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Australia: New South Wales facing huge locust plague

Brad Markham
ABC News
Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:01 UTC
Image
© Brad Markham
Locust eggs discovered on a property near Parkes in September 2009
There're fears NSW could be facing its worst locust plague since 2004.

Heavy rains have triggered a surge in locust activity. The pest has already ravaged early oat crops in the state's south. Some of the biggest clusters of baby locusts ever seen in NSW have been found in the far-west around Tibooburra.

The state's locust coordinator Simon Oliver is urging all landholders to check their paddocks for the pest.

"We've had good rain across NSW over the past three months," he says. "That's led to strong pasture growth and as a result the locusts have reinvigorated themselves. We're now finding large numbers in most parts of western NSW."
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Snowman

The white stuff is back! Snowfall heralds start of British Summer Time


UK Daily Mail
Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:24 UTC
Image
© PA
White wilderness: Snow covers the ground as far as the eye can see at Fintry, Scotland
The arrival of British Summer Time has brought wet and windy weather, with snow already falling in some parts of the country.

Snow this morning in central and northern Scotland and there will be more to come as the cold weather pushes south.

Although shielded from the worst, southern England is likely to see sleet and frigid temperatures by the end of the week.

Brendan Jones, of MeteoGroup said: 'It's a small taste of what will come tonight. In northern Scotland overnight it reached -4c and -5c in some inland areas.

'It will be more significant over the coming evening and night. It will be significant over the hills and mountains but also lower levels will see some snow as well.

'There's rain moving up from the south hitting colder air in Scotland. The southern uplands and Perthshire hills could see 4in to 6in through tonight and into tomorrow.
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Attention

Plight of Bees Worsens This Winter and Scientists Spot Stew of Pesticides in Pollen, Hives

Seth Borenstein
The Los Angeles Times
Wed, 24 Mar 2010 05:06 UTC
Image
© AP Photo
Scavenger bees in a dead hive (Merced, California)
The mysterious 4-year-old crisis of disappearing honeybees is deepening. A quick federal survey indicates a heavy bee die-off this winter, while a new study shows honeybees' pollen and hives laden with pesticides.

Two federal agencies along with regulators in California and Canada are scrambling to figure out what is behind this relatively recent threat, ordering new research on pesticides used in fields and orchards. Federal courts are even weighing in this month, ruling that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency overlooked a requirement when allowing a pesticide on the market.

And on Thursday, chemists at a scientific conference in San Francisco will tackle the issue of chemicals and dwindling bees in response to the new study.
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Info

Common Toads Can Predict Earthquakes, New Study Finds


Islington Gazette
Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:35 UTC
Common toads (Bufo bufo) can detect impending seismic activity and alter their behaviour from breeding to evacuation mode, suggests a new study in the Zoological Society of London's (ZSL) Journal of Zoology.

Researchers from The Open University reported that 96 per cent of male toads in a population abandoned their breeding site five days before the earthquake that struck L'Aquila in Italy in 2009. The breeding site was located 74 km from the earthquake's epicentre.

The number of paired toads at the breeding site also dropped to zero three days before the earthquake. No fresh spawn was found at the site from the date that the earthquake struck to the date of the last significant aftershock (magnitude >4.5).

Breeding sites are male-dominated and the toads would normally remain in situ from the point that breeding activity begins, to the completion of spawning.
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Bizarro Earth

US: Grasshopper Invasion Feared This Summer

Matt Joyce
Associated Press
Sun, 28 Mar 2010 09:13 UTC
Grasshopper
© Scott Schell/University of Wyoming
Some Western, Plains states could see worst outbreak in 30 years

Newcastle, Wyoming - Grasshopper infestations have taken on mythic tones here on the arid prairie of northeastern Wyoming - they blanket highways, eat T-shirts off clotheslines and devour nearly every scrap of vegetation on ranches and farms.

The myth may come closer to reality this summer than at any time in decades in several states in the West and the Plains.

A federal survey of farm areas taken last fall found high numbers of adult grasshoppers in parts of Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska and Idaho. Each female lays hundreds of eggs so that high count could turn into costly grasshopper infestations this summer.

Well-timed cool and wet weather to stifle the young grasshoppers when they hatch around May and June.
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Magnify

Putting ClimateGate in perspective

Joanne Nova
Jonova
Sun, 28 Mar 2010 18:33 UTC
Image
I attribute much of the recent rapid rise of the skeptics to the ongoing effects of ClimateGate. Yet, in a sense, the e-mails that were sprung from East Anglia did nothing more than confirm what most skeptics already suspected. Lawrence Solomon, author of The Deniers, has written an unusually good summary in the form of a speech for the Colorado Mining Association.

