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Luis Miguel
Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
4/10/2012 3:26:00 AM

It's already been a very record-breaking hot year

By SETH BORENSTEIN | Associated Press – 14 hrs ago

Freak heat smashes 7,775 records in March

Unprecedented weather patterns have given even climate experts an "uneasy" feeling.'This is weird. This is not good'

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's been so warm in the United States this year, especially in March, that national records weren't just broken, they were deep-fried.

Temperatures in the lower 48 states were 8.6 degrees above normal for March and 6 degrees higher than average for the first three months of the year, according to calculations by theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That far exceeds the old records.

The magnitude of how unusual the year has been in the U.S. has alarmed some meteorologists who have warned about global warming. One climate scientist said it's the weather equivalent of a baseball player on steroids, with old records obliterated.

"Everybody has this uneasy feeling. This is weird. This is not good," said Jerry Meehl, a climate scientist who specializes in extreme weather at the National Center for Atmospheric Researchin Boulder, Colo. "It's a guilty pleasure. You're out enjoying this nice March weather, but you know it's not a good thing."

It's not just March.

"It's been ongoing for several months," said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Ashville, N.C.

Meteorologists say an unusual confluence of several weather patterns, including La Nina, was the direct cause of the warm start to 2012. While individual events can't be blamed on global warming, Couch said this is like the extremes that are supposed to get more frequent because of manmade climate change from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

It's important to note that this unusual winter heat is mostly a North America phenomenon. Much of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere has been cold, said NOAA meteorologist Martin Hoerling.

The first quarter of 2012 broke the January-March record by 1.4 degrees. Usually records are broken by just one- or two-tenths of a degree. U.S. temperature records date to 1895.

The atypical heat goes back even further. The U.S. winter of 2010-2011 was slightly cooler than normal and one of the snowiest in recent years, but after that things started heating up. The summer of 2011 was the second warmest summer on record.

The winter that just ended, which in some places was called the year without winter, was the fourth warmest on record. Since last April, it's been the hottest 12-month stretch on record, Crouch said.

But the month where the warmth turned especially weird was March.

Normally, March averages 42.5 degrees across the country. This year, the average was 51.1, which is closer to the average for April. Only one other time — in January 2006 — was the country as a whole that much hotter than normal for an entire month.

The "icebox of America," International Falls, Minn., saw temperatures in the 70s for five days in March, and there were only three days of below zero temperatures all month.

In March, at least 7,775 weather stations across the nation broke daily high temperature records and another 7,517 broke records for night-time heat. Combined, that's more high temperature records broken in one month than ever before, Crouch said.

"When you look at what's happened in March this year, it's beyond unbelievable," said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver.

NOAA climate scientist Gabriel Vecchi compared the increase in weather extremes to baseball players on steroids: You can't say an individual homer is because of steroids, but they are hit more often and the long-held records for home runs fall.

They seem to be falling far more often because of global warming, said NASA top climate scientistJames Hansen. In a paper he submitted to the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and posted on a physics research archive, Hansen shows that heat extremes aren't just increasing but happening far more often than scientists thought.

What used to be a 1-in-400 hot temperature record is now a 1 in 10 occurrence, essentially 40 times more likely, said Hansen. The warmth in March is an ideal illustration of this, said Hansen, who also has become an activist in fighting fossil fuels.

Weaver, who reviewed the Hansen paper, called it "one of the most stunning examples of evidence of global warming."

___

Seth Borenstein be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel
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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
4/11/2012 4:42:19 PM

5 reasons the US job market might be weakening

5 reasons the US hiring slowdown in March might signal a weakening job market

By Paul Wiseman, AP Economics Writer | Associated Press – Mon, Apr 9, 2012 6:09 PM EDT

5 reasons job market may be weakening

Was the March hiring slowdown a one-month aberration or a sign of bigger problems ahead?Weather's impact

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Economists mostly shrugged off news that U.S. hiring slowed in March as a one-month aberration warped by warm weather.

But what if they're wrong? What if the sharp drop in job creation signaled something more ominous?

Investors appeared worried Monday. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 131 points on the first day of trading since the government said Friday that employers added just 120,000 jobs in March. That was only half the pace of hiring the economy enjoyed in December through February and well below the 210,000 economists had expected.

Economists were quick to explain away the March numbers.

Unseasonably warm weather in January and February, they said, had led construction companies and other employers to hire workers earlier in the year than usual — in effect, swiping jobs that would have occurred in March.

And they noted that jobs numbers typically bounce around from month to month. Some economists are waiting to see whether employment growth picks up again when the hiring numbers for April are announced the first week of May.

But many also see reasons to worry about the job market. Here are five:

— SLUGGISH ECONOMIC GROWTH

The economy hasn't been growing fast enough to sustain the level of job growth the United States enjoyed from December through February — an average of 246,000 jobs a month.

The economy is expected grow around 2.5 percent this year. Economists say that's consistent with monthly job growth of around 140,000.

Some economists fear that March's weaker numbers are just a return to the normal link between economic and job growth — and that hiring won't pick up until the economy accelerates.

— HIGHER GASOLINE PRICES

U.S. gasoline prices have risen 65 cents this year to a national average $3.93 gallon, according to the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge. Economists had expected consumers to keep spending at a healthy pace in the face of higher prices at the pump. Partly, that was because consumers had endured a run-up in gasoline prices last year and would be less vulnerable to sticker shock. Moreover, many households have reduced debts and are in better financial shape.

But retailers cut more than 62,000 jobs in February and March. That suggested that gasoline price hikes might have started to pinch consumers' budgets — and their willingness to shop, says Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors. Consumers drive about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity, so their spending is crucial for economic and job growth.

— SHRINKING INCOMES

Companies cut workers' hours in March, reducing their average weekly earnings. Pay isn't keeping up with inflation either. In February, inflation-adjusted earnings were 1 percent lower than a year earlier. That means less money to spend without borrowing or dipping into savings. And many consumers are swearing off credit card debt: They cut credit card borrowing by $5 billion this year through February. The Bank of America economists say the income trends are "hardly a positive for consumer spending."

— JOB-MARKET DROPOUTS

The economy has added nearly 1.9 million jobs over the past year, and unemployment rate has fallen from 9.1 percent to 8.2 percent since August. But the job market might not be as strong as those numbers suggest. One broad measure of the labor market's health refuses to strengthen: The percentage of the working-age population that's actually working has been stuck below 59 percent for 2½ years. It hadn't previously, fallen that low since 1984, before many women poured into the work force.

Many economists say millions of Americans have given up looking for work.

"People have left the labor force because frankly the prospects for employment remain anemic," says Bank of America economist Neil Dutta.

— A LOT OF CATCHING UP TO DO

The solid job gains of December to February disguised a painful fact: The economy still has a long way to go recover all the jobs lost in the Great Recession and its aftermath. From January 2008 to February 2010, the economy lost 8.8 million jobs. About 3.6 million, or 40 percent, of those have been regained. Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, calculates that, accounting for population growth, the United States would have to create 350,000 jobs a month for three years to return to pre-recession employment levels. That's nearly three times as many jobs as the economy generated last month.

"We're doing better than a total slog," she says, "but we are not getting the really robust job growth we need."

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel
Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
4/11/2012 4:51:49 PM

Powerful Indonesia quakes trigger tsunami warnings

By FAKHRURRADZIE GADE | Associated Press – 3 hrs ago


Click image for more photos

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (AP) — Two massive earthquakes triggered back-to-back tsunami warnings for Indonesia on Wednesday, sending panicked residents fleeing to high ground in cars and on the backs of motorcycles. There were no signs of deadly waves, however, or serious damage, and a watch for much of the Indian Ocean was lifted after a few hours.

Women and children were crying in Aceh province, where memories are still raw of a 2004 tsunami that killed 170,000 people in the province alone. Others screamed "God is great" as they poured from their homes or searched frantically for separated family members.

[Related: Coast Guard sinks tsunami 'ghost ship']

The U.S. Geological Survey said the first 8.6-magnitude quake was 270 miles (435 kilometers) from Aceh's provincial capital. The tsunami watch that followed from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii advised countries all along the rim of the Indian Ocean, from Australia and India to as far off as Africa, that a tsunami could be generated.

The only wave, however, was less than 30 inches (80 centimeters) high, rolling to Indonesia's coast.

But just as the region was sighing relief, an 8.2-magnitude aftershock hit.

"We just issued another tsunami warning," Prih Harjadi, from Indonesia's geophysics agency, told TVOne in a live interview.

His countrymen were told to stay clear of western coasts.

Again, the threat quickly passed.

Experts said both quakes were geologically different than the one that spawned the 2004 tsunami, occurring horizontally, with the tectonic plates sliding against each other, creating more of a vibration in the water.

Watch video here

The other type of earthquake, a mega thrust, like the one that also hit off Japan last year, causes the seabed to heave and displaces water vertically, sending towering waves racing toward shores.

Roger Musson, seismologist at the British geological survey who has studied Sumatra's fault lines, said initially he'd been "fearing the worst."

"But as soon as I discovered what type of earthquake it was ... I felt a lot better."

The tremors were felt in neighboring Malaysia, where high-rise buildings shook. Singapore, Thailand, Bangladesh and India also were rattled.

But it was the streets of Aceh where real chaos broke out.

Patients poured out of hospitals, some with drips still attached to their arms. In some places, electricity was briefly cut.

Hours after the temblor, people were still standing outside their homes and offices, afraid to go back inside.

"I was in the shower on the fifth floor of my hotel," Timbang Pangaribuan told El Shinta radio from the city of Medan. "We all ran out. ... We're all standing outside now."

He said one guest was injured when he jumped from a window.

Thailand's National Disaster Warning Center issued an evacuation order in six provinces along the country's west coast, including the tourist destinations of Phuket, Krabi and Phang-Nga.

India's Tsunami Warning Center issued a warning for parts of the eastern Andaman and Nicobar islands. In Tamil Nadu in southern India, police cordoned off the beach and used loudspeakers to warn people to leave the area.

The quake was felt in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where many people in the city's commercial Motijheel district left their offices and homes in panic and ran into the streets. In Male, the capital of the Maldives, buildings were evacuated.

Indonesia straddles a series of fault lines that makes the vast island nation prone to volcanic and seismic activity.

The giant 9.1-magnitude quake and tsunami on Dec. 26, 2004, killed 230,000 people in about a dozen nations.

___

Associated Press reporters Margie Mason in Hanoi, Vietnam; Sean Yoong in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Muneeza Naqvi in New Delhi; Vee Intarakratug in Bangkok and Farid Hossain in Dhaka, Bangladesh contributed to this report.

* * *

Related video:

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Luis Miguel
Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
4/11/2012 5:08:29 PM
Note: I have been waiting for the second part of this article to appear, hence the delay in presenting it.
Are We Running Out of Water? World Water Crisis 101 (Part 1)








Care2 Earth Month: Back to Basics

This year, Care2 decided to expand Earth Day into Earth Month, since there is so much to explore when it comes to the environment. Every day in April, we‘ll have a post about some of the most important topics for the environment, exploring and explaining the basics. It‘s a great tool to help you get started with helping the environment - or help explain it to others. See the whole series here.

All the Water on Earth

Ours is often referred to as the blue planet because 70 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. Yet, scientists and public officials predict a global water crisis within the next few decades. Worldwide 2.7 billion people are currently affected by water shortages and, by 2025, and two-thirds of the world’s population could be living under water stressed conditions.

There are two primary components of water availability: quantity and quality.

Quantity: The Earth‘s Drinkable Freshwater Supply is Limited

Only 2.5 percent of the water on earth is theoretically drinkable and the vast majority of that freshwater is inaccessible, either deep below the earth’s surface or in glaciers and snowfields at the poles. As climate change shifts rainfall and drought patterns around the world, more and more people are living in water stressed conditions.

According to the WorldWatch Institute, “some 20 percent of the increase in water scarcity in the coming decades will be caused by climate change … In poor countries, the consequences of climate change could be dire – erratic weather patterns have already been the primary cause of famine for millions around the world.”

Water Scarcity Around the World

China – Chronic drought in north China is pushing the Gobi Desert into farmland that feeds China’s megacities Beijing and Tianjin and the Yellow River, “the so-called birthplace of Chinese civilization, is so polluted it can no longer supply drinking water.”

Europe – France – a major supplier of wheat barley and sugar beets to the European Union – is experiencing the worst drought in the past 50 years.

Africa – In sub-Saharan Africa, only 61 percent of inhabitants have access to safe drinking water sources. This compares with 90 percent or more in Latin America and the Caribbean, northern Africa, and large parts of Asia. In poorer countries, lack of water access is often due to lack of infrastructure. While much wealthier than most sub-Saharan countries, Egypt still suffers from water scarcity. The country imports more than half of its food because it does not have enough water to grow it domestically.

Island Nations – Drinking water is one of the many climate change concerns of island nations. On the Pacific Island of Tuvlala, water was rationed to just two buckets a day during a prolonged drought in 2011. During the worst of the drought, New Zealand and Australia provided “rehydration packets” to prevent a humanitarian crisis.

Australia – But Australia has its own water woes. Climate change may be intensifying the continent’s natural drought cycle. At the same time, extreme weather events such as last fall’s record flooding that inundated Melbourne may become more frequent.

United States – The water level in the Ogaliala Aquafer, groundwater that feeds wells in Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, has been dropping every level, more than 150 feet in some places. Agricultural communities that depend on the aquifer to irrigate crops are under immense strain, with some nearly collapsing already. In other regions, record droughts in Florida and Texas threatens agriculture that supplies the whole nation with food.

Quality: Abuse of a Common Resource

Centuries of assuming that dilution is the solution to pollution has taken a toll on world waters.

U.S. Water Pollution Facts

Water Pollution Around the World

The story is similar worldwide with 2 million tons of human waste dumped directly into waterways every single day. In developing countries, 70 percent of industrial waste is dumped into rivers and streams that communities depend up on for drinking, washing, watering farms and supplying livestock.

Asian rivers may be the most polluted in the world. “They have three times as many bacteria from human waste as the global average, and 20 times more lead than rivers in industrialized countries.”

Drinking water pollution directly affects more than half the world’s population and each year there are about 250 million cases of water-related diseases, with roughly 5 to 10 million deaths

The Future of Water

While there has been some good news on water, experts predict that access to water in the future will drive not just economic growth but conflicts between nations.

In part two of World Water Crisis 101, we’ll explore two possible solutions – desalination and dams.

Related stories:

Water for All through Desalination and Dams? World Water Crisis 101 (Part 2)

How Your Washing Machine is Polluting The Oceans

Las Vegas to Survive on East Nevada‘s Groundwater

Polluters Dump 226 Million Pounds of Toxins into U.S. Rivers

Read more: , , , , , , , , ,



Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/world-water-crisis-101-part-1-quantity-and-quality.html#ixzz1rkinxqQc

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel
Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
4/11/2012 5:14:09 PM
Water for All through Desalination and Dams? World Water Crisis 101 (Part 2)









Care2 Earth Month: Back to Basics

This year, Care2 decided to expand Earth Day into Earth Month, since there is so much to explore when it comes to the environment. Every day in April, we’ll have a post about some of the most important topics for the environment, exploring and explaining the basics. It’s a great tool to help you get started with helping the environment — or help explain it to others. See the whole series here.

Growing Demand for a Limited Supply of Water

In part 1 of World Water Crisis 101, we explored the problem of water scarcity and water pollution in the face of global population growth. Already, 2.7 billion people are affected by water shortages and, by 2025, and two-thirds of the world’s population could be living under water stressed conditions.

Fact: How the world uses freshwater:

  • about 70 percent for irrigation
  • about 22 percent for industry
  • about 8 percent for domestic use

Source: World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP)

Water scarcity and polluted water supplies have an enormous impact human health, food production, and economic growth. Solutions to scarcity include moving water from far away, filtering ocean water for drinking, improving agricultural practices and urban water conservation, and safeguarding the available supply by reducing pollution. In part 2 of World Water Crisis, we’ll take a look at desalination and water diversions.

