March 25, 2008

• NoteWorthy News 3-25-08
  ((Natural Events Edition - Part 1 of 2))

  aNNa'S NoTe:  I'm going to try to date them, to keep them in order.  I'm emptying my hopper, so they could go back a ways... bear with me!

   CAMEL FLU? 
  http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/id...ws
  Aug 8, 07 - Hundreds of camels have died in Saudi Arabia this week from a mystery ailment.  The Agriculture Ministry has said 232 camels died in the space of four days in the Dawasir Valley, 400 km (250 miles) south of Riyadh. King Abdullah has promised compensation for owners, who say the real number of deaths is far higher.

  Agriculture ministry officials have denied an infectious disease caused the deaths and blamed them on animal feed supplied by food storage authorities.  "The disease has to be limited to one place to prevent it spreading and then they have to find a serum," said camel breeder Hamad al-Harthy, who talked of hundreds of deaths.

  Camels are big business in the desert kingdom and are traded by Bedouin tribes for thousands of dollars each. The animals are used for racing and their meat is also prized.
  aNNa'S NoTe:  That's a lot of camels... I hope the shieks have gotten over the illness hump.  Get it, hump...?  Snort!!  LoL!!

   WE'RE MELTING, WE'RE MELTING...!  
  http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20070927-9999-1n27icemelt.html
  Sept 27, 07 - The Arctic Ocean is more than 3,000 miles from Southern California, but the rapid disappearance of sea ice at the top of the world could be altering weather patterns down here.  Three years ago, computer forecast models predicted that in 2050, the reduced ice mass would cause climate shifts that would result in a drought in the western United States. But the ice is melting far faster than climatologists thought it would. So much ice has disappeared that the Arctic today looks much like what scientists thought it would in 2050. It's as if the atmosphere hit the fast-forward button.

  The predicted climate changes also may have arrived, with much of the West in the midst of the kind of severe drought that geoscientist Jacob Sewall had envisioned for 2050. Los Angeles just finished its driest year on record, and San Diego had its fourth driest. Over the past eight years, average flow on the Colorado River, one of San Diego County's major sources of water, has been at its lowest level in more than a century. Reservoir levels at Lake Mead and Lake Powell have declined sharply. If the forecast models are correct and the vanishing ice is responsible, this could be the beginning of weather changes that might someday leave the West perpetually parched and strain water resources even further than they are now.

  “Every one of my colleagues, when we talk, we're all amazed by how fast things are happening,” said Tim Barnett, a researcher at the University of California San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.  ...Mark Serreze, a research associate at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said he believes the Arctic could be completely ice-free in the summer by 2030. A couple of years ago, he thought that wouldn't occur until at least 2070.

    “As sea ice melts away, the excellent reflector (snow and ice) is replaced by the poor reflector (ocean), putting more sunlight (heat) into the system,” said Don Perovich, a research geophysicist at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H. “This additional heat causes more melting ... putting more sunlight into the system, causing more melting.”

  “The average person should start thinking seriously about where their water comes from now, what they're doing with it, and where the water will come from in 10 to 20 years,” he said. “I don't know why people don't take it more seriously,” he said. “We're not going to have enough water for what we're doing. Nobody's facing up to it.”

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7139797.stm
  Dec 12 - Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice. Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years. Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss. Summer melting this year reduced the ice cover to 4.13 million sq km, the smallest ever extent in modern times.

  Remarkably, this stunning low point was not even incorporated into the model runs of Professor Maslowski and his team, which used data sets from 1979 to 2004 to constrain their future projections. "Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007," the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC. "So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative."
  aNNa'S NoTe:  Have you ever read Revelation?  Heat and burning Earth are main themes.  This gives plausibility to that, don'tcha think?  I mean, it makes it a little more real.  More pending.  Of course, don't ask the AoC.  Karen Armstrong (its spokesperson) says Revelation is 'an unfortuate book' and that 'it was never meant to be read literally'.  Yeah, just fables, folks...  By the way, that chart is enlargeable...

   WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE 
  http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8TAG0HG0&show_article=1
  Dec 4, 07 - Hurricane-force winds and heavy rain battered the Northwest for a second day Monday, killing at least two people and leaving entire communities dark and isolated as the storms blocked roads with trees, power lines, high water and mud. Dozens of people stranded by flood waters required rescue as the second of two storms blew through, and Oregon transportation officials warned drivers not to attempt passage through the Coast Range. "This storm is hitting the coast so hard, it's not leaving any road open," Transportation Department spokeswoman Christine Miles said.

  The first wave of severe weather in the Northwest, which hit Sunday, was expected to reach the Upper Midwest with snow Tuesday, the National Weather Service said. That region had already been battered over the weekend by ice and snow before the storm blew into the Northeast on Monday. The governors of Washington and Oregon declared states of emergency, which will allow for easier aid to stricken communities.

  Mudslides halted north-south Amtrak passenger train service between Eugene, Ore., and Vancouver, British Columbia, and flooding forced the indefinite closure of Interstate 5, the main route between Seattle and Portland. To the east, snowslides temporarily closed major Cascade Mountain passes carrying traffic on Interstate 90 and U.S. 2. Most major roads in southwestern Washington's Grays Harbor and Pacific counties were closed, and virtually all roads into the coastal city of Aberdeen were cut off, officials said.

  "In 30 years of law enforcement, it's as bad as I've ever seen," said Grays Harbor County Sheriff Michael J. Whelan, whose own truck was smashed in his driveway by a falling tree.
  aNNa'S NoTe:  Long over with, but for the record, there it is.  Not that hurricanes are what Washington needs to worry about.  Five words: San Juan de Fuca, baby.  Which of course will set off St. Helens (and worse, Ranier) and trigger one helluva tsunami.  They ain't a'gonna get out, one way or another.  Probably one of THE dumbest places in the world you could possibly live, BTW.

   NOROVIRUS PANDEMIC IN UK 
  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2008/01/04/noindex/nnoro104.xml
  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article3176710.ece
  Jan 4, 07 - The winter vomiting bug norovirus has struck 2.8million people, with health professionals braced for another rise as people return to schools and offices. The virus - which causes projectile vomiting, diarrhoea, mild fevers and headaches - is striking down more than 200,000 a week, according to official estimates. Three hospitals have been placed on red alert, while hundreds of wards up and down the country have been closed to new patients as the number of beds being taken up by bug victims reaches critical levels.

  Schools have even begun sending warning letters to parents explaining the symptoms while employers are calling on staff to stay away from work 48 hours after they have recovered to stem the spread of the virus.  Norovirus can prove deadly for vulnerable people, such as children and the elderly. The impact of the bug has been exacerbated by a new outbreak of flu with those most at risk now being given antiviral drugs by their doctors.

  A statement said: “This season we have seen an increase in reports of norovirus cases, almost double the number reported for the same period last year.
  aNNa'S NoTe:  I am Legend came out this week.  I'm SOOOOOOO looking forward to renting it!  And yeah, this is a small scale of what I forsee happening next January with the bird flu.
  
   PLAGUE: A GROWING THREAT 
  http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23011754-5013605,00.html
  Jan 6, 07 - MOSQUITOES have reached plague proportions in parts of Sydney amid freak breeding conditions and claims by residents the insects are growing stronger and smarter.  Numbers rose 150 per cent along the Parramatta River during 2007 as higher rainfall and unusually large king tides created an ideal environment for hatching larvae. The population reached its highest level in 15 years of testing around mangroves and tidal wetlands opposite Sydney Olympic Park.

  Figures from City of Ryde Council's mosquito-trapping program also found Aedes vigilax - a species of saltwater mosquito with an especially painful bite - reached unprecedented levels last year, increasing to more than 50 per cent of the total population.  "It's as if the mozzies have evolved," Melrose Park resident Hast Soran told The Sunday Telegraph. "They are faster and smarter - they know how to get away and how to hide."
  aNNa'S NoTe:  Brian always calls kids who are not sick but living with sickies "carrier monkeys".  I think there should be a re-name... to "carrier mozzies".  More fitting, for what's ahead.  And here, if you count West Nile...

