, two Hawaii newspapers reported.

The Honolulu Advertiser and Maui News reported the woman, who was not identified, fell and suffered minor injuries after a male humpback whale surfaced next to the whale-watching and research vessel, and the whale's pectoral fin hit the boat's starboard side.

The woman was thrown to the deck of the vessel and struck her head. She was conscious and alert as she was being taken to a Maui hospital.
Read More...
Chalkboard

Origin of Life On Earth: Scientists Unlock Mystery Of Molecular Machine


Science Daily
Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:36 UTC
A major mystery about the origins of life has been resolved. According to a study published in the journal Nature, two Université de Montréal scientists have proposed a new theory for how a universal molecular machine, the ribosome, managed to self-assemble as a critical step in the genesis of all life on Earth.

"While the ribosome is a complex structure it features a clear hierarchy that emerged based on basic chemical principles," says Sergey Steinberg, a Université de Montréal biochemistry professor who made his discovery with student Konstantin Bokov. "In the absence of such explanations, some people could imagine unseen forces at work when such complex structures emerge in nature."
Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Almost 200 whales beached in Australia


Associated Press
Sun, 01 Mar 2009 01:05 UTC
Sydney - Nearly 200 whales and several dolphins are stranded on a beach in the southern Australian island state of Tasmania, the latest in a string of beachings in recent months.

Rescuers were headed Monday to Naracoopa Beach on Tasmania's King Island to try to save some of the 194 pilot whales and half a dozen bottlenose dolphins that began beaching themselves on Sunday evening.
Read More...
Igloo

US: Rare snow blankets South as East braces for storm

Jay Reeves
Asociated Press
Mon, 02 Mar 2009 05:14 UTC
Alabama snow
© Associated Press/Dave MartinAn early March snowstorm dumped snow across Alabama, Sunday, March 1, 2009. The storm then moved into Georgia, causing plane cancellations and threatening the East coast.
A potent March snowstorm blanketed much of the Southeast with snow Sunday before barreling toward the Northeast, where officials prepared snowplows and road-salt for a wintery assault.

The icy blast threatened to drop up to a foot of snow in the Philadelphia area, 13 inches in New York and 15 inches across southern New England late Sunday.

Thousands of New York City sanitation workers prepared to salt city streets, and airlines preemptively canceled flights Sunday at the region's major airports.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation planned to attack the snow in the Philadelphia area with 400 trucks and 77,000 tons of stockpiled salt, assistant press secretary Gene Blaum said.
Read More...