With his permission, I've included my favourite points here, as well as a copy of the full speech. His blog is a part of the Energy Probe team.
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Bizarro Earth

Russia: Koryaksky volcano becomes active


The Voice of Russia
Sun, 28 Mar 2010 10:48 UTC
Koryaksky
© RIA Novosti
Koryaksky volcano.
The Koryaksky volcano raising 3,456 m above sea level on the Russian Kamchatka Peninsula, 30 km from the region's main city Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, is showing signs of higher seismic activity. Thirteen 3-magnitude tremors have been registered in the past 24 hours. After staying dormant for 52 years, Koryaksky woke up in December 2008, sending plumes of ash and steam into the air. So far, it poses no threat to local residents, but trails of ash and smoke endanger air flights. Caught amid turbines, particles of magma can cause engine failure. The peak of Koryaksky's volcanic activity occurred 7,000 and 3,500 years ago.
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Evil Rays

Light earthquake hits Israel

Ahiya Raved
Ynet
Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:57 UTC
Quake measuring 3.6 on Richter Scale felt in northern Israel; no injuries reported

An earthquake measuring 3.6 on the Richter Scale was felt across northern Israel Saturday evening, the Geophysical Institute of Israel said.

No injuries or damages were reported in the quake, whose epicenter was just north of the Sea of Galilee.

The earthquake, which hit Israel at 8:45 pm, was not an unusual incident, the Institute said.

"We got a few phone calls about the quake being felt at communities around the Sea of Galilee," Dr. Rami Hofstater said. "The earthquake was registered and recorded."

A Ynet reader said she felt the quake in Haifa. "The bed moved and the water bottle shook," she wrote. Another reader said that "the earthquake was felt on the Golan Heights." A Golan resident wrote that he felt the quake in his feet. "Nothing moved, it was something very weak, but we felt the quake," he said.

The head of the Mevo'ot Hermon regional council said that the quake was certainly felt in his community, Moshav Sdeh Eliezer.
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Evil Rays

Light Quake Hits Northern Israel

Hillel Fendel
Israel National News
Sat, 27 Mar 2010 20:25 UTC
A weak earthquake was felt in northern Israel on Saturday night; no injuries or damage was reported.

The Seismological Institute reported that the quake measured 3.6 on the Richter scale. It occurred just north of the Kinneret Sea (Sea of Galilee), near the Arik Bridge, at 8:45 PM, for about ten seconds. Residents reported feeling it.
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Evil Rays

Temblor Tilts Earth by Inches

Gautam Naik
The Wall Street Journal
Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:54 UTC
Image
© Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images
Firefighters searched for victims in the debris of a house in Curanipe.
The earthquake that struck Chile was so powerful it shifted the planet's axis enough to make it spin slightly faster, meaning our days will be shorter by 1.26 millionths of a second, according to preliminary calculations by scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

"This is an esoteric effect that physics says has to happen," notes David Kerridge, the British Geological Survey's head of natural hazards, who studies earthquakes. "It's interesting, but it has no particular consequence on anything."

Comment: NASA scientists claimed the Chilean earthquake shifted the Earth's axis by "2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches)" and shortened the day by "1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second)". Just one strong quake, imagine! But the claim was countered as unverifiable and ludicrous by German scientists:
Professor Rainer Kind from the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam said: "It is highly doubtful that these calculations are correct. The changes to the Earth's axis caused by an earthquake would be so tiny that it isn't measurable and therefore impossible to reliably detect."

Existing calculations of the movement of the Earth's axis by past earthquakes are still being debated, the expert added.

Professor Karl-Heinz Glassmeier from the Deutschen Geophysikalischen Gesellschaft (German Geophysical Association) also criticised the alleged discovery: "I hit my hand on my head as I read that yesterday.

"NASA can only make the headlines with it. A figure of eight centimetres is absolutely unverifiable."

The influence of an earthquake on the Earth's tilt would in any case be extremely low, explained Dr. Mojib Latif from The Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel.

He said: "The heavenly bodies around us are mainly responsible for the Earth's tilt. The gravity of the heavy and big planets in particular determines the gradient of the Earth's axis.

"That can not be changed by an earthquake, even one as powerful as that in Chile."

Professor Kind added: "It is impossible that there could ever be such a severe earthquake which would observably move the Earth's axis. That would only be possible through outside influences, for example a meteorite.

"The destruction however would be so great, that the movement of the Earth's axis would be comparatively insignificant."
So while a strong earthquake may not be sufficient to shift the planet's axis and thus alter the length of days, it's conceivable that a change in the arrangement of "the heavenly bodies" might well do so. The good professor probably didn't have this in mind when he used that term, but if we consider that comets and their debris trails are also "heavenly bodies", then we can see that earthquakes may be a symptom of an external cosmic force affecting Earth's rotation. Any slowing down of rotation, however imperceptible, would be sufficient to affect the magnetic field and produce incredible pressures within the planet that then shift tectonic plates, resulting in more earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as that pressure is released.

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