Desalination – Drinking Water from the Sea

Nearly 10 years into record drought conditions in Australia, 5 major cities are turning to ocean desalination to solve their water woes. About half of the world’s current capacity to filter drinkable water from salty ocean water is installed in the middle east, with Israel on track to provide 75 percent of the nations water supply from the sea.

The technology remains controversial, especially in countries with less dire water shortages. Reverse osmosis plants to desalinate seawater are expensive and require enormous amounts of energy to run. Pollution from the energy used by the plants would very likely contribute to global warming, which is expected to exacerbate world water shortages. The resulting brine, super-salty wastewater, has to go somewhere and pumping it back into coastal environments could upset delicate ecosystem balances.

Dams and Aqueducts – Drinking Water from Far Away

Freshwater is not evenly distributed around the world. Even relatively water rich nations may have regional scarcity problems and many cities have grown up in places with inadequate water to support their modern populations.

Fact: In 60 percent of European cities with more than 100,000 people, groundwater is being used at a faster rate than it can be replenished.

Source: World Business Council For Sustainable Development (WBCSD)

Many proposed solutions to water scarcity assumes that water is portable. Nations have long dammed rivers to create reservoirs of water for cities and farms. Dams have been controversial and damaging to the local ecosystems.

Simple dams and reservoirs are nothing compared to the kinds of projects being proposed to meet growing urban water demands around the world. It has long been a fear of the U.S. Great Lakes states that population growth in the Southwest will lead to grand projects to divert water from the lakes or upper Mississippi River to supply Phoenix, Tempe, and Albuquerque.

Before you dismiss the fear as ridiculous, remember that the Colorado River was diverted to supply Los Angeles more than a century ago. The state of Nevada recently approved a series of pipelines and pumping stations to move groundwater hundreds of miles from the east to the city of Las Vegas. And China is undertaking a project that the New York Times is comparing with diverting the Mississippi to supply Boston, Massachusetts.

China to Build the World’s Largest Water Diversion Project

China began construction on a canal and aqueduct project in 2002 that will ultimately divert 6 trillion gallons of water every year from the southern Yangztee River to supply the arid plains in the north.

“Since 2002, China has spent 138 billion yuan ($22 billion) on the project and expects to spend another 64 billion yuan ($10 billion) this year alone. The government has also relocated 330,000 people who lived near a reservoir on one of the routes.” – The New York Times

Massive Water Diversions Come with Big Costs

Such enormous engineering projects may sound appealing, but moving water – both heavy and bulky – over great distances takes a tremendous amount of energy. For example, California spends nearly 20 percent of its electricity use to moving water around.

On the environmental impacts of such schemes, Brian Richter of The Nature Conservancy and University of Virginia writes:

“We should be careful about ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul.’ As we dry up a river or lake to harvest or export its water, the health of fish populations and natural freshwater ecosystems plummet. In virtually all of the large rivers that have begun to go dry, fisheries have been decimated, leading to severe hardship for local people that depend upon that food source for their subsistence and livelihoods. Last year, I published a journal paper with colleagues at The Nature Conservancy that suggested that depletion of a freshwater source by more than 20% will likely have harmful ecological and social consequences.”

World Water Crisis 101 (Part 3) – If Desalination and Massive Water Diversions Are Not The Solution, What Is?

In part 3 of our series, we’ll explore water conservation, sanitation improvements, and pollution prevention. If you missed Are We Running Out of Water? World Water Crisis 101 (Part 1), check it out.

Related Stories

Running Out of Water? World Water Crisis 101 (Part 1)

What Is Water Worth?

Desalination Will Soon Provide 75% Of Israel’s Drinking Water

Yemen’s Capital Could Run Out Of Water by 2025

Read more: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Photo of the Three Gorges Dam in China by Thinkstockphoto.com



Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/water-for-all-through-desalination-and-dams-world-water-crisis-101-part-2.html#ixzz1rkkOG500

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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