Yellowstone Park shaken by hundreds of earthquakes

Scientists are monitoring a cluster of earthquakes that have rattled Yellowstone National Park over the past few days amid concerns that a larger earthquake could be brewing.

Yellowstone is situated on a giant, geologically active feature known as a supervolcano and boasts some 75 per cent of the world's geysers Photo: AP

More than 250 tremors have been recorded since Friday including nine greater than magnitude 3.0 on the Richter scale, according to the University of Utah. The largest, a magnitude 3.9, struck on Saturday and the area was shaken by a 3.3 tremor just after midday on Monday.

While earthquakes are common in the giant park, which covers parts of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana and experiences about 1,000 to 2,000 tremors a year, the intense burst of seismic activity lasting several days has been described as unusual.

"They're certainly not normal," said Robert Smith, a professor of geophysics at the University of Utah. "We haven't had earthquakes of this energy or extent in many years."

Mr Smith, director of the Yellowstone Seismic Network, which operates seismic stations around the park, said the earthquakes have ranged in strength from barely detectable to Saturday's 3.9. A magnitude 4 earthquake is capable of producing moderate damage.

"This is an active volcanic and tectonic area, and these are the kinds of things we have to pay attention to," he said. "We might be seeing something precursory.

"Could it develop into a bigger fault or something related to hydrothermal activity? We don't know. That's what we're there to do, to monitor it for public safety."

CONTINUE

2009 to be one of warmest years on record

LONDON (Reuters) - Next year is set to be one of the top-five warmest on record, British climate scientists said on Tuesday.

The average global temperature for 2009 is expected to be more than 0.4 degrees celsius above the long-term average, despite the continued cooling of huge areas of the Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as La Nina.

That would make it the warmest year since 2005, according to researchers at the Met Office, who say there is also a growing probability of record temperatures after next year.

Currently the warmest year on record is 1998, which saw average temperatures of 14.52 degrees celsius - well above the 1961-1990 long-term average of 14 degrees celsius.

Warm weather that year was strongly influenced by El Nino, an abnormal warming of surface ocean waters in the eastern tropical Pacific.

Theories abound as to what triggers the mechanisms that cause an El Nino or La Nina event but scientists agree that they are playing an increasingly important role in global weather patterns.

The strength of the prevailing trade winds that blow from east to west across the equatorial Pacific is thought to be an important factor.

"Further warming to record levels is likely once a moderate El Nino develops," said Professor Chris Folland at the Met Office Hadley Center. "Phenomena such as El Nino and La Nina have a significant influence on global surface temperature."

Professor Phil Jones, director of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia, said global warming had not gone away despite the fact that 2009, like the year just gone, would not break records.

"What matters is the underlying rate of warming," he said.

He noted the average temperature over 2001-2007 was 14.44 degrees celsius, 0.21 degrees celsius warmer than corresponding values for 1991-2000.

Researchers unlock secrets of 1918 flu pandemic

Policemen in Seattle wearing masks made by the Red Cross, during the influenza epidemic in a National Archives photo dated December 1918.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers have found out what made the 1918 flu pandemic so deadly -- a group of three genes that lets the virus invade the lungs and cause pneumonia.

They mixed samples of the 1918 influenza strain with modern seasonal flu viruses to find the three genes and said their study might help in the development of new flu drugs.

The discovery, published in Tuesday's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could also point to mutations that might turn ordinary flu into a dangerous pandemic strain.

Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin and colleagues at the Universities of Kobe and Tokyo in Japan used ferrets, which develop flu in ways very similar to humans.

Usually flu causes an upper respiratory infection affecting the nose and throat, as well as so-called systemic illness causing fever, muscle aches and weakness.

But some people become seriously ill and develop pneumonia. Sometimes bacteria cause the pneumonia and sometimes flu does it directly.

During pandemics, such as in 1918, a new and more dangerous flu strain emerges.

CONTINUE

"First Contact With Inner Earth": Drillers Strike Magma

A drilling crew recently cracked through rock layers deep beneath Hawaii and accidentally became the first humans known to have drilled into magma—the melted form of rock that sometimes erupts to the surface as lava—in its natural environment, scientists announced this week. "This is an unprecedented discovery," said Bruce Marsh, a volcanologist from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, who will be studying the find.

Normally, he said, volcanologists have to do "postmortem studies" of long-solidified magmas or study active lava during volcanic eruptions.

But this time they'd found magma in its natural environment—something Marsh described as nearly as exciting as a paleontologist finding a dinosaur frolicking on a remote island.

"This is my Jurassic Park," he said at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

First Contact...CONTINUE

Yellowstone Earthquakes Under Supervolcano Caldera

The headline "Scientists track unusual earthquake swarm beneath Yellowstone" only means one thing to fans of the Discovery channel like myself: supervolcano. Here is what the earthquake center at the University of Utah had to say yesterday afternoon:

The University of Utah Seismograph Stations reports that a notable swarm of earthquakes has been underway since December 26 beneath Yellowstone Lake in Yellowstone National Park, three to six miles south-southeast of Fishing Bridge, Wyoming. This energetic sequence of events was most intense on December 27, when the largest number of events of magnitude 3 and larger occurred.

The largest of the earthquakes was a magnitude 3.9 (revised from magnitude 3.8) at 10:15 pm MST on Dec. 27. The sequence has included nine events of magnitude 3 to 3.9 and approximately 24 of magnitude 2 to 3 at the time of this release. A total of more than 250 events large enough to be located have occurred in this swarm. Reliable depths of the larger events are up to a few miles. Visitors and National Park Service (NPS) employees in the Yellowstone Lake area reported feeling the largest of these earthquakes.

Earthquakes are a common occurrence in the Yellowstone National Park area, an active volcanic-tectonic area averaging 1,000 to 2,000 earthquakes a year. Yellowstone's 10,000 geysers and hot springs are the result of this geologic activity. A summary of the Yellowstone's volcanic history is available on the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory web site (listed below).

CONTINUE

250 Small Earthquakes Hit Yellowstone National Park Over Weekend; Largest 3.8 Magnitude

World Crops Threatened by Strengthening La Nina Weather Pattern

Dec. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Grain and oilseed crops may be threatened next year by a weather pattern known as La Nina, according to a private forecaster.

La Nina conditions have developed rapidly across the equatorial Pacific Ocean during the past few weeks, said Drew Lerner, president of World Weather Inc. in Overland Park, Kansas. He said that may indicate more dry weather in parts of South America in the next three months and a wet, cold start to the U.S. planting season in March.

La Nina, which means “the little girl” in Spanish, is caused by lower-than-normal surface-water temperatures in the Pacific. It can trigger widespread changes in weather around the world, including a higher-than-normal number of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean, Lerner said.

“The impact of La Nina conditions has already been noted in many areas, with more frequent rain in eastern Australia, wet weather in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines as well as a drier bias in southeastern parts of South America,” Lerner said in a Dec. 24 interview. “Confidence is quite strong that a full blown La Nina event is evolving.”

The current weather patterns are more similar to a mature La Nina instead of a developing event because the last episode faded in May, leaving behind residual atmospheric conditions, Lerner said. The pocket of unusually cool Pacific water has quickly expanded west and extends to a greater depth than usual, signaling a stronger impact on next year’s weather, he said.

“The colder surface temperatures become relative to normal, the higher the potential for La Nina and the stronger the event might become,” Lerner said. “Below-average precipitation will continue in eastern Argentina, Uruguay, far southern Brazil and a part of Paraguay, but not necessarily a full-blown drought and major crop losses.”

CONTINUE

Natural disasters 'killed over 220,000' in 2008

BERLIN (AFP) – Natural disasters killed over 220,000 people in 2008, making it one of the most devastating years on record and underlining the need for a global climate deal, the world's number two reinsurer said Monday.

Although the number of natural disasters was lower than in 2007, the catastrophes that occurred proved to be more destructive in terms of the number of victims and the financial cost of the damage caused, Germany-based Munich Re said in its annual assessment.

"This continues the long-term trend we have been observing. Climate change has already started and is very probably contributing to increasingly frequent weather extremes and ensuing natural catastrophes," Munich Re board member Torsten Jeworrek said.

Most devastating in terms of human fatalities was Cyclone Nargis, which lashed Myanmar on May 2-3 to kill more than 135,000 people and leave more than one million homeless.

Just days later an earthquake shook China's Sichuan province, leaving 70,000 dead, 18,000 missing and almost five million homeless, according to official figures, Munich Re said.

Around 1,000 people died in a severe cold snap in January in Afghanistan, Kyrgystan and Tajikistan, while 635 perished in August and September in floods in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.

Typhoon Fengshen killed 557 people in China and the Philippines in June, while earthquakes in Pakistan in October left 300 dead.

CONTINUE

British wildlife may not survive third wet summer

A puffin. Photograph: David Tipling/Getty

Environment charity's audit reflects the damaging effect of bad weather - and shows how climate change has put some species under threat

A third miserable summer in parts of the UK could spell disaster for many species of insects, birdlife and mammals, the National Trust warns today.

The charity says three wet summers in a row in many regions could mean that creatures - ranging from craneflies (often called daddy-long-legs) to species of butterflies, members of the tit family, puffins and bats - may struggle to survive in some places.

Matthew Oates, a nature conservation adviser for the trust, said: "After two very poor years in a row we desperately need a good summer in 2009 - otherwise it's going to look increasingly grim for a wealth of wildlife in the UK.

"Climate change is not some future prediction of what might happen. It's happening now and having a serious impact on our countryside every year."

The warning comes in a yearly audit produced by the National Trust of how the weather in 2008 affected wildlife.

CONTINUE

NASA study links severe storm increases, global warming

PASADENA, Calif. -- The frequency of extremely high clouds in Earth's tropics -- the type associated with severe storms and rainfall -- is increasing as a result of global warming, according to a study by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Extremely high clouds, known as deep convective clouds, are typically associated with severe storms and rainfall. In this AIRS image of Hurricane Katrina, taken August 28, 2005, the day before Katrina made landfall in Louisiana, the eye of the storm was surrounded by a "super cluster" of 528 deep convective clouds (depicted in dark blue). The temperatures of the tops of such clouds are colder than 210 degrees Kelvin (-82 degrees Fahrenheit). Credit: NASA/JPL

In a presentation to the recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, JPL Senior Research Scientist Hartmut Aumann outlined the results of a study based on five years of data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft. The AIRS data were used to observe certain types of tropical clouds linked with severe storms, torrential rain and hail. The instrument typically detects about 6,000 of these clouds each day. Aumann and his team found a strong correlation between the frequency of these clouds and seasonal variations in the average sea surface temperature of the tropical oceans.

CONTINUE

Floods could follow ice in Midwest

Men shovel snow from the roof of a home after heavy snow blanketed the town of Crested Butte, Colo. on Friday, Dec., 26, 2008. Winter storm warnings were in effect Friday for parts of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and the western Dakotas, and a blizzard warning covered the mountains of southwest Colorado.

CHICAGO (AP) — Rain and rapidly rising temperatures accompanied by thick fog threatened to cause flooding Saturday in the Midwest after days of Arctic cold, heavy snow and ice.

Thick ice on roads that contributed to dozens of deaths had thawed and mountains of snow turned into pools and streams of water.

"It's a Catch 22," said Marisa Kollias, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Transportation. "We're getting rid of one problem, the ice, but we're getting another problem with the flooding."

The National Weather Service posted flood watches and warnings Saturday for parts of Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and Missouri. As much as 2 inches of rain fell in two hours during the night in west-central Illinois, the National Weather Service reported Saturday.

And as warm air collided with cold, the weather service posted tornado watches for parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois and Kansas.

After subzero temperatures in places earlier in the week, Saturday morning readings were in the 40s as far north as Cheboygan, Mich., at the top of the state's Lower Peninsula, the weather service said. However, up to 7 inches of snow is possible in the state Sunday, the agency said.

The weather service said the Chariton River was overflowing and causing minor flooding in Chariton, Iowa. Flood stage is 15 feet; the river was at 16.6 feet at 3 a.m. Saturday and expected to rise a bit more. It said road flooding was reported in parts of Missouri.

CONTINUE

Global food shortage pushes rice profits up

RICEGROWERS, which trades as SunRice, has brushed aside the global financial crisis and a disastrous drought in the Riverina to post a stunning 600 per cent boost in half-year profits.

SunRice is one of the largest rice companies in the world and among the biggest Australian exporters of branded processed foods. It owns the SunRice and Koala Rice brands, as well as the Always Fresh brand of Mediterranean-type products.

