Only Natural
* One train is derailed and another missing in Miyagi prefecture, Kyodo says. - Up to 300 bodies found in Sendai city, domestic news agency Jiji says. - Some 3,000 residents living near a nuclear plant in Fukushima prefecture, north of Tokyo, have been told to evacuate the area, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano tells reporters. - Government says no radiation leaking; evacuation is precaution after reactor cooling malfunction. - Bank of Japan to hold policy meeting on Monday, will announce decision same day, cutting short scheduled Monday-Tuesday meeting. - First signs of tsunami begin to appear on shores of Hawaii.
Japanese refiners Cosmo Oil and JX Nippon Oil and Energy shut their refineries in the eastern part of the country following a massive earthquake that struck the area on Friday afternoon. Several power plants and ports in the Tokyo Bay area were also closed... Japan's Tohoku Electric Power Company shut its three nuclear reactors at its Onagawa power plant while a Tokyo Electric Power Company spokesman said it had shut seven units at two of its nuclear power plants in Fukushima prefecture... Key ports in the Tokyo Bay area also suspended operations... The quake unleashed a 10 meter-high tsunami that tossed ships inland and sparked fears that destructive waves could hit across the Pacific Ocean...
The quake that hit Japan was a magnitude 8.9, the biggest earthquake to hit the country since officials began keeping records in the late 1800s, and one of the biggest ever recorded in the world, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake struck at a depth of six miles, about 80 miles off the eastern coast, the agency said. The area is 240 miles northeast of Tokyo. A tsunami warning was extended to a number of Pacific, Southeast Asian and Latin American nations, including Japan, Russia, Indonesia, New Zealand and Chile. In the Philippines, authorities ordered an evacuation of coastal communities.
Republicans are raising questions about why the EPA apparently dismissed an analyst's report questioning the science behind global warming.
The Democrat-led House pressed Thursday for enough votes to pass landmark legislation that would combat global warming by forcing U.S. companies to reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions, expanding expensive renewable-energy sources and trimming consumers' choices on new light bulbs and hot tubs. [WHERE'S G BUSH WHEN WE REALLY NEED REGEIