Oklahoma is so hot that street lamps are melting

Highs of 115 degrees are taking its toll on the nation's heartland

It's hard to not be concerned with global warming when its effects are right in front of your eyes. Sure, it's one thing when the ocean begins to reclaim islands, but when you can see the effects in your home town, well, that's another story altogether. Case in point: KFOR TV in Stillwater, Oklahoma is reporting that temperatures are so high that the street lamps have begun melting.

To be sure, Stillwater is suffering from one heck of a heatwave. It's expected to reach 115 there today, 108 on Friday, and 109 on Saturday. And warmer temperatures are nothing new: July represented the 23rd month out of the last 28 that came in warmer than average.

It's possible the heat itself isn't responsible for the event — it's being reported on Facebook that a nearby dumpster fire may have been the cause of the melting plastic light housings. Still, that dumpster fire was caused and aggravated by the record heat and dryness. And if dangerous, spontaneous fires aren't reason enough to go green, we don't know what is.

[Image credit: Patrick Hunter via Facebook]

• by ThinkProgress
• August 2, 2012

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Photo: Ano Lobb/flickr

Photo Reveals Giant Greenland Iceberg Heading to Sea

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A massive iceberg that recently cleaved from one of Greenland's largest glaciers has made its way down the fjord that confines it and is poised to float out into an ocean strait, satellite photos reveal.

The giant berg, about 46 square miles (120 square kilometers) in size, broke away from the Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland on July 16. In the nearly three weeks since, the iceberg, dubbed PII-2012, has drifted some 14 miles (22 km) and rotated about 90 degrees counter-clockwise.

Satellite images captured on Monday (July 30) show the berg has nearly reached the mouth of a fjord that opens on the Nares Strait, a narrow stretch of ocean that separates Greenland from Canada.

Andreas Muenchow, an associate professor at the University of Delaware who has been tracking PII-2012's progress with satellite data, wrote on his blog that the berg has picked up a bit of speed in recent days. Last week it was traveling about two-thirds of a mile (1 km) each day, yet over the weekend of July 28, the ice island doubled its pace.

Researchers first noticed the growing crack that would break PII-2012 from the Petermann Glacier's ice shelf — the forward edge of the glacier, which floats on the ocean — several years ago, when sifting through satellite images taken in 2001.

In the intervening years, scientists watched the crack, which some of them dubbed "The Big Kahuna,"extend its reach across the ice shelf, and predicted last autumn that a berg would finally break away during the warm summer months of 2012.

When the iceberg finally does emerge into the Nares Strait, it could pose problems for ships trying to navigate the narrow ocean channel, Muenchow said. "Without a break-up, it is big enough to block the channel as another large ice island did for almost 6 months in 1962," he wrote on July 31.

The Petermann Glacier and other glaciers wend through Greenland's ice sheet, essentially serving as slow-moving conveyor belts. They move ice from the middle of the frigid island to the sea, where it forms the colossal, floating plains called ice shelves that, from time to time, give birth to enormous icebergs

However, these floating ice plains also buttress up the glaciers that feed them, slowing their progress into the ocean. Research has revealed that when ice shelves weaken or collapse entirely, glaciers speed up, moving more ice off of land and into the ocean and raising global sea levels.

The Petermann Glacier's newest iceberg birth has shrunk its ice shelf significantly, according to both Muenchow and scientists with the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Reach Andrea Mustain at amustain@techmedianetwork.com, or follow her on Twitter@AndreaMustain.Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook &Google+.

• Images: Greenland's Dramatic Landscape
• Video: Watch an Iceberg Birth from Above
• Images: Tracking a Retreating Glacier

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In Syria, mortars kill 21 in Damascus refugee camp

In this citizen journalism image provided by Shaam News Network SNN, taken on Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2012, smoke leaps the air from purported shelling in Damascus, Syria. Syrian opposition activists say regime forces have swept through neighborhoods south of the capital Damascus in a deadly military operation that has inflicted casualties. (AP Photo/Shaam News Network, SNN)THE ASSOCIATED PRESS IS UNABLE TO INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THE AUTHENTICITY,

BEIRUT (AP) — Mortars rained down on a crowded marketplace in a Palestinian refugee camp in the Syrian capital, killing 21 people as regime forces and rebels clashed on the southern outskirts ofDamascus, activists said Friday.

The attack on Yarmouk camp came as the government battled rebel fighters in the nearby Damascus suburb of Tadamon on Thursday evening. Clashes there continued on Friday and sounds of explosions from the neighborhood could be heard as far as the mostly deserted Damascus downtown, with plumes of smoke seen rising into the sky.

The U.N. agency running Palestinian camps confirmed that at least 20 people had died in the shelling of Yarmouk. The Britain-based Syria Observatory for Human Rights, which first reported the deaths, said the mortars hit as shoppers were buying food for the evening meal. The activists with the group would not speculate on who was firing.

"We don't know where the mortars came from, whether they were from the Syrian regime or not the Syrian regime," said Rami Abdul Rahman, director of the Observatory. He added they could also have been strays from the fighting in nearby Tadamon.

The state news agency blamed the bombardment on "terrorist mercenaries" — a term the government uses for rebel fighters — and said they had been chased away by security forces.

The incident highlights the precarious situation of not just Palestinian refugees but all civilians in Syria who are increasingly getting caught in the crossfire of this bloody uprising that has claimed 19,000 lives since it erupted in March 2011. Every day hundreds of civilians are uprooted by the violence, according to the U.N., which estimates that 1.5 million people have been force to abandon their homes but remain in the country.

An online video of the immediate aftermath of the Yarmouk attack showed bleeding and burnt bodies with people rushing about amid the smoke and the sounds of screaming.

Government troops have in the past attacked the camp, home to nearly 150,000 Palestinians and their descendants driven from their homes by the war surrounding Israel's 1948 creation. Palestinian refugees in Syria have tried to stay out of the 17-month old uprising, but with Yarmouk nestled among neighborhoods sympathetic to the rebels, its residents were eventually drawn into the fighting.

Yarmouk's younger inhabitants have also been moved by the Arab Spring's calls for greater freedoms and have joined protests against President Bashar Assad's regime— and have died during demonstrations when Syrian troops fired on them.

The situation of the Palestinian refugees is particularly sensitive because Syria has long cast itself as the principal champion in the Arab world of the Palestinian struggle against Israel. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose government has a strict policy of neutrality regarding the Syrian conflict, condemned the Yarmouk attack.

"The presidency demands an immediate end to all murder and destruction in the refugee camps, and protection to its inhabitants," Abbas' office said in a statement carried on the official Palestinian news agency.

After the mortar attack, camp residents demonstrated against the government, chanting slogans against Assad and praising the opposition Free Syrian Army, according to online videos. The content of the videos could not be independently verified.

With the civil war in Syria getting increasingly vicious, chances for a diplomatic solution to the conflict were fading after the resignation Thursday of Kofi Annan, the U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria. Annan cited divisions within the Security Council preventing a united approach to stop the fighting.

Syria's ally Iran, blamed the U.S. and its allies for Annan's resignation, saying it was their insistence on Assad's removal from power that had undermined the six point U.N. peace plan, which was never implemented.

"Annan's six-point plan was accepted by Syria," said Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi Friday. "It was Western countries and some regional states that didn't want Annan plan to succeed." He also accused the U.S. and its allies in the region of contributing to the instability, saying they were supplying the Syrian rebels with weapons and equipment.

The U.N. General Assembly was preparing to vote Friday on a new Arab-sponsored resolution condemning Syria's use of heavy weapons to crush the uprising that has killed an estimated 19,000 people since it began on March 2011.

The resolution — which like all General Assembly resolutions is unenforceable — is expected to denounce Syria for unleashing tanks, artillery, helicopters and warplanes on the people of Aleppo and Damascus, and demand that the Assad regime keep its chemical and biological weapons warehoused and under strict control.

U.N. observers had confirmed Wednesday that they witnessed Syrian warplanes firing rockets and machine guns.

In addition to the fighting around the southern neighborhood of Tadamon, the Observatory also reported shelling of the southwestern suburb of Jdaidat Artouz, where dozens of bodies were found after government forces swept through on Wednesday.

Syria's civil war, which had spread across much of the country, only came to the capital and northeastern city of Aleppo, Syria's main commercial hub, in July.

A rebel assault and revolt in Damascus two weeks ago was vigorously crushed by government forces, but pockets of resistance and sympathetic neighborhoods remain.

Sporadic clashes and shelling also continue in Aleppo, especially the opposition bastion of Salaheddine as rebels and government forces hold different parts of that city. On Thursday, the rebels even deployed a captured tank against the regime and briefly shelled an air force base outside Aleppo.

The U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous warned of a major government assault on Aleppo in the coming days to retake the rebel-held neighborhoods.

"The focus is now on Aleppo, where there has been a considerable build-up of military means, and where we have reason to believe that the main battle is about to start," he told reporters in New York late Thursday after briefing the Security Council on his trip to Syria.

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Associated Press writers Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran, Iran, and Dalia Nammari in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.