   FREAK TORNADOS IN JANUARY 
  http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8U1T55G0&show_article=1
  http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=4103328
  Jan 8 - A possible tornado damaged homes in central Arkansas on Tuesday, a day after a freak cluster of January twisters struck the unseasonably warm Midwest and demolished houses, knocked a railroad locomotive off its tracks and briefly shuttered a courthouse.

  A line of thunderstorms stretched across the region Tuesday and a tornado watched remained in effect during the afternoon in parts of central and eastern Arkansas, and western Tennessee, the National Weather Service said. The tornadoes developed as temperatures rose to record highs across wide areas of the country. Tornadoes were reported or suspected Monday in southwest Missouri, southeastern Wisconsin, Arkansas, Illinois and Oklahoma. Monday's storms also poured more than 5 inches of rain on north- central Indiana, causing near-record flooding that threatened a dam on the Tippecanoe River, and one man drowned while attempting to evacuated in Remington after a creek flooded, said Karen Wilson, Jasper County emergency management director.

  "I have never seen damage like this in the summertime when we have potential for tornadoes," Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said. "To see something like this in January is mind-boggling to me."

   PLAGUE: A GROWING THREAT 
  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22655919/
  Jan 14, 07 - Plague, the disease that devastated medieval Europe, is re-emerging worldwide and poses a growing but overlooked threat, researchers warned on Tuesday.  While it has only killed some 100 to 200 people annually over the past 20 years, plague has appeared in new countries in recent decades and is now shifting into Africa, Michael Begon, an ecologist at the University of Liverpool and colleagues said.

  Rodents carry plague, which is virtually impossible to wipe out and moves through the animal world as a constant threat to humans, Begon said. Both forms can kill within days if not treated with antibiotics. "You can't realistically get rid of all the rodents in the world," he said in a telephone interview. "Plague appears to be on the increase, and for the first time there have been major outbreaks in Africa."

   VACCINE OVERHAUL 
  http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=4325538
  http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2008Feb21/0,4670,FluVaccine,00.html
  Feb 21 - Next year's flu vaccine is getting a complete overhaul to provide protection against three new and different influenza strains _ hopefully better protection than this year's version.  Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration unanimously backed the new recipe on Thursday, echoing an earlier decision by the World Health Organization. It's a highly unusual move: Seldom are more than one or two strains swapped out from one year to the next.  Now the question is whether vaccine manufacturers can make such a big change in time to produce more than 100 million doses by the fall.
  aNNa'S NoTe:  Being a conspiracy theorist, I foresee one of two things happening:  a)  They will use this 'change' to inject the population with something nasty/invasive/contagious/all-of-the-above, OR b) it'll be the wrong 'new' strain and will do a WORSE job protecting people, accounting for a greater number of deaths when the bird flu hits... or worse, it'll pull an I am Legend and hurt the population.  I don't want the shot because of 'a'.  I DO want the shot, because I was the only one to get the flu shot this year (and the only healthy person who skipped both bouts of the flu that hit our family).  Toss a coin.  Y'win or you lose, it's 50-50.

   ST. HELENS SHTUFF 
  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22732065/
  Steam seeping from a fracture atop the lava dome in Mount St. Helens' crater and the mountain's first noteworthy seismic activity since 2004 have caught scientists' attention this week as signs that something is moving inside it.   ..."It was interesting enough to take some pictures," said Pallister, a private pilot who works in the hazards section of the volcano observatory.

  After landing, he learned that a magnitude-2.9 earthquake had registered on seismographs at an observatory in Vancouver. That was followed by a small tremor that lasted nearly an hour and a half, an unusually long period, punctuated by a second quake of magnitude 2.7 — all in the same period in which he saw the steam.
  aNNa'S NoTe:  Oh, gee, no... we have NO idea what could effect a volcano, right?  Surely not an earthquake...!  Like I said, though... Mt. St. Helens is lower on my watch list than, oh, say Mt. Ranier and Yellowstone's Supervolcano...  and I have a LOT more natural shtuff in my hopper, so we'll stop here and do another one, soon...

  • 2:11 pm
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