Strong global rice prices and the continued growth of its value-adding rice businesses generated the bumper half-year profits.

Prices for some rice products jumped threefold this year as a result of a global food shortage.

Ricegrowers posted a net profit for the six months to October 31 of $59 million, compared to $8.3 million for the same period last year - an increase of 611 per cent.

Revenue from its range of rice, rice cakes, microwave products and pickled vegetables rose nearly 30 per cent to $457.3 million for the first half.

CONTINUE

Tennessee sludge spill estimate grows to 1 billion gallons

(CNN) -- Estimates for the amount of thick sludge that gushed from a Tennessee coal plant this week have tripled to more than a billion gallons, as cleanup crews try to remove the goop from homes and railroads and halt its oozing into an adjacent river.

TVA officials originally said the cleanup would take four to six weeks. Now they say they aren't sure.

The sludge, a byproduct of the ash from coal combustion, was contained at a retention site at the Tennessee Valley Authority's power plant in Kingston, about 40 miles east of Knoxville. The retention wall breached early Monday, sending the sludge downhill and damaging 15 homes. All the residents were evacuated, and three homes were deemed uninhabitable, according to the TVA.

TVA's initial estimate for the spill was 1.8 million cubic yards or more than 360 million gallons of sludge. By Friday, the estimate reached 5.4 million cubic yards or more than 1 billion gallons -- enough to fill 1,660 Olympic-size swimming pools.

Environmental advocates say the ash contains concentrated levels of mercury and arsenic.

The plant sits on a tributary of the Tennessee River called the Clinch River. At least 300 acres of land has been coated by the sludge -- a bigger area than the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

A spokesman for TVA -- a federal corporation and the nation's largest public power company -- said the agency has never experienced a spill of this magnitude.

"There's a lot of ash there," spokesman John Moulton said Friday. "We are taking this very seriously. It is a big cleanup project, and we're focused on it 24 hours a day."

CONTINUE

NASA Mars photo leaked - wood found on mars!

Someone at NASA released a photo that they shouldn’t have, a picture of a piece of timber the size of a railroad tie, a photo that could get someone killed. There is no mistaking that the object in the print below is a piece of wood. NASA claims that Mars is a desert planet with no life at all. NASA lies, repeatedly.

Where would a piece of timber this size come from? There are vast forests on Mars, ones that are kept from the public. This piece of wood looks like it floated to its present location, being partially sunk in the soil. The ground around it is very interesting. Notice the flat rock formation of the soil and the crevices in between them. Does this look familiar? It appears to be the bed of a dried up pond. There had to be a significant amount of water in this area, water high enough to lift that railroad tie sized piece of timber and float is perhaps several miles. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showed that vast regions of the Red Planet have been altered by floods. This dried pond effect should come as no surprise.

This flood had to have happened within the past thirty or forty years because the wood is intact, though this is judging the rate of decay by Earth standards. Some may say that Mars did have water on it long ago and that it even had an atmosphere, which is true, but a piece of timber isn’t going to survive for thousands of years.

Both of the Viking Orbiters filmed vast forests on Mars, though no subsequent probe to the Red Planet has shot a single frame of film showing a tree. This was by design. The Viking photographs show more than just a few trees but rather thousands upon thousand of them. These trees appear to be much larger than Earth trees, having a leaf and branch system that is unique to Mars. The foliage spans much wider than a similar plants on Earth do, rising to who knows what heights. The spacing between them could be the result of the dying Martian atmosphere. Dense forests more than likely filled large areas of Mars back in the days when it had a breathable environment. There were undoubtedly several species of trees, and different varieties of underbrush, which are now extinct.

The Flood destroyed the Garden of Eden and other ancient worlds that God wanted destroyed such as Atlantis. The Ancient Egyptians spoke of a time that existed before Egypt. The Sphinx clearly shows signs of water erosion, which shows that it existed before the Flood and well before modern archeologists claim that it did. The same wiping out strategy was applied to worlds beyond the Earth. Mars has an ancient world that was destroyed, one with a face and a pyramid. So it isn’t so hard to believe that the moon did as well.

Many claim that the moon isn’t a moon at all but an alien object that was placed in Earth orbit. Some have called it Luna. They claim that the moon was not mentioned in the Biblical story of creation, but it was. The moon was referred to as “the lesser light that rules the night” in Genesis 1:16. The moon stopped in the sky in Joshua 10:30 but this had nothing to do with the alien presence there.

The aliens live on the surface of the moon, but this is in no way saying that there isn’t an alien presence inside the moon as well. If you take some time to use your photo editor with high-resolution photos of the moon, it won’t take you long to find these structures. NASA will suggest that you created this or that it is really part of a crater. Stop and ask yourself one question, if the moon really is as NASA claims that it is, then why are some photos classified and unavailable to the public while others are inked and blurred?

One of the most famous examples of this is the Apollo 16 “Earth rise” photo in which “the Earth” is rising over the moon. NASA says that the object in the picture is the Earth and few people question it. If you think for yourself, and look with an open mind, you will clearly see that this is a UFO. This is another craft off to the left, which NASA doesn’t even attempt to explain away.

The fact that trees can survive in such an atmosphere, and with much less water than Earth trees do, reveals their unique structure while offering hope for an increasingly polluted Earth. Since the Martian atmosphere is 95% carbon dioxide, these plants would have to thrive on it in a way much superior to Earth trees. They may give off oxygen, though I am using terrestrial vegetation for comparison, but they could give off another gas, one even toxic to humans. Seeding or drafting these trees in bulk could bring breathable air back to the Red Planet. If Mars was so altered by water, then where did all that water go? Some of it went into the soil, much of it is frozen at the poles, and a good percentage of it went into a lake. NASA didn’t need to spend all that money on the Phoenix Mission in order to search for water on Mars. All they had to do was look at their old photographs.

The only way that piece of timber got to where it was is by way of flood, and the only way that it separated from the tree that it was once a part of was by high and rapidly flowing water. Based on the findings of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, that piece of wood could’ve floated for some distance before coming to its final resting place.

The lake, although frozen, Mars having a mean surface temperature of -46 degrees C, must contain more than just water. There has to be some amebas and other single celled organisms in these waters. There are most likely fossils of Martian fish and perhaps even Martian animals. On Earth, old lake beds are a prime location in which to find dinosaur fossils. Why would Mars be any different?

If you examine the lake carefully, especially toward the right angle, you will notice two indentations. One is large and shallow while the other one, which is located near the right edge of the lake, is small but much deeper. These are due to the lake shifting as the result of temperature fluctuations.

NASA can keep telling its lies but the photos have slipped out and what a story they tell. NASA thought that the Opportunity Rover took a picture of the area in front of it, but did they honestly expect us to forget about the railroad sized piece of timber in the foreground? It’s time for NASA to come clean with the public. It’s time that they land one of those rovers in Cydonia, the Inca city, or in one of forests.

Image sources:

The high resolution picture, which this might have come from is at:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20040524a/site_B115_navcam_180_cyl_L-B118R1.jpg

The object is on the left hand side of the montage.

More photos:

Navigation Camera :: Sol 115 (27 images) - Text Only version
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity_n115.html
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/n/115/1N138388241EFF2700P1994R0M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/n/115/1N138388278EFF2700P1994L0M1.HTML

It can be seen in Navigation Photo Sol 118

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/n/119/1N138745027EFF2809P1987R0M1.HTML

Tom Arbino has his own UFO forum: www.ufo-secret-files.net

References:
www.livescience.com/space/080716-mars-water.html
www.marsdaily.com/reports/Frozen_Water_Confirmed_On_Mars_999.html

Honey Bees On Cocaine Dance More, Changing Ideas About The Insect Brain

In a study that challenges current ideas about the insect brain, researchers have found that honey bees on cocaine tend to exaggerate
ScienceDaily (Dec. 25, 2008) — In a study that challenges current ideas about the insect brain, researchers have found that honey bees on cocaine tend to exaggerate.

Normally, foraging honey bees alert their comrades to potential food sources only when they've found high quality nectar or pollen, and only when the hive is in need. They do this by performing a dance, called a "round" or "waggle" dance, on a specialized "dance floor" in the hive. The dance gives specific instructions that help the other bees find the food.

Foraging honey bees on cocaine are more likely to dance, regardless of the quality of the food they've found or the status of the hive, the authors of the study report.

The findings, detailed this month in the Journal of Experimental Biology, shed new light on the famous honey bee dance language, said University of Illinois entomology and neuroscience professor Gene Robinson, who led the study. The research also supports the idea that in certain circumstances, honey bees, like humans, are motivated by feelings of reward.

CONTINUE

Washington Governor Declares Statewide Emergency

Dec. 19, 2008: Snow collects on the branches of the Christmas tree in front of the New York Stock Exchange.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

SEATTLE — Gov. Chris Gregoire declared a winter storm emergency Wednesday as many Western Washington residents hoped for a traditional rainy Christmas after a week of heavy snow, jammed airports, closed roads and cabin fever.

"A number of counties and cities are struggling to meet the problems posed by this month's onslaught of snow and winter weather," Gregoire wrote. "Snowfall has reached record or near-record level in 30 of the state's 39 counties."

Her proclamation directed state agencies to support local emergency responses, freeing funds and activating the National Guard, the Washington State Guard and State Emergency Operations Center at Camp Murray, by Fort Lewis.

CONTINUE

Alert raised at Soufriere Hills Volcano

The Soufrière Hills Volcano on Montserrat has been erupting since 1995 and has rendered almost two-thirds of the island uninhabitable, including the former capital of Plymouth. (Photo: Greg Scott, Caribbean Helicopters)

BRADES, Montserrat, December 23, 2008 - Disaster preparedness officials in Montserrat have raised the hazard level of the Soufriere Hills Volcano following steadily increasing activity over the last 10 days.

The decision was taken at a National Disaster Preparedness and Response Advisory Committee (NDPRAC) meeting yesterday which was held to look at the possible impact of the activity on nearby communities and determine what preparatory actions should be taken.

Although not mandating any evacuation at this time, Director of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory (MVO) Dr Nicolas Fournier recommended that the hazard level be increased from three to four, due to the threat to areas north and west of the dome, and urged increased preparedness for those living in Zone B of the island, which includes Isles Bay, Waterworks, parts of Old Towne and the lower part of Happy Hill.

CONTINUE

Disasters killed more than 238,000 people in 2008

Cyclone Nargis claimed over 120 000 lives.

Catastrophes killed more than 238,000 people this year, with cyclone Nargis which swept through Myanmar accounting for more than half the deaths, a study by reinsurer Swiss Re showed on Thursday.

"While the total cost to society was 225 billion dollars (182 billion euros), 50 billion dollars was covered by property insurance, making 2008 the second costliest year ever in terms of insured losses," the world's biggest reinsurer said.

The worst year of natural and man-made catastrophes was 2005, with 374,042 people killed and 107 billion dollars in insured losses.

Cyclone Nargis accounted for the most fatalities in 2008, and the earthquake in Sichuan, China was the second most serious, killing 87,449 people.

"Most of the losses from these two events were not insured," added Swiss Re.

Hurricanes Ike and Gustav which hit the United States and the Caribbean were the most costly for insurers which carried affected insured risks of 24 million dollars.

The United Nations disaster management agency in October estimated that more than 230,000 people were killed by disasters during the first half of the year, with the economic cost reaching 35 billion dollars.

Tennessee: 400 acres coated by 500 million gallons of sludge

Tennessee sludge spill runs over homes, water

(CNN) -- A wall holding back 80 acres of sludge from a coal plant in central Tennessee broke this week, spilling more than 500 million gallons of waste into the surrounding area.

Environmental Protection Agency officials are on the scene and expect the cleanup to to take four to six weeks.

The sludge, a byproduct of ash from coal combustion, was contained at a retention site at the Tennessee Valley Authority's power plant in Kingston, about 40 miles east of Knoxville, agency officials said.

The retention wall breached early Monday, sending the sludge downhill and damaging 15 homes. All the residents were evacuated, and three homes were deemed uninhabitable, a TVA spokesman told CNN.

The plant sits on a tributary of the Tennessee River called the Clinch River.

"We deeply regret that a retention wall for ash containment at our Kingston Fossil Plant failed, resulting in an ash slide and damage to nearby homes," TVA said in a statement released Tuesday.

TVA spokesman Gil Francis told CNN that up to 400 acres of land had been coated by the sludge, a bigger area than the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Video footage showed sludge as high as 6 feet, burying porches and garage doors. The slide also downed nearby power lines, though the TVA said power had been restored to the area.

Francis said Environmental Protection Agency officials were on the scene and estimated the cleanup could take four to six weeks.

Some of the goop spilled into the tributary, but preliminary water quality test show that the drinking water at a nearby treatment plant meets standards.

"I don't want to drink it. I doesn't look healthy to me," Jody Miles, who fishes in the Clinch River, told CNN affiliate WBIR. "Do you reckon they can bring all this life back that's going to die from all this mess?"

CONTINUE

Whitewater rapids hit Washington suburb

Swift waters from a busted Montgomery County major pipeline have flooded a section of the Washington suburb, causing water outages and widespread panic.

The county's fire officials said on Tuesday that the water pipeline rupture occurred during the early morning commute and torrents of water trapped dozens of cars in four feet deep fast currents that inundated the affluent suburb to the northwest of Washington D.C., AP reported.

At least five people have been taken to hospital after their vehicles were overwhelmed by the surge, which gushed at a rate of 568,000 liters per minute.

The Montgomery County authorities ordered schools to close and put the district's trauma response divisions on alert for further rescue missions.

The Washington Suburban Sanitation Commission has repeatedly asked for the renovation of the area's old water and sewage system, which has plagued the county with frequent water outages.

Canada see its first white Christmas since '71

A man shovels his driveway in Caledon, Ont., on Sunday, Dec. 21, 2008, after a snowstorm hit overnight. (Sumran Bhan / CTV.ca)

The first day of winter brought wind-chill warnings, snow and a bevy of storms to cities across Canada on Sunday, potentially laying the groundwork for the first cross-country white Christmas in nearly four decades.

Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips told CTV Newsnet that "it looks like a very good chance" it will be a white Christmas for all parts of Canada for the first time since 1971.

"It's just sort of the beginning of winter, and it's a little much to expect when we have so many different climatic types in this country for it to be frozen and snow-covered from right across the huge country," he told CTV Newsnet on Sunday.

But with so much snow already on the ground, the veteran weather prognosticator said he thinks that any upcoming balmy Christmas Day temperatures will not be able to melt away the growing snowfall base.

"It may be in 40 years, the first one," he said.

CONTINUE

Snow, rain and ice blankets much of US

WASHINGTON (AFP) — A massive winter storm blanketed the US West Coast with snow, sleet and ice early Monday while blizzards and snow squalls struck the Northeast and Midwest, killing at least four people and making travel dangerous.

The storm snarled holiday air traffic across the country, with delays at major airports in San Francisco; Houston, Texas; Boston, Massachusetts; New Jersey and New York, officials said.

The fierce weather was blamed for the death of two people in a single-vehicle crash on Interstate Highway 80 east of Des Moines, Iowa.

Another weather-related fatality was reported in northwest Iowa when a farm tractor being used for snow removal slipped off the driveway and overturned, killing the driver, the Des Moines Register newspaper reported.

Drivers blinded by blizzard conditions created a 30-vehicle pile-up on Interstate 94 in western Michigan Sunday. Dozens of the vehicles were also involved in a series of other wrecks nearby, including one that killed a 31-year-old Illinois man, CNN television reported.

CONTINUE

Snowflake Maker to Improve Weather Forecasts New Experiments Help Scientists Better Understand Relationship Between Snowfall and Temperature

How does a snowflake form? A new generation of ice cloud chambers is set to give us the first detailed insightinto this delicate process and could even help weather forecasters better predict when snow is likely to fall.

Scientists are generating snowflakes to study the relationship between snowfall and temperature.

(Getty Images)
More Photos

Next year, Paul Connolly from the University of Manchester, UK, will study ice crystal aggregation in the Manchester Ice Cloud Chamber. This giant three-storey stainless steel cylinder can be cooled to temperatures as low as -50 °C to simulate the conditions that produce snow.

Ice crystals form when a burst of compressed air enters the tank. The air expands and cools, triggering water vapour in the chamber to freeze. As the ice crystals drift down the chamber they merge to create snowflakes.

Connolly's set-up includes a pair of laser beams that trigger a burst from a third laser when a flake crosses their path. This third laser projects a shadow of the flake onto a digital camera. Taking different images of the flakes as they fall will allow Connolly to gauge how their size changes during their journey down the cloud chamber.

CONTINUE

Change, but at what price?

After 2008 started with panic over food prices, the world seemed to be waking up to global warming. But then the recession hit

Ancient woodland in Britain is being felled at a faster rate than the Amazon rainforest. Photograph: Derek Croucher/Getty Images

No one could have predicted quite how dramatically 2008 would have ended. Even as President Bush was slashing his way through US environmental protection laws, president-elect Obama appointed Nobel prize-winning physicist Steve Chu as the next US energy secretary. Chu is seen as the repudiation of everything that Bush stood for, and predicts temperatures will rise by a staggering 6.1C by the end of the century if nothing is done. Although it does not mean the oil age is over, if you want a sign that 2008 was a tipping point, it could not have been clearer.

But go back to the start of the year. Empty shelves in Caracas, riots in India and Mexico, and rice shortages in Dhaka, Manila, and Kathmandu. Traders in at least 12 sub-Saharan African countries were hoarding food, and soaring maize and rice prices were leading to political instability. Governments were being forced one after the other to step in to protect supplies and control the cost of bread and dairy products.

The problem, said the analysts, was a mix of climate change and extreme weather leading to poor harvests in major grain-growing countries such as Australia. But the blame was also laid on the many millions of acres of maize, wheat and other crops planted in the US and elsewhere in 2007 to provide biofuels for cars rather than food for people. Catastrophe loomed, said the UN.

CONTINUE

Warnings of 'Catastrophic' Rise in Temperature -Catastrophic for the Environment and Humanity

Met Office warn of 'catastrophic' rise in temperature

A new study by the Met Office warns that the world could warm by more than 5C in the next 90 years, if emissions keep on rising. This would be catastrophic for the environment and for humanity. Dr Vicky Pope, Head of Climate Change Advice at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre explains the science

When it comes to climate change, scientific evidence provides critical information for decision making. Because governments need to understand the consequences of choosing one strategy over another they also need to understand what will happen if targets are missed or cannot be agreed by all countries. Failures could have far-reaching consequences and so the Met Office has conducted a series of ‘what if?’ climate projections, to give a better understanding of what those consequences might be.

CONTINUE

Zimbabwe: extinction looms in a paradise lost to guns, greed and hunger

Image :1 of 2

Martin Fletcher

At first it seemed a paradise. Baboons played on the dusty track ahead of us. Impala and zebra, wildebeest and spiral-horned kudu bounded into the bush as our vehicle approached. We stopped to admire a 3,000-year-old baobab tree with a trunk that dwarfed our four-wheel drive, and spotted a herd of African elephants. It seemed scarcely possible that this semi-arid land in the Lowveld of southeastern Zimbabwe could support so much wildlife.

It was only as we approached the eastern edge of the million-acre Save Valley Conservancy that we began to encounter the problems besetting this idyll. “Resettled farmers” had moved in - burning trees, building huts of mud and thatch, and clearing land in an improbable attempt to grow crops.

CONTINUE

'Forgotten' lake shows South's tough drought

A sailboat on a cradle rests on a once-submerged road that is now exposed from the lake bottom at Big Water Marina on Lake Hartwell in Starr, S.C., on Dec. 4.

View related photos

STARR, S.C. - A decaying highway, plunged deep underwater after Lake Hartwell was dammed in the 1950s, sits exposed once again across what remains of the bay outside Big Water Marina.

It's a depressing reminder of the toll from a stubborn Southern drought that only recently began to abate with replenishing rains this fall. Much of the region has recovered, but a ring stretching from northeast Georgia to the western Carolinas remains stuck in "extreme" drought.

And Hartwell, a massive 56,000-acre lake straddling Georgia-South Carolina state line, is near the epicenter. Even after a spate of recent downpours, its water line is nearly 18 feet below normal levels.

"We never thought we'd see it. We never thought the lake would go this far down," said Jane Davis, who built the marina from the ground up with her husband. "Everyone needs water, but Hartwell has finally given more water than it can take."

Forecasters say there's no telling when it will end.

CONTINUE

GIANT WAVES HIT ATOLLS

VILLAGERS of Luaniua and Pelau in the Malaita outer islands are reportedly suffering from severe food shortage as a result of continuous tidal surge onto their land.

Reports reaching the Solomon Star say the Atolls of Ontong Java have been badly hit and people there are now running out of food. Reports from the two affected villages say since Monday last week they have been experiencing rough seas that eventually turned into a tidal wave.

Chief Peter Kalali from the House of Chiefs of Luaniua and Pelau in a letter dated 11th December 2008 to the Ministry of Home Affairs and the National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) said the situation had affected the livelihood of the people.

“All their food crops have been washed away by the tidal wave,” Mr Kalali said in his letter, a copy of which the Solomon Star cited.

“Heavy rains, king tides and flooding have taken their toll on us and people are very scared. All our food crops have turned yellow and families are living on dry coconuts,” he said.

Mr Kalali also highlighted in his letter that villagers were starving because food crops such as taro and kakake, which was their staple, have been washed away by the waves.

He added that the tidal wave have also carried dead fish, corals and sea weeds causing the place to stink.

Provincial Member for Luaniua ward Wilson Sangahu when contacted yesterday told Solomon Star that attempts to talk to NDMO and the Ministry of Home Affairs for relief assistance have fallen on deaf ears.

Mr Sangahu said he called the Disaster Office in Honiara several times but was referred to the Disaster office in Auki.

“On behalf of the two stricken villages of Luaniua and Pelau we urged the national and provincial government to take this into consideration and act swiftly because our people are suffering,” he said.

The Disaster Office has confirmed that they have cited the letter; however they said the Director of the National Disaster Office is currently in Auki so he is unable to comment.

However, a spokesman said they are following up on the report.

Fierce winter storm locks Northeast in ice

	A flock of geese take to the air as snow falls December 19, 2008 in New York. The winter storm moved across the Midwest, leaving tens of thousands of households without power, and headed toward the Northeast where 4 to 6 inches (10-15cms) of snow was predicted for parts of New York City. 4:41 p.m. ET, 12/19/08
DON EMMERT / AFP/Getty Images

Snow freezes travel across country; hundreds of flights delayed, canceled

Falling at a rate of nearly 2 inches an hour, new snow began blanketing New England and New York on Friday, promising to lock the region in a state of suspended animation and knotting road and air traffic in the major transportation hubs of the Northeast.

After leaving “a big, big mess in the Midwest,” the storm arrived late Friday morning in New York, where subfreezing temperatures upstate meant residents should prepare for “a big old dump of snow,” said Bill Keneely, a forecaster for NBC Weather Channel.

As much as 15 inches of snow was forecast for areas north of Rochester, N.Y., while up to 14 inches was forecast for parts of Hartford, Conn. A foot was expected in Boston and Albany, N.Y.; in Buffalo, N.Y., snow was falling at a rate of 2 inches an hour.

CONTINUE

Snow and freezing rain knock out power, threatened wheat crops

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A blast of snow and freezing rain knocked out power, threatened wheat crops and could ruin the last shopping weekend before Christmas as a storm moved from the U.S. upper Midwest to the country's Northeast on Friday.

Snow was falling from Minnesota in the Midwest to Connecticut in the Northeast, with ice and freezing rain in northern Indiana, Ohio and western Pennsylvania. The storm has left 161,000 customers without electricity in Indiana, 47,000 in Illinois and 15,000 in Ohio.

The National Weather Service estimated more than 6 inches of snow would fall in much of New York State, as well as Connecticut and Massachusetts in a 12-hour period Friday.

American Electric Power Co Inc's Indiana Michigan Power unit reported the most outages with more than 94,000 customers out in Indiana.

CONTINUE

Heat Waves And Crop Losses Predicted For California

A vineyard in California, USA. Global warming will likely put enormous strain on California's water supply and energy systems and have a devastating impact on certain crops.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 19, 2008) — Global warming will likely put enormous strain on California's water supply and energy systems and have a devastating impact on certain crops.

Stanford researchers predict this outcome based on projections from two different emission scenarios. One assumes a continuing moderate increase in greenhouse gas emissions until 2100; the other assumes emissions would increase until mid-century and then start dropping off. Both of the scenarios indicate there will be more frequent heat waves and generally rising temperatures, the only difference being just how dramatic the increases will be.

"We will very likely see our current high temperatures much more often and also temperatures hotter than anything we've seen before under both projected levels of carbon dioxide emissions," said Michael Mastrandrea, a lecturer in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Environment and Resources and a research associate at the Woods Institute for the Environment. "This is something that's going to be a huge challenge for California to deal with in the future."

CONTINUE

Scientists May Have Found Ice on Moon

Craters near one of the moon's poles in a NASA archival photo.

Could there be ice on the moon?

A team of British researchers thinks so, and theorizes that the water could be put to use by residents of a future permanent lunar base.

Poring over data from NASA's 1998 Lunar Prospector probe, the Durham University scientists found that hydrogen on the moon tends to be concentrated in dark craters near the lunar poles — exactly where you'd expect water, permanently shielded from the sun's rays by the crater walls, to stay frozen.

"Water ice should be stable for billions of years on the moon provided that it receives no sunlight," explained Dr. Vincent Eke of the university's Institute for Computational Cosmology in a press release.

A NASA scientist said the results would help the space agency decide where to place a moon base, expected within the next 20 years.

Frigid Storm Closes California Freeways, Drops Snow in Malibu

Dec. 17: An ambulance rolls over and crashes in the snow in El Mirage, Calif.

• 
• 
• 

LOS ANGELES — Snow snarled major mountain highways and even dusted Malibu on Wednesday as a cold storm hit parts of California. One person was killed by a wind-related helicopter crash, and an overflowing river on the U.S.-Mexico border led to the evacuation of nearly two dozen people, rescues of about 50 horses and the deaths of four others.

Styming thousands of commuters and travelers, snow shut Interstate 15 over 4,190-foot Cajon Pass east of Los Angeles and roads through the San Gabriel Mountains connecting metropolitan Los Angeles to the commuter suburbs of Palmdale and Lancaster in the high desert to the north.

Interstate 5, a major trucking and travel route connecting Southern California with the Central Valley and Northern California, stayed open over 4,144-foot Tejon Pass most of the day, with on-and-off Highway Patrol escorts, then finally was shut down in the afternoon as conditions deteriorated. Massive backups developed below all the passes.

Click here for photos.

Calen Weiss, 19, of Tarzana, his brother and two friends wanted to go snowboarding at Big Bear in the San Bernardino Mountains but instead got stuck on I-15 in Cajon Pass for an hour as visibility fell to about 40 yards.

"It looks like Whoville, all snowy, but with less joy and more extreme misery," he said by phone from the Summit Inn.

CONTINUE

1,500 Parakeets Rescued From 2-room Apartment

(AP) Berlin officials said they have rescued 1,500 parakeets from a two-room apartment. City veterinarian Margit Platzer said the birds were flying freely around the apartment, which was "littered with feces, feathers and leftover food." Platzer said it took her team more than seven hours on Tuesday to catch all the birds with nets.

The birds were taken Wednesday to animal shelters in Berlin and elsewhere because there was not enough room for them at facilities in the capital.

Local media reported, without citing sources, that the owner gradually bought and bred the birds until his apartment was full, and that neighbors had complained about the noise and smell.

The retired man, who was not identified, could face charges for endangering the animals' safety and health.

Video: Scientists find hole in Earth's Magnetic field

Tidal waves displace 75,000 people

PAPUA New Guinea has been pummelled by non-stop tidal waves and unusually high tides that have forced 75,000 people from their homes this month, the United Nations says.

The autonomous PNG region of Bougainville, the Solomon Islands, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia were also affected by the high waves, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

"Half the population of (PNG's) Manus Island has been displaced," OCHA spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said.

"The government of Papua New Guinea has declared a state of national disaster and a team of OCHA experts should arrive Wednesday to examine their needs.

"The fact that the affected islands are scattered and the never-ending nature of the tidal waves make the evaluation of the situation very difficult."

Australia this week announced it will give $1 million to Papua New Guinea after the high sea swells inundated several provinces.

Las Vegas hit by rare snowstorm - could get 6 inches

Winter storm warning for Las Vegas, 6 inches of snow possible

Weather service says even the Strip could get half-foot of snow

All bundled up, Alexandria Hudson walks through the streets of Green Valley Ranch to pick up her child at the bus stop Wednesday afternoon. Snow fell Wednesday afternoon in much of the Las Vegas Valley.

A rare snowstorm blanketed the Las Vegas Valley today, delaying flights, causing widespread fender-benders and leading to the cancellation of several events. In the end, up to 6 inches of snow could fall in the valley, including on the Strip.

The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning in effect through 6 a.m. Thursday. The weather service said its Las Vegas office had reported 2 inches of snow by 4 p.m. and that total accumulations for most of the lower levels of the valley would be between 3 and 6 inches.

"The foothills should see amount of 5 to 10 inches overnight and the higher mountains between 1 and 2 feet of total snowfall," the weather service's warning said. An advisory from the weather service this afternoon called the snow event "extremely rare."

CONTINUE and HERE also

The Planet Gets Cooler in '08. Say What?

A wintry mix of sleet and freezing rain knocked out power to more than half a million homes and businesses in New England and upstate New York on Friday, Dec. 12, 2008

The 2008 climatological report: partly cloudy. Or partly sunny — it depends on your point of view, which underscores why it can be so easy to misunderstand the mechanism of climate change. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Tuesday released its weather analysis for the year and found that 2008 has been the coolest year since the turn of the century. Using data gathered from Britain's Hadley Centre, the University of East Anglia and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), the WMO reported that the average global temperature in 2008 was 57.74 degrees F (14.3 degrees C), cooler than the past several years. That's due in part to the chilling action of the climatological effect known as La Niña, which cooled the Pacific.

CONTINUE

Saturn Moon May Be Home To Ice Volcanoes

Titan in ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths as taken by Cassini space probe NASA JPL Saturn
(AP) Observations from the international Cassini spacecraft suggest Saturn's largest moon may have active or recently active ice volcanoes.

Radar images point to flows on the surface of Titan that could result from volcanoes spewing chilled liquid from the interior, mission scientists reported Monday.

Previous Titan flybys suggested ice volcanoes existed, and scientists believe they would erupt with ammonia, methane and water instead of lava.

The latest data "not only indicate that cryovolcanism has been going on on Titan in the recent geologic past, but might even be going on on Titan today," said Cassini scientist Jonathan Lunine of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Titan is one of the few bodies in the solar system with a significant atmosphere. Scientists believe methane gas breaks up in the atmosphere and forms clouds that rain methane.

CONTINUE

"Death map" shows heat a big hazard to Americans

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Heat is more likely to kill an American than an earthquake, and thunderstorms kill more than hurricanes do, according to a "death map" published on Tuesday.

Researchers who compiled the county-by-county look at what natural disasters kill Americans said they hope their study will help emergency preparedness officials plan better.

Heat and drought caused 19.6 percent of total deaths from natural hazards, with summer thunderstorms causing 18.8 percent and winter weather causing 18.1 percent, the team at the University of South Carolina found.

Earthquakes, wildfires and hurricanes combined were responsible for fewer than 5 percent of all hazard deaths.

Writing in BioMed Central's International Journal of Health Geographics, they said they hoped to dispel some myths about what the biggest threats to life and limb are.

"According to our results, the answer is heat," Susan Cutter and Kevin Borden of the University of South Carolina wrote in their report, which gathered data from 1970 to 2004.

CONTINUE

First-Ever Photo of Liquid on Extraterrestrial World

The Huygens probe has captured an image of what may be the first drop of liquid ever observed on an extraterrestrial surface.

The photo is evidence that liquids may exist on the surface of other planets and moons, not just frozen lakes. And liquid is more likely habitat for extraterrestrial life.

Among the pictures snapped by the Huygens probe after landing on Saturn's moon Titan in 2005, one appears to show a dewdrop made of methane that briefly formed on the edge of the probe itself (indicated by arrow at bottom of image on right). Scientists think heat from the probe caused humid air to rise and condense on the cold edge of the craft.

Though Huygens may have helped produce it, the methane drop is still the first liquid directly detected at a surface anywhere beyond Earth.

Like Earth, Titan has clouds, lakes and river channels, and it may be the only other place in the solar system where liquid evaporates from the surface and returns as rain. "Aside from Earth, it's the most exciting world there is," said lead author Erich Karkoschka of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

The Cassini space probe, which took data from above the moon after separating from the Huygens lander, detected what scientists believe are lakes of liquid methane on Titan's surface. Microbes that eat methane thrive on Earth, and scientists think pools of methane could be comfortable homes for similar organisms on Titan.

Because Titan's current atmosphere is a lot like the early Earth's, the lakes could be a lab for studying the origins and early evolution of life.

CONTINUE

A Giant Hole in Earth's Magnetic Field

Dec. 16, 2008: NASA's five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a breach in Earth's magnetic field ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist. Solar wind can flow in through the opening to "load up" the magnetosphere for powerful geomagnetic storms. But the breach itself is not the biggest surprise. Researchers are even more amazed at the strange and unexpected way it forms, overturning long-held ideas of space physics.

"At first I didn't believe it," says THEMIS project scientist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "This finding fundamentally alters our understanding of the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction."

The magnetosphere is a bubble of magnetism that surrounds Earth and protects us from solar wind. Exploring the bubble is a key goal of the THEMIS mission, launched in February 2007. The big discovery came on June 3, 2007, when the five probes serendipitously flew through the breach just as it was opening. Onboard sensors recorded a torrent of solar wind particles streaming into the magnetosphere, signaling an event of unexpected size and importance.

Right: One of the THEMIS probes exploring the space around Earth, an artist's concept. [more]

"The opening was huge—four times wider than Earth itself," says Wenhui Li, a space physicist at the University of New Hampshire who has been analyzing the data. Li's colleague Jimmy Raeder, also of New Hampshire, says "10²⁷ particles per second were flowing into the magnetosphere—that's a 1 followed by 27 zeros. This kind of influx is an order of magnitude greater than what we thought was possible."

CONTINUE

China Slaughters Thousands of Chickens After Finding Bird Flu

SHANGHAI -- Chinese agriculture officials ordered the slaughter of more than 300,000 chickens after they found poultry infected with a lethal form of avian influenza -- the first such outbreak publicly reported in mainland China since June.

The discovery of the H5N1 form of the bird flu virus in two areas of Jiangsu province northwest of Shanghai follows recent outbreaks in India, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, raising the risk of human infections during the winter.

After routine testing turned up signs of the H5N1 virus in chicken eggs on farms in two locales, the agriculture ministry said it moved to cull 377,000 chickens and ban the transport of poultry in or out of the affected areas.

Bird flu remains mainly a danger to poultry, not people, since it is not easily transmitted to humans. Just 38 cases of human H5N1 infection -- including 29 that led to deaths -- have been reported this year. That's minuscule compared with the number of people who die annually of regular influenza.

CONTINUE

NASA: 2 Trillion Tons Of Land Ice Melted Since '03

More than half of the loss of landlocked ice in the past five years has occurred in Greenland, based on measurements of ice weight by NASA's GRACE satellite.

(AP) More than 2 trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, according to new NASA satellite data that show the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming.

More than half of the loss of landlocked ice in the past five years has occurred in Greenland, based on measurements of ice weight by NASA's GRACE satellite, said NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke. The water melting from Greenland in the past five years would fill up about 11 Chesapeake Bays, he said, and the Greenland melt seems to be accelerating.

NASA scientists planned to present their findings Thursday at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. Luthcke said Greenland figures for the summer of 2008 aren't complete yet, but this year's ice loss, while still significant, won't be as severe as 2007.

The news was better for Alaska. After a precipitous drop in 2005, land ice increased slightly in 2008 because of large winter snowfalls, Luthcke said. Since 2003, when the NASA satellite started taking measurements, Alaska has lost 400 billion tons of land ice.

CONTINUE

Reef patterns show risk off Sumatra for another big quake

With coral reefs as their tea leaves, scientists are forecasting that in the next several decades there will be another major earthquake along the Sunda fault off Sumatra like the one that spawned the catastrophic tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004.

Kerry Sieh, formerly of the California Institute of Technology and now at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and colleagues write in the journal Science that a 2007 quake along a more southerly stretch of the fault represented only a first, partial rupture of that 400-mile section, which had been quiet for nearly two centuries. The researchers say this part of the fault, called the Mentawai section, is likely to be the site of at least one more major rupture.

As evidence, they point to the growth patterns of coral reefs in the region over the last 700 years. When a quake occurs, the seafloor rises up, effectively lowering the sea level so that shallow coral reefs are now above the surface. The reefs cannot grow upward, but their still-submerged portions grow outward.

CONTINUE

Panda habitat seriously affected in May earthquake

CHENGDU -- Pandas habitats, seriously affected in the May's earthquake, are in urgent need of restoration, an official said on Monday.

Pandas habitats seriously affected in the May's earthquake are in urgent need of restoration, an official said on Monday. [Agencies]

Forest coverage in the southwestern Sichuan quake-zone dropped by nearly 2 percentage points to 42.6 percent while 11.6 percent of the "ecological corridor", connecting isolated habitat areas with bamboo forests, was cut off, said Luo Zengbin, head deputy of the Sichuan Provincial Department of Forestry.

"The migration and breeding of rare animals such as pandas was hindered, as the corridor was cut off in many areas by the earthquake and ensuing landslides, mud-rock flows and quake lakes, " Luo said.

The isolation of pandas could prevent gene exchanges, he said.

The official called on international organizations to participate in restoring the panda habitats.

China has earmarked 9.4 billion yuan (1.37 billion US dollars) to restore forests in Sichuan.

The "giant panda ecological corridor" program launched in 1987 is an important measure in protecting the endangered species.

Field inspectors in Wolong nature reserve, a major habitat of giant pandas in Sichuan, said the earthquake triggered serious mountain landslides and damaged a huge area of forest. Panda caves collapsed. Bamboos were buried or destroyed and the water was polluted, posing a direct threat to the health of panda populations.

Get ready for worse climate change impacts

An extra billion people will face water shortage, cereal production in developing countries will drop and coastal regions will face more damage from floods and storms because of delay in combating climate change, says a leading expert.

The world should be prepared to face far worse effects of global warming than it is facing now, Martin Parry, a professor at the Imperial College in London, said in the backdrop of little substantial progress at the Dec 1-12 climate summit here.

Parry is also former co-chair of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working group and lead author of its seminal 2007 report.

In the report, the IPCC had said worldwide greenhouse gas emissions had to peak by 2015 and then decrease if global warming was to be kept within two degrees Celsius. Starting with the European Union, governments around the world have talked of this as a desirable target.

Parry has put together from his own research and from studies around the world the effect of delay on this goal in areas such as water supply, food, health, coastal areas and other ecosystems.

Even if the world manages to reach an emission peak at 2015 and then cuts 80 percent of its emissions by 2050 compared to 1990 - a very ambitious target, since it will mean an annual six percent emission reduction - 0.4 to 1.7 billion people will face water shortage due to the climate change already taking place, something that Parry calls 'inevitable damage'.

CONTINUE

U.S. researchers identify new region of magnetosphere

A new region of the magnetosphere, which is the invisible shield of magnetic fields and electrically charged particles that surround and protect Earth from the onslaught of the solar wind, has been recently discovered.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) -- A new analysis of the measurements of five different satellites has revealed the existence of the warm plasma cloak, a new region of the magnetosphere, which is the invisible shield of magnetic fields and electrically charged particles that surround and protect Earth from the onslaught of the solar wind.

CONTINUE

Lost world: More than 1,000 species discovered in a decade

More than a thousand new species have been discovered in the Greater Mekong Region of Southeast Asia in the last decade, according to a new report from WWF.

Among the 1,068 new species discovered between 1997 and 2007 were the world’s largest huntsman spider, with a leg span of 30 centimetres, and the hot pink cyanide-producing 'dragon millipede'.

Most species were discovered in the largely unexplored jungles and wetlands. However, the Laotian rock rat, thought to be extinct 11 million years ago, was first encountered by scientists in a local food market.

The 'dragon millipede' (left) can produce cyanide to protect itself. The aggressive Heteropoda dagmarae (right) was found in Laos

A Theloderma licin frog was found in Thailand

The Siamese Peninsula pitviper was found slithering through the rafters of a restaurant in Khao Yai National Park in Thailand.

'This region is like what I read about as a child in the stories of Charles Darwin,' said Dr Thomas Ziegler, Curator at the Cologne Zoo.

'It is a great feeling being in an unexplored area and to document its biodiversity for the first time… both enigmatic and beautiful,' he said.

The findings, highlighted in First Contact in the Greater Mekong report, include 519 plants, 279 fish, 88 frogs, 88 spiders, 46 lizards, 22 snakes, 15 mammals, 4 birds, 4 turtles, 2 salamanders and a toad.

Scientists have found 22 species of snake including this green pitviper

The region comprises the six countries through which the Mekong River flows including Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and the southern Chinese province of Yunnan.

It is estimated thousands of new invertebrate species were also discovered during this period, further highlighting the region’s immense biodiversity.

'It doesn’t get any better than this,' said Stuart Chapman, Director of WWF’s Greater Mekong Programme.

'We thought discoveries of this scale were confined to the history books. This reaffirms the Greater Mekong’s place on the world map of conservation priorities.'

The report stresses economic development and environmental protection must go hand-in-hand to ensure the survival of the Greater Mekong's astonishing array of species and natural habitats.

The Laotian rock rat was thought to be extinct but was found in a local food market

'This poorly understood biodiversity is facing unprecedented pressure… for scientists, this means that almost every field survey yields new diversity, but documenting it is a race against time,' said Raoul Bain, Biodiversity Specialist from the American Museum of Natural History.

The report recommends what is urgently needed to protect the biodiversity of the region is a formal, cross-border agreement by the governments of the Greater Mekong.

'Who knows what else is out there waiting to be discovered, but what is clear is that there is plenty more where this came from,' said Chapman.

British Archaeologists Discover 2,000-Year-Old Brain

The British archaeologists discovered an ancient skull containing an amazing surprise. The scientists found inside the skull a well-preserved brain which the experts called a “freak of preservation.” A statement released on Friday announced that the brain was more than 2,000 years old, being the oldest discovered in Britain.

Richard Hall, a director of York Archaeological Trust, said the skull had been removed from its owner’s body sometime before the Roman invasion of Britain and it had been found this fall inside a muddy hole during a dig at the University of York in the northern England.

Rachel Cubbitt, the one who dug it out, said that she had discovered that the skull had something inside it while she was cleaning it. In search for the moving thing, she saw that the skull contained an unusual yellow substance, which after further tests at York Hospital, proved to be brain tissue.

CONTINUE

A calm survivor has a drink perched on sandbags as the rising river Ouse flooded parts of York after torrential weekend rain

Read more »

Genetically Modified Hawaii

CORNY ISSUE Genetically engineered corn is fast taking over conventional crops in the Aloha State.
©iStockphoto.com/Vladimir Vladimirov

Just beyond the defunct Koloa Sugar Mill on the Hawaiian island of Kauai's south shore are acres of cornfields that have sprouted over the past decade in a state made famous by its pineapples, bananas and sugarcane crops. Slightly out of place in the Aloha State, they otherwise look quite conventional, although in fact they are not: The crop is among a bounty of others in the state that are grown from seeds that have been genetically engineered or modified (GM) to produce sturdier plants able to withstand weather and disease as well as thrive in the face of insects and chemicals sprayed on them to kill destructive weeds.

In front of one plot of corn stalks is a red and white sign warning, "Danger: pesticides. Keep out." Tacked to it is a list containing 15 chemicals that may have been applied to the crop. In this case, the chemicals circled are the herbicides pendimethalin (brand name: Prowl), dicamba (Banvel) and atrazine, the latter of which is banned in the European Union (E.U.) because of its link to birth defects in frogs that live in groundwater contaminated with it.

I pass these corn fields every day when I go to the beach to go swimming," says Marty Kuala, 68, a 36-year resident of the town Koloa who worked in a plant nursery (that grew native plants such as naupaka, a’ali’i, and naio) in 2005. "It's kind of a new thing that we're starting to see these fields [of genetically modified or engineered crops] all over the place. GMOs [genetically modified organisms] are growing in the Mahaulepu area on Kauai's south shore and even in the large populated areas of Lihue, our biggest town."

CONTINUE

Did magnetic blip trigger mass extinction?

Rising hot material upset convection in Earth's core, says new theory

More than 250 million years ago, a plume of super-hot material began rising through Earth's mantle, upsetting convection in the core and throwing the planet's magnetic field into disarray. That event may have caused one of the worst mass extinction events in the planet's history, leaving behind a barren volcanic wasteland something like this scene from modern-day Iceland.

It was a dying on a scale never seen before or since on Earth. The slaughter was everywhere; the fertile ocean and balmy supercontinent Pangea were transformed into killing fields, littered with the bodies of ancient animals. By the time the dust had settled on the Permian-Triassic mass extinction 250 million years ago, 90 percent of life on the planet had been snuffed out.

Now a new theory suggests the catastrophe was set in motion 15 million years earlier, deep in the Earth. On the edge of the molten outer core, a plume of super-hot material began rising through the mantle, upsetting convection in the core and throwing the planet's magnetic field into disarray.

The weakening of Earth's magnetic field exposed the surface to a shower of cosmic radiation, says Yukio Isozaki of the University of Tokyo. He believes the radiation broke nitrogen in the atmosphere into ions that acted as seeds for clouds enshrouding the planet.

CONTINUE

Action urged on Gulf of Mexico's dead zone

Scientists say pollution from cities and farms needs to be curtailed now

NEW ORLEANS - Scientists are urging immediate government action to reduce urban and Midwest farmland runoff blamed for feeding an 8,000-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

The oxygen-deprived pool of water has grown alarmingly off the mouth of the Mississippi River, and a report on Thursday by the National Research Council exhorted the federal government to take quick steps to avoid a tipping point and avert an ecosystem collapse similar to what has happened in Chesapeake Bay and Denmark's coastal waters. The council is a scientific and technology non-profit institution created by Congress.

"Action and progress ... have been stalled for years," the report said in calling for "decisive, immediate actions" to curtail polluting runoff from several Midwestern states that feed the Mississippi River and are blamed as factors in the dead zone's growth.

Continue

Ice storm cripples north-east US

Advertisement

The aftermath of the ice storm

As many as 1m people have been left without power in the north-eastern US after one of the worst ice storms in a decade crippled the electricity grid.

States of emergency have been declared in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and in parts of Maine and New York state.

Officials say the damage is extensive and it could take several days before all power is restored. Temperatures are forecast to remain below freezing.

At least four people are so far thought to have died as a result of the storm.

The body of a public works supervisor was recovered from a reservoir in Marlborough, Massachusetts, on Saturday, a day after he responded to a call about tree branches downed by the storm.

Meanwhile, a man in Danville, New Hampshire, died of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by the generator he was using to heat his camper van. A couple also died in Glenville, New York, when a generator filled their house with the gas.

A severe ice storm in December last year was blamed for the deaths of at least 22 people in the central US.

'Extensive' damage....Continue

The Mysterious Case of Disappearing Acorns – Squirrels Starving

Image: A hungry squirrel in Virginia (Corbis)

Is Mother Nature calling it quits? Along with the baffling collapse of bee populations worldwide to other strange natural phenomena, we can now add the bizarre disappearance of acorns in widespread areas along the eastern seaboard – Virginia, Pennsylvania, Nova Scotia, and even as far away as the Midwest.

"I'm used to seeing so many acorns around and out in the field, it's something I just didn't believe," says Rod Simmons, a field botantist based in Arlington, Virginia, where at this time of year, acorns are usually everywhere – either underfoot or falling from oaks. "But this is not just not a good year for oaks. It's a zero year. There's zero production. I've never seen anything like this before."

He wasn’t the only one who noticed this odd occurrence:

......CONTINUE

Titanic Telescope Scans Skies For E.T.

CNET's Daniel Terdiman Visits World's First Large-Scale Telescope Meant For The SETI Project

In a tiny California town town within sight of Mount Shasta and Mount Lassen is the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, home to the Allen Telescope Array -- the only large-scale telescope fully at the disposal of the SETI project. (Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

(CNET) From the perspective of an extraterrestrial, I wonder if there would be much difference between a human and a deer.

You might think that's an odd question, but on Wednesday, as I stood in an open plain here, at around 5,000 feet, with Mount Shasta visible far off to the north, a stunning blue sky, I watched a deer poking around at the base of what on its own would be an odd piece of astronomy equipment.

In fact, though, the 20-foot-diameter antenna the deer was investigating was just one of 42 identical units that make up the Allen Telescope Array, currently the world's first large-scale telescope meant for the full-time use of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project.

The ATA, as it's called, opened in late 2007 with these first 42 antennas. Designed to work in pairs, the antennas are intended to work together to mimic the stellar investigatory capacity of far larger single dishes. And the ATA is hardly finished. In fact, it is planned to eventually be made up of 350 of these antennas.

CONTINUE

Biggest full moon for years enhanced by shooting stars

If the full moon tonight looks unusually large, it is not your imagination – it is the biggest and brightest full moon to be seen for 15 years.

Each month the Moon makes a full orbit around the Earth in a slightly oval-shaped path, and tonight it will swing by the Earth at its closest distance, or perigee. It will pass by 356,613km (221,595 miles) away, which is about 28,000km closer than average.

The unusual feature of tonight is that the perigee also coincides with a full moon, which will make it appear 14 per cent bigger and some 30 per cent brighter than most full moons this year – so long as the clouds hold off from blocking the view.

The next closest encounter with a full moon this large will not be until November 14, 2016.

CONTINUE

More than 800 dogs die after Italian river bursts its banks

The kennel housed about 1,000 dogs but authorities were only able to save 270 animals when the Petrace river, near the city of Reggio di Calabria, overflowed.

Three people have died in storms that have battered Italy since Wednesday.

The River Tiber, which runs through Rome and which has risen to its highest level in four decades, was expected to reach its peak late on Friday.

Residents living nearby were on alert in case the river’s banks burst, while some people in Ostia, southwest of the capital, were due to be evacuated from their homes. Rail traffic in the region was also affected.

Venice has also suffered serious flooding for the second time in two weeks, with the waters reaching 1.05m (3ft 6in) on Thursday.

Last week, the acqua alta (high water) reached 1.56m (5ft 2in), the highest level since 1986, before falling back again.

Major earthquake expected along tsunami's fault line

Another major earthquake along the same fault line that sparked the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami is likely in the next several decades — and it could unleash as much or more destruction, new research suggests.

The tsunami, which killed an estimated 250,000 people, was sparked by a magnitude-9.2 earthquake along the Sunda fault off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. A major 8.4 temblor and aftershocks along a southern section of that fault called the Mentawi patch shook up the region last year.

Now, analysis of coral growth patterns along the Mentawi patch suggests that the 2007 quake may have been just the first episode in an "earthquake supercycle," or set of large quakes that have occurred in the region roughly every 200 years for the past seven centuries. Sections of the Earth's crust called tectonic plates are likely to rupture again under the Mentawi patch within several decades, possibly generating a magnitude-8.8 temblor, according to research published in this week's Science.

CONTINUE

Food shortage is top priority

Food shortage is top priority

NAIROBI, December 12 - President Mwai Kibaki has assured Kenyans that the government is addressing the current food shortage and the high prices of basic food commodities as a matter of priority.

Addressing the nation at Nyayo National Stadium during this year’s Jamhuri Day celebrations on Friday, the president said the government had put measures in place to increase food production and sustain national food security.

“The Government recently announced interventions aimed at streamlining the distribution of maize in the country which include duty free importation of maize and the use of the strategic grain reserves to stabilize food prices,” President Kibaki said.

The President disclosed that following consultations with maize millers on the necessary modalities, the government had agreed to release 700,000 bags of maize directly to the millers.

In addition, the government will import a further five million bags of maize through the National Cereals and Produce Board, saying these measures are intended to ensure that the commodity is not only readily available but also affordable.

CONTINUE

Drought means workers hungry in US produce capital

MENDOTA, Calif. (AP) — Idled farm workers are searching for food in the nation's most prolific agricultural region, where a double blow of drought and a court-ordered cutback of water supplies has caused hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

This bedraggled town is struggling with an unemployment rate that city officials say is 40 percent and rising. This month, 600 farm families depleted the cupboards of the local food bank, which turned away families — more than 100 of them — for the first time.

"We're supposed to supply the world," said Mendota Mayor Robert Silva, "and people are starving."

The state's most dire water shortage in three decades is expected to erase more than 55,000 jobs across the fertile San Joaquin Valley by summer and drive up food prices across the nation, university economists predict.

"People being thrown out of work are the ones who can least afford it," said Richard Howitt, a professor of agriculture economics at the University of California-Davis, who estimates that $1.6 billion in agriculture-related wages across the valley will be lost in the coming months because of dwindling water.

CONTINUE

Heavy rains pound Italy, Rome declares emergency

AP – A view of St. Peter's Basilica as a swollen Tiber River flows beneath the Sant'Angelo Bridge, in Rome, …

ROME – Rome declared a state of emergency as the swollen Tiber river threatened to flood Friday and the death toll from the heavy rains battering much of Italy rose to four.

The Civil Protection Department said the Tiber had risen about 16 feet (5 meters) in the past two days and warned it might burst its banks.

Officials evacuated Gypsy camps along the Tiber's banks and boats broke loose from their moorings in the surging water. The smaller Aniene river, which flows into the Tiber, already overflowed, forcing officials to close down some streets in Rome and evacuate hundreds of people.

"It is as if there has been an earthquake," Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno told the daily La Repubblica.

Tourists snapped pictures as the roiling Tiber surged underneath the city's bridges. Lumir, an Afghan hound, sported a blue raincoat Friday as his owner watched the Tiber rise in Rome.

CONTINUE

Zoo life is killing elephants

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Zoo life can be deadly for elephants, researchers concluded in a study that found wild elephants live longer than their captive sisters.

The average African female elephant lived to be just under 17 in a zoo but female elephants living natural lives in Amboseli National Park in Kenya lived an average of 56 years, they found.

Stress and obesity are the likely killers, Ros Clubb of Britain's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and colleagues found.

"In zoos, the welfare of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) and Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) has long caused concern," they wrote in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

"Infanticide, Herpes, tuberculosis, lameness, infertility, and stereotypic behavior are prevalent, and zoo elephant populations are not self-sustaining without importation."

The international team of researchers studied more than 4,500 individual elephants, including about half the global zoo population.

"Neither infant nor juvenile mortality differed between populations, but adult females died earlier in zoos than in Amboseli," they wrote.

Supermassive Problems with Black Holes

Composite image of spiral galaxy M81.

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Wisconsin/D.Pooley & CfA/A.Zezas; Optical: NASA/ESA/CfA/A.Zezas

UV: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA/J.Huchra et al.; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA

A gravitational point source more than 70 million times the mass of the Sun is theorized to inhabit this galactic core. Are scientists misinterpreting their own observations?

In a recent press release from the Chandra X-ray Observatory astronomers announced that black holes exhibit similar behavior regardless of their mass. Whether they are ten times the mass of a typical star or many millions of times more massive, they tear matter apart and forcefully draw it into unknown regions where the so-called physical laws of our universe no longer apply.

Black holes are said to cause space and time itself to twist and warp so that the past becomes the future and velocity calculations yield impossible solutions. Matter inside of a black hole occupies no volume at all, yet retains gravitational acceleration so great that not even light can escape its attraction – thus they are "black" holes because they cannot be detected with optical telescopes. Although they are impossible to observe directly over 90% of galaxies in the universe are said to harbor these perilous maws.

CONTINUE

Rare snow covers New Orleans, other areas

Flights disrupted, while parts of Alabama and N.C. watch for flooding

Snow accumulates on some plants as a street car passes by at Lee Circle in New Orleans during a rare snow fall Thursday morning December 11, 2008.

NEW ORLEANS - A rare snowfall blanketed south Louisiana and parts of Mississippi Thursday, closing schools, government offices and bridges, triggering crashes on major highways and leaving thousands of people without power.

Parts of Louisiana were expected to get up to four inches of snow. Snow also covered a broad swath of Mississippi, including the Jackson area, and closed schools in more than a dozen districts. The National Weather Service in Jackson said up to 8 inches was possible in the southern and eastern parts of the state.

A heavy band of snow coated windshields and grassy areas in New Orleans, where the National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning.

CONTINUE

Drought parches much of the U.S: At least 36 states expect to face water shortages

(CNN) -- Marjorye Heeney knew something was wrong when she saw a bulging cloud of black dust darken the sky.

Receding water left this bathtub-like ring on the rock walls of Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border.

She then heard an eerie, train-like whistle as fierce winds rattled her front door and windows. When she looked outside, hordes of grasshoppers and crows swarmed over her father's barren farm. After the storm broke, her father walked outside and muttered curses as he scanned the horizon for rain clouds.

"I can remember my dad just watching the sky so closely," Heeney says. "A sprinkle would excite him so much."

That's how Heeney, now 83, describes growing up on an Oklahoma farm during the Dust Bowl storms in the 1930s. For much of that decade, "black blizzards" -- formed by a prolonged drought and poor farming techniques -- ravaged much of the nation.

Now a new generation of Americans is again anxiously looking to the sky. Drought has returned to the United States, and some warn that more tough days are ahead.

The value of water is starting to become apparent in America. Over the past three years a drought has affected large swaths of the country, and conflicts over water usage may become commonplace in the future, climatologists say.

CONTINUE

China's Pandas face winter food shortages

Giant pandas living in China's southwest quake-ravaged Sichuan province face the risk of starvation this winter

SHANGHAI (AFP) — Giant pandas living in China's southwest quake-ravaged Sichuan province face the risk of starvation this winter due to severe food shortages, state media reported Thursday.

One panda had already died despite emergency efforts by the Wolong Panda Breeding Centre, China's best known reserve, and other centres have reported similar cases, the Shanghai Morning Post reported.

"Pandas are facing an extremely difficult winter as the earthquake destroyed much of their habitat and ruined most bamboo at low altitudes," Wolong's director Zhang Hemin was quoted as saying.

CONTINUE

Tree's rapid decline sounds alarm on global warming

WASHINGTON — The whitebark pine, a tree found in the high elevations of the western U.S. and Canada, is being killed as a consequence of global warming and should be protected as an endangered species, an environmental group formally told the Interior Department Tuesday.

If the federal government accepts the scientific arguments in a petition by the Natural Resources Defense Council, it would be the first time a wide-ranging tree has been added to the list. The NRDC also sees an endangered designation as a warning about worsening climate change.

CONTINUE

Water found in hot planet's orbit

The atmosphere of the fiery planet was analysed by measuring heat radiation

Scientists say they have found evidence for water vapour in the atmosphere of a planet 63 light-years from Earth.

The "hot Jupiter" planet's surface temperatures exceed 900C.

Writing in the journal Nature the scientists say their discovery may help find planets that can support life.

In a separate study, Nasa say they have found carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the same planet.

Molten core

The planet known as HD 189733b is classed as a hot Jupiter due to its fiery molten centre and heavily gaseous atmosphere, which mimic's the atmosphere of Jupiter, the gas giant in our own galaxy.

CONTINUE

Genetic Seed Banks Needed for Livestock, Too [Video]

On average, one local breed of cattle, chickens, goats, pigs or sheep becomes extinct each month

The Ankole cattle of Uganda boast long, curved horns. The breed has thrived in this eastern African country for millennia thanks to its ability to subsist on poor forage and limited water [see video here]. But facing growing consumer demand for milk, these native cattle are increasingly being replaced by European Holstein-Friesian cows—known for their distinctive black patches and their ability to produce prodigious quantities of milk—and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns that Ankole could become extinct within 20 years.

CONTINUE

Environment minister calls for a 'food Kyoto' as a billion people face starvation

Hilary Benn to propose global action to secure food supplies as population booms – along with starvation

Britain and the world face a "perfect storm" of threats to food security unless world leaders agree a global deal to tackle rising prices and environmental damage, the environment secretary Hilary Benn will warn tonight.
Benn will say there are a range of threats to producing enough food to feed an expected global population of 9 billion people by the middle of this century and will call for an international agreement to tackle global warming.

CONTINUE

Fifth of world's corals already dead, say experts

POZNAN, Poland (AFP) – Almost a fifth of the planet's coral reefs have died and carbon emissions are largely to blame, according to an NGO study released Wednesday.
The report, released by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, warned that on current trends, growing levels of greenhouse gases will destroy many of the remaining reefs over the next 20 to 40 years.
"If nothing is done to substantially cut emissions, we could effectively lose coral reefs as we know them, with major coral extinctions," said Clive Wilkinson, the organisation's coordinator.
The paper was issued on the sidelines of the December 1-12 negotiations on a new global treaty on climate change, taking place under the UN flag.
Half a billion people around the world depend on coral reefs for food and tourism, according to a common estimate.
CONTINUE

Hubble telescope finds carbon dioxide on extrasolar planet

Hubble Space Telescope has discovered carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star, the U.S. space agency NASA reported on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- This breakthrough is an important step toward finding chemical biotracers of extraterrestrial life, said NASA.The Jupiter-sized planet, called HD 189733b, lies 63 light-years away. It is too hot for life, but the Hubble observations are a proof-of-concept demonstration that the basic chemistry for life can be measured on planets orbiting other stars. Organic compounds also can be a by-product of life processes and their detection on an Earthlike planet someday may provide the first evidence of life beyond our planet.

CONTINUE

Rich nations must plan for floods, heat and drought now

Two thousand people killed during a summer heatwave; mosquitoes at Heathrow carrying malaria parasites picked up from infected holidaymakers; road-builders switching to a melt-resistant tarmac.
If anyone is in any doubt that climate change is already affecting the UK, this is your answer. "It's not just a question of impacts in the future. We are actually looking at impacts right now," said Chris West, director of the UK Climate Impacts Programme. His job is to advise the government, private and voluntary sectors on how changes to the UK's climate will affect how they operate.
The most severe and immediate impacts of climate change will hit developing countries. But the rich, developed world will also be affected, and adapting to the changes will be extremely expensive.

CONTINUE

Rare 50 year Arctic Blast Sets Sights On Southern California.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA - December 8, 2008 (OWSweather.com) Rare 50 year Arctic Blast Sets Sights On Southern California.
With a week away, and a sure sign of things to come, OWSweather.com is making preparations on the server to handle the traffic from this next event. UJEAS is in line with the majority if not all the other models in keeping a near historical arctic air mass into the Southern California region.
With a warm November, Southern California is finally ready for cold storms to make their way in. Resort level snow will be likely next week, and in pretty hefty amounts if things stay on track. OWSweather.com Meteorologist Kevin Martin predicts a 50 year event. While Martin is usually conservative on these events, the pattern highly favors it. "We are in a pre-1950 type pattern, "said Martin. "We know we are due for a winter storm sometime this year. The type we may be dealing with will be ranked up there with the known years before 1950, which set record low daytime temperatures into the forecast region. With this, may come low elevation snow."
Forecaster Cameron Venable is seeing very cold temperatures in the Los Angeles areas as well. Torrance is not usually known for winter weather, thus making this an interesting event for Venable to track.
"Temperatures in Siberia, Russia will be -81 degrees this week, "said Martin. "With those type of temperatures the arctic air mass has to spill somewhere. Our answer of the exact track will become more clear this week. All residents in the mountain communities should prepare this week for very cold, winter weather, with snow."
Indications are a second, colder storm could hit near the 18th-22nd time-frame. The details on that will have to be sorted out.

80,000 birds to die in Hong Kong flu scare

HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- Authorities in Hong Kong ordered about 80,000 chickens killed Tuesday after discovering dozens of birds had died of bird flu at a farm in the territory.

The order requires all chickens within a 3 kilometer (2-mile) radius of the farm where the dead chickens were discovered Monday to be culled, said Dr. York Chow, Hong Kong's food and health secretary.

"We have discovered up to 60 dead chickens in that farm. After a series of tests, we have confirmed this morning that the chickens did die from the H5 virus," Chow told reporters.

One other farm is affected by the order, he said.

Health officials worldwide have long feared a major human outbreak of the H5N1 flu virus, which has infected numerous bird species in Asia, Europe and Africa. The disease has been passed from poultry to humans in some cases, resulting in more than 200 deaths since 2003.

Human-to-human transmission of avian flu is rare, but officials worry it could mutate and become a deadly pandemic.

UN says climate change may uproot six million annually

POZNAN, Poland, Dec 8 (Reuters) - The impact of climate change could uproot around six million people each year, half of them because of weather disasters like floods and storms, a top U.N. official said on Monday.

The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) was making plans based on conservative estimates that global warming would force between 200 million and 250 million people from their homes by mid-century, said L. Craig Johnstone, the U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees.

"That means a displacement of something like six million people a year -- that's a staggering number," he told Reuters on the sidelines of the Dec. 1-12 U.N. climate talks in Poland.

"Our operating assumption is to cover the minimum ... but we're not anywhere near being able to cover that right now," he said.

Johnstone said relief agencies would need to aid almost three million people a year displaced by sudden disasters.

Another three million would likely migrate due to gradual changes like rising sea levels, and be more able to plan.

UNHCR statistics show 67 million people were uprooted around the world at the end of 2007, 25 million of them because of natural disasters.

Johnstone said steps to limit greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change would not be enough to prevent rising disasters or conflict over resources, which would hit the poorest people hardest.

"You can expect that as you have droughts, as you have scarcity of resources ... it will increase tensions and it will increase conflict," he said.

But plans could be made to deal with disasters because experts understood which areas of the world would likely be affected, he said.

Predicted global warming impacts include more intense storms hitting coastal areas in Asia and the Caribbean, and more frequent floods and droughts in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Johnstone said aid agencies would need to boost the relief supplies they keep in stock for emergencies by 10 to 20 times.

"(Climate change) adds a substantial additional burden to humanity," he said. "(UNHCR's) presence in the world corresponds almost perfectly with the hotspots ... So we will be called on to help and we need to be prepared for that."

He added that a new global climate pact due to be agreed by the end of 2009 in Copenhagen should include funding to prepare for disasters, because it would save money in the long run. (Reporting by Megan Rowling, editing by Diana Abdallah)

Global Warming Pulled A Fast One

Sun-lovers that we are, we’ve always said that we remain skeptical but hopeful with regard to global warming. Now it appears that we may have less reason to hope.

In a twist that’s worthy of a mention in a certain Alanis Morissette song, it turns out that melting Antarctic ice may actually work against climate change.

Collapsed ice sheets – the go-to evidence of global warming – appear to be nature’s way of maintaining homeostasis. From the Guardian article:

CONTINUE

Montserrat volcano continues violent explosions

OLVESTON, Montserrat: Montserrat's volcano fired glowing red rocks and towers of gray ash into the sky early Friday for the fourth time this week, but no injuries or damage were reported, scientists said.

The pre-dawn blast followed three explosions earlier in the week, which released blistering gases and steam from inside a hardened lava dome topping the Soufriere Hills volcano, according to Roderick Stewart, director of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory.

The first explosion on Tuesday at the cloud-shrouded volcano — the first in nearly six months — occurred without any seismic activity. Subsequent explosions sent glowing streaks of red from pyroclastic flows down the mountain's western side.

"The activity this week has demonstrated that explosions and pyroclastic flows do occur without any warning whatsoever," said Stewart, one of the scientists who monitor the volcano and report any changes to the island's 4,500 residents, who live in northern areas declared safe.

The volcano sprang to life in 1995. More than half the British Caribbean territory's 12,000 inhabitants moved away. An eruption in 1997 buried much of the south and killed 19 people.

Emergency Storage Food Among Products in Highest Demand

25 Mountain House cases

At the end of 2008, there are three consumer marketplaces that are experiencing record sales volumes—firearms, precious metals, and emergency storage food. Crisis preparedness is increasingly the theme for those seeking a refuge for their money and comfort from their concerns.

Minneapolis (Vocus/PRWEB ) December 6, 2008 – Gun dealers all over the United States are having a hard time keeping any inventory on hand for anxious customers. Reports are that guns and ammunition are selling at levels up to 50% higher than previous records.

CONTINUE

Food pantry stacked with patrons Lines grow as hunger hits home

Photo by Mark Garfinkel

If you want to measure the economic crisis without tallying billion-dollar bailouts or stock market losses, just count the people in line for their monthly food pickup at the American Red Cross Food Pantry in Roxbury.

It’s a line that stretches down Proctor Street onto the Clifford Park baseball fields on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, when the busiest food pantry in the region serves a record number of clients.

“People are worried. It’s a scary out time out there,” said Maureen Schnellmann, head of Red Cross food and nutrition programs. “One of the things that I think that’s happened is people are afraid even beyond perhaps what they need to be, and that fear across classes and economic backgrounds makes people retract a little.”

The Greater Boston Food Bank, which distributes 28 million pounds of food and grocery products annually to more than 600 hunger-relief agencies, considers the Roxbury pantry to be its busiest client, a spokeswoman said.

And it’s only getting busier. The pantry served a record-breaking 72,000 low-income households in the fiscal year that ended June 30. This year, the pantry is on track to break that record by serving 95,000 clients, Schnellmann said.

During Thanksgiving alone, the pantry served 2,600 families over two days, pushing the number of households served in November to 10,000, Red Cross figures show. Annually, the pantry distributes 611,189 pounds of food worth $673,502, a spokeswoman said.

CONTINUE

Himalayas melting in Nepal

Climate change is having a very visible effect in the world's highest mountains, especially on the Nepal side of the Himalayas.

Charles Haviland took a plane trip to eastern Nepal for this report.

'Moses project' to secure future of Venice

It sounds like something only a Bond villain could dream up: a fiendishly clever but astronomically expensive project to turn back the tide with giant steel gates bolted to the sea floor.

By Nick Squires in Venice
Last Updated: 1:19PM GMT 07 Dec 2008

Previous

1 of 3 Images

Next

How Project Moses will protect Venice

A man walks on Piazza San Marco during floods that have left Venice 'under water' Photo: AP

The Moses project is aimed at solving the problem of how to safeguard Venice, which recently experienced its worst flooding in 22 years Photo: AP

The Moses project, however, is reality, not fantasy, and its purpose is to solve the 1,000- year-old problem of how to safeguard the irreplaceable art and architecture of Venice, which appeared so under threat in last week's "acqua alta".

Art and architecture remained intact after Monday's floods, the fourth most severe rise in water levels since records began in 1872, but Venetians were split over whether the Moses scheme could have prevented the "deluge".

"If Moses had been in operation on Monday, Venice would not have flooded," said Elena Zambardi, spokeswoman for the Consorzio Venezia Nuova, a consortium of engineering firms which is building the Moses barrier.

CONTINUE

UN is told that Earth needs an asteroid shield

Scientists call for £68m a year to detect danger, and more for spacecraft to defend against it

A group of the world's leading scientists has urged the United Nations to establish an international network to search the skies for asteroids on a collision course with Earth. The spaceguard system would also be responsible for deploying spacecraft that could destroy or deflect incoming objects.

The group - which includes the Royal Society president Lord Rees and environmentalist Crispin Tickell - said that the UN needed to act as a matter of urgency. Although an asteroid collision with the planet is a relatively remote risk, the consequences of a strike would be devastating.

An asteroid that struck the Earth 65 million years ago wiped out the dinosaurs and 70 per cent of the species then living on the planet. The destruction of the Tunguska region of Siberia in 1908 is known to have been caused by the impact of a large extraterrestrial object.

CONTINUE

A SILENT TSUNAMI

A SILENT tsunami of hunger is engulfing the world, afflicting nearly a billion people in 60 countries and killing 25,000 men, women and children every day. The global food crisis, triggered by high prices, shortages and bad weather, is deepening as the world's economy moves into recession. Millions more people are now facing poverty, starvation, disease and death.

The World Bank is predicting that 967 million people will now go hungry in 2008, 44 million more than in 2007. That means that almost one in every six people on the planet is not getting enough food to stay healthy.

Children's growth is being stunted, immune systems are being destroyed and fatal diseases like diarrhoea, measles and malaria are spreading.

CONTINUE

Herds of caribou are dwindling from Climate Change

Native hunters say climate affecting herds

POZNAN, Poland (AP) — Chief Bill Erasmus of the Dene nation in northern Canada brought a stark warning about the climate crisis: The once abundant herds of caribou are dwindling, rivers are running lower and the ice is too thin to hunt on.

Erasmus raised his concerns in recent days on the sidelines of a U.N. climate conference, seeking to ensure that North America's indigenous peoples are not left out in the cold when it comes to any global warming negotiations.

Erasmus, the 54-year-old elected leader of 30,000 native Americans in Canada, and representatives of other indigenous peoples met with the U.N.'s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, and have lobbied national delegations to recognize them as an "expert group" that can participate in the talks like other nongovernment organizations.

CONTINUE

Songbird at risk of extinction, warns UN

Cerulean warbler Dendroica cerulea

OTTAWA - The first time Bruce Di Labio heard the distinct song of the cerulean warbler, he could not see the bird itself. It was tucked away high in the canopy of trees, and Di Labio left without catching a glimpse of the bright blue ball of feathers.

That was in 1973.

"I wanted to see this bird so badly but it just wouldn't show itself," Di Labio, 50, said. "That's something I'll always remember about the cerulean warbler - how well it can hide."

The elusive songbird is now at risk of extinction, according to the United Nations. A UN resolution passed on Friday grants the bird full protection from hunters, along with a pledge to reduce damage resulting from pollution and climate change.

CONTINUE

Observing Jupiter to understand Earth

Magnetic substorms on Earth disrupt orbiting satellites

, including telecommunication satellites and global positioning systems. This mysterious phenomenon has been studied with ESA's Cluster satellites, comparing it with magnetic substorms on the giant planet Jupiter for a better understanding.

How the magnetosphere gets stormy

Planets such as Mercury, Earth or Jupiter that have their own magnetic field are protected by the magnetic bubble that it generates.

During a magnetic substorm on Earth, particles located tens of thousands kilometres on the nightside are energised and hurled earthward within a few minutes. This creates colourful aurorae and excites the near-Earth environment, disrupting communications between Earth and orbiting satellites and affecting global positioning systems. Despite decades of space-based research, several aspects of this phenomenon remain unknown.

CONTINUE

UN: 21 new species in danger of extinction

A Cheetah

ROME (AFP) — Twenty-one animal species, including the cheetah, three dolphin families and an Egyptian vulture, were added to the list of those in danger of extinction by a UN conference that ended Friday.

Six other bird species as well as manatees have also been placed on the list of animals benefiting from increased protections, called list I.

In addition, next year has been proclaimed the "year of the gorilla" to help the survival of threatened species.

The findings were made at a conference of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals.

Several types of sharks have been placed on the so-called list II of threatened species, including two families of Mako sharks in the Mediterranean whose population have fallen off by 96 percent in recent years due to overfishing.

CONTINUE

Report: USA ignoring climate change threat

I know we're in the middle of a cold snap in the East, but here's a post about global warming to chew on. (And even though parts of the USA have been unusually cold for the past couple of weeks, the Associated Press reports that Nordic ski events in the Czech Republic had to be canceled this week due to the unusual warmth and lack of snow.)

According to a report released this week from Yale University, U.S. municipalities and other organizations most at risk of sustaining damage from climate change are not adapting enough to counteract the potential dangers of higher global temperatures. The report is titled "The Climate Crisis and the Adaption Myth."

"Despite a half century of climate change that has already significantly affected temperature and precipitation patterns and has already had widespread ecological and hydrological impacts, and despite a near certainty that the United States will experience at least as much climate change in the coming decades just as a result of current atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, little adaptation has occurred," reports Robert Repetto, the report author and, until recently, a Yale professor of economics.

Some of the report's findings include: CONTINUE

Hubble Sees a Celestial 'Snow Globe'

Hubble catches an instantaneous glimpse of many hundreds of thousands of stars moving about in the globular cluster M13. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Like a whirl of shiny flakes sparkling in a snow globe, many hundreds of thousands of stars move about in the globular cluster M13, as Hubble catches an instantaneous glimpse of one of the brightest and best-known globular clusters in the northern sky. This glittering metropolis of stars is easily found in the winter sky in the constellation Hercules, and can even be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

M13 is home to over 100,000 stars and located at a distance of 25,000 light-years. These stars are packed so closely together in a ball approximately 150 light-years across that they will spend their entire lives whirling around in the cluster.

Story HERE

2008 will be coolest year of the decade

Global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, but cooler temperature is not evidence that global warming is slowing, say climate scientists

This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07.

Story HERE

Megathrust earthquake could hit Asia 'at any time'

A devastating "megathrust" earthquake could occur at any time off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, according to new research. Previous quakes have failed to release all of the energy that has built up over hundreds of years, leaving the fault zone vulnerable to another large earthquake.

Using GPS, field measurements, radar data and seismological records, a team of international researchers investigated the parameters and reconstructed the events of two massive earthquakes, measuring 8.4 and 7.9 on the Richter scale, which occurred in the Mentawai area in 2007.

Previous models of how earthquakes work had suggested that the same fault would rupture in the same way and at regular, predictable time intervals. But the researchers found that the 2007 quakes ruptured only a fraction of the area affected by the giant 1833 earthquake, indicating that a tectonic plate boundary can rupture in different patterns depending on local differences in stress.

"What we see here is that the 2007 earthquake had at least a very big overlap with the 1833 earthquake, but it was very much smaller; in other words, it was an entirely different earthquake," says John McCloskey, a geophysicist at the University of Ulster, UK.

Fault at fault

CONTINUE

Avian cholera threatens Arctic eider duck colonies

Common eider ducks have been dying off in parts of Hudson Strait and northern Hudson Bay as a result of avian cholera.

Canadian scientists say they fear avian cholera could put the future of some eider duck colonies in the Arctic in jeopardy.

Avian cholera is a potent bacteria-based disease that has affected common eider duck colonies in southern Nunavut and in the Nunavik region of northern Quebec in the last few years.

"It is having devastating impacts on some of the largest colonies in the Canadian Arctic," said Grant Gilchrist, a research scientist with the National Wildlife Research Centre in Ottawa.

While avian cholera is highly contagious among waterfowl and other bird species, it cannot be passed on to humans.

Story HERE

Camels found wandering in Mexican border city

Police officers restrain two stray camels in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2008. The two camels, named Toby and Yu, escaped from a nearby warehouse Wednesday, before they were controlled by the police officers and tied to a tree.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — It may have seemed like a mirage: Two camels nibbling on a pine tree along a street in this desert metropolis on the Texas border. Police tried lassoing the animals, which lunged at the officers with snapping teeth as onlookers chuckled.

But in the end, officials say all it took was some juicy green leaves on a branch held by the caretaker to lure the camels back into captivity.

Police spokesman Jaime Torres says the camels named Yull and Tobi escaped early Wednesday from the warehouse of a businessman, who had bought the animals for a planned amusement park.

Mexico has seen a rash of escaped animals lately, including four tigers, a 500-pound lion and a five-ton elephant.

NASA releases composite image of Tycho supernova remnant

The Tycho supernova remnant is shown in this composite image which combines infrared and X-ray views obtained with NASA's Spitzer and Chandra space observatories and the Calar Alto observatory in Spain in this handout from NASA released to Reuters December 3, 2008. The remnant was analysed more than four centuries after the star exploded. The explosion, witnessed by Tycho Brahe and other astronomers of that era, makes it the oldest ever seen in the Milky Way.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

CONTINUE

Man-made noise in world's seas threatens wildlife

ROME (Reuters) - Man-made noise in the world's seas and oceans is becoming an increasing threat to whales, dolphins and turtles who use sound to communicate, forage for food and find mates, wildlife experts said on Wednesday.

Rumbling ship engines, seismic surveys by oil and gas companies, and intrusive military sonars are triggering an "acoustic fog and cacophony of sounds" underwater, scaring marine animals and affecting their behavior.

"There is now evidence linking loud underwater noises with some major strandings of marine mammals, especially deep diving beaked whales," Mark Simmonds, Science Director of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, told a news conference in Rome.

CONTINUE

Qatar looks to grow food in Kenya

The Gulf state has joined a growing list of rich countries that want to grow food in poor countries

Aerial view of Lamu island, off the Kenyan coast, where Qatar proposes to fund a £2.4bn port as part of a land deal with Nairobi. Photograph: Yann Arthus-Bertrand/Corbis

Qatar has asked Kenya to lease it 40,000 hectares of land to grow crops as part of a proposed package that would also see the Gulf state fund a new £2.4bn port on the popular tourist island of Lamu off the east African country.

The deal is the latest example of wealthy countries and companies trying to secure food supplies from the developing world.

Other Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have also been negotiating leases of large tracts of farmland in countries such as Sudan and Senegal since the global food shortages and price rises earlier this year.

CONTINUE

Is This The World’s First Global Warming Induced Mammal Extinction?

Australia has what’s been termed the highest rate of mammals facing extinction of any country in the developed world. Twenty two percent are threaten. And news just in suggests that another one might have already checked out. The rare white lemuroid possum (pictured right) hasn’t been sighted for the past three years. Scientists are concerned it might have the ignominious distinction of being the world’s first mammal sent to extinction by global warming.

And it’s not only mammals that are under threat. The Mary River Turtle (left picture) is also having a tough time of it. But more on them later. Back to the White Possum.

This cute bundle of fur, only found above 1000m (3280 ft) in the mountains of the Daintree rainforest of far north Queensland, where the cool cloud forests help maintain their body temperature. Apparently they struggle to survive when temperatures rise above 30°C for four or five hours. Scientists fear that record high temperatures in the 2005 summer may have decimated the population.

CONTINUE

Venus, Jupiter and the Moon

December 2, 2008—
The heavens smiled down on Earth Monday in a rare celestial trifecta of Venus, Jupiter, and the moon.

The planets aligned—an event known as a conjunction—Sunday night, and were joined by a thin sliver of moon on Monday.

(Related: "Sky Show December 1: Jupiter, Venus, Moon Make 'Frown'" [December 1, 2008].)

The rare planetary meeting was visible from all parts of the world, even from light-polluted cities such as Hong Kong and New York.

People in Asia witnessed a smiley face (above, photographed from Manila, Philippines), while skywatchers in the United States saw a frown.

The three brightest objects in the sky were so tightly gathered that one could eclipse them with a thumb, according to NASA's Web site.

The next visible Venus-Jupiter conjunction will be on the evening of March 14, 2012, but the two planets will appear farther apart in the sky.

Story HERE

Iran to send animals into space

TEHRAN, December 2 (RIA Novosti) - Iran plans to send exploratory rockets into space with live animals on board, paving the way for manned space flights, a space research official said on Tuesday.

Mohammad Ebrahimi, deputy head of Iran's Aerospace Research Institute, said Iran plans to send Kavoshgar (Explorer) 3 and 4 rockets into space in the near future.

The Kavoshgar 2 was successfully launched on Wednesday. The rocket consisted of a carrier, space-lab and restoration system.

Ebrahimi said the rocket analyzed air pressure and wind speed, and conducted astronomical tests at altitudes of 50 to 200 km.

The Kavoshgar 2 is a two-stage solid fuel rocket capable of carrying a small payload and reentering the lower atmosphere with a high degree of accuracy. Iran insists that its space program has no military goals.

Historic center of Venice flooded

Tourists taking photos in the flooded Saint Mark's square in Venice on Monday.(Manuel Silvestri/Reuters)


The worst flooding in Venice in more than 20 years forced residents and tourists to wade through knee-high water Monday.

City officials said the sea level topped 61 inches (156 centimeters) on Monday, well past the 40-inch (110-centimeter) flood mark, following heavy rains. Alarms went off to alert citizens in the morning.

"There are very few streets that are water-free," said a city spokesman, Enzo Bon.

Among the spots affected was St. Mark's Square, the landmark piazza that is the lowest point in the city.

Workers were unable to install the raised wooden walkways used during flooding because the water rose too high and too quickly. The floods forced many of the water taxis to suspend service, Bon said.

TV footage showed people rolling up their pants or wearing rubber boots as they walked through the water. Some had plastic wrapped around their legs, while some tourists in St. Mark's walked on chairs left in the piazza.

The last time Venice registered such high waters was in 1986, city officials said. The all-time record was 194 centimeters (76 inches) in 1966.

Cloning: Exploitation of earth’s resources, places very existence of life forms in jeopardy

Cloning: saving the endangered species

By having exploited the earth’s resources in unbridled manner, for our needs (and greed), we have placed the numbers and very existence of several other life forms in jeopardy. We have aggrandized more land, used up more water, exploited more plants and animals, and produced more waste (much of which will not go away).

This has upset nature’s fragile equilibrium. One direct result of this is the endangerment of some life forms. A few examples are the Amazon rain forest, the panda, the great apes, cheetah, Asiatic lion and even the common Indian vulture. Some such as the dodo bird and the great American bison have been lost forever.

The folly

Fortunately, realization of the folly has dawned on us, even if late in the day. And several groups and international agencies are putting together contingency plans using new ideas of resurrection. Advances in biology in the last decades have come into use in this welcome move.

How does one repopulate an endangered species? By making more of them using the biological steps involved in reproduction. The method of in vitro fertilization (making test tube babies) is one such. Indeed, it has become so standard by now that it is hard to believe that it was only thirty years ago that Drs. Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards helped produce Louise Brown, the first test tube human baby.

CONTINUE