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ENASA satellite finds Earth’s clouds are getting lower
(PhysOrg.com) — Earth’s clouds got a little lower — about one percent on average — during the first decade of this century, finds a new NASA-funded university study based on NASA satellite data. The results have potential implications for future global climate.
This image of clouds over the southern Indian Ocean was acquired on July 23, 2007 by one of the backward (northward)-viewing cameras of the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA’s polar-orbiting Terra spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechScientists at the University of Auckland in New Zealand analyzed the first 10 years of global cloud-top height measurements (from March 2000 to February 2010) from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA’s Terra spacecraft. The study, published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, revealed an overall trend of decreasing cloud height. Global average cloud height declined by around one percent over the decade, or by around 100 to 130 feet (30 to 40 meters). Most of the reduction was due to Read more…
The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom
Corbis
On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year’s end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish “international control over the Internet” through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices.
If successful, these new regulatory proposals would upend the Internet’s flourishing regime, which has been in place since 1988. That year, delegates from 114 countries gathered in Australia to agree to a treaty that set the stage for dramatic liberalization of international telecommunications. This insulated the Internet from economic and technical regulation and Read more…
Silver may continue to outperform others
Silver has displayed a smart rally in the current year so far, rising 21.2 per cent from January onwards. And, there are indications it would continue to outperform other metals like gold and copper. This would be good news for India’s largest silver producer, Hindustan Zinc, as the metal is likely to contribute 14-20 per cent to its Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) margins.
Barclays Capital’s commodity outlook says: “The current profile of our price forecast suggests precious metals would be the strongest sector in 2012. We expect silver to reach $38 and rise even further in the third quarter of 2012, before profit booking sets in. At present, it is in a consolidation mode.”
Barclays says physical demand has been driving silver for the past few weeks.(Click here for graphs)
Following record gains in silver in late 2010 and early 2011, prices crashed towards $25. Since then, they have rebounded to $33-36. Currently, silver is facing strong Read more…
Above-normal number of tornadoes expected in 2012
Following a near-record number of tornadoes in 2011, an active severe weather season with above-normal tornadoes is expected in 2012.
There were 1,709 tornadoes in 2011, falling short of the record 1,817 tornadoes set in 2004. In comparison, the average number of tornadoes over the past decade is around 1,300.
Last year ranks as the fourth most deadly tornado year ever recorded in the United States.
In 2011, there was a very strong La Niña, a phenomenon where the sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific around the equator are below normal. As a result, there was a very strong jet stream, which is a key ingredient for severe weather.
Often in a La Niña year, the “Tornado Alley” shifts to the east, spanning the Gulf States, including Mississippi and Alabama, and the Ohio and Tennessee valleys.
During the extremely active severe weather season of 2011, many tornadoes touched down east of Read more…
Radiation detected 400 miles off Japanese coast
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Radioactive contamination from the Fukushima power plant disaster has been detected as far as almost 400 miles off Japan in the Pacific Ocean, with water showing readings of up to 1,000 times more than prior levels, scientists reported Tuesday.
But those results for the substance cesium-137 are far below the levels that are generally considered harmful, either to marine animals or people who eat seafood, said Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
He spoke Tuesday in Salt Lake City at the annual Ocean Sciences Meeting, attended by more than 4,000 researchers this week.
The results are for water samples taken in June, about three months after the power plant disaster, Buesseler said. In addition to thousands of water samples, researchers also sampled fish and plankton and found Read more…
Repent sins now, before the last call
One thing is certain. We’re all going to die. Every day that we exist is another day closer to our death. Yes, we have a short time on the planet. 75-80 years is our life expectancy. Some people, if they are fortunate, live to be 100. But then what? Do we just cease to exist, or is there really life after life?
Most of us go through life unconcerned about God until we get close to death. Then all of a sudden an afterlife is pretty important. If there is an afterlife, and I believe there is, will we get to go to Heaven or will we be lost? Specifically, we need to ask Jesus Christ to forgive our sins and ask him to come into our heart.
In the book of John, 14:6, it states by Jesus “I am the truth, I am the way, and I am the life and no man comes to the Father but by Me.” This scripture makes it pretty clear that you cannot go to Heaven unless you believe in Jesus.
Now is the time to repent of our sins. When comes the last call we want to be ready. Most people become ill before they die, but many die suddenly, in wars, in car accidents, heart attacks and other quick deaths. That is why we don’t want to wait. I don’t believe we can ask for forgiveness after we die.
Like the poet Shakespeare wrote, “To be or not to be; that is the question.” It’s up to us folks. Now is the time to ask Jesus to come into our lives.
A US government program secretly injected people with plutonium
The horrors of the nuclear age, in terms of exploding reactors and nuclear bombs, are well known. Behind the well-publicized threat of mass death lies a secret history of nuclear projects being used to destroy individuals. In the late 1940s, United States citizens were injected with plutonium without their knowledge.
In early 1945, Ebb Cade, a worker at the Oak Ridge Nuclear Facility, got into a car wreck. He survived, but was bed bound with a broken arm and a broken leg. When doctors interviewed him, they ascertained that the fifty-three-year-old African American man was otherwise perfectly healthy, eating well, drinking well, and had no history of serious illness. And so, having obtained a healthy subject, on April 10th his doctors secretly injected him with Read more…
Depleting the Seas of Fish
In November 2006, Washington Post writer Juliet Eilperin headlined, “World’s Fish Supply Running Out, Researchers Warn,” saying:
International ecologists and economists believe “the world will run out of seafood by 2048” if current fishing rates continue.
A journal Science study “conclude(d) that overfishing, pollution and other environmental factors are wiping out important species” globally. They’re also impeding world oceans’ ability to produce seafood, filter nutrients, and resist disease.
Marine biologist Boris Worm warned:
“We really see the end of the line now. It’s within our lifetime. Our children will see a world without seafood if we don’t change things.”
Researchers studied fish populations, catch records, and ocean ecosystems for four years. By 2003, 29% of all species collapsed. It means they’re at least “90% below their historic maximum catch levels.”
In recent years, collapse rates accelerated. In 1980, 13.5% of 1,736 fish species collapsed. Today, Read more…
IEA: China buys more oil from Iran
Didier Houssin, IEA director of energy markets and security, said on Tuesday that Beijing is the world’s second-biggest crude consumer and may continue to increase oil imports from Iran.
“China has been buying more crude and may continue to do so,” he said at the International Petroleum Week conference.
Earlier this month, the IEA predicted that China’s purchases of Iranian crude would slow in the first three months of the year.
This comes while the IEA’s latest report predicts that China’s oil demand would Read more…
Saudi Arabia vows “iron fist” to end violence
Saudi military forces.
Saudi Arabia has vowed to use an “iron fist” to end violence in the country’s east after a sermon preached last week criticised the government’s use of violence against protestors in the kingdom.
The Gulf state’s Interior Ministry has accused an unnamed foreign power, widely thought to mean Iran, of backing attacks on its security forced in its Eastern province.
“It is the state’s right to confront those that confront it first … and the Saudi security forces will confront such situations … with determination and force and with an iron first,” the ministry said in a statement to the Saudi Press Agency.
“Some of those few [who attacked security forces] are manipulated by foreign hands because of the Read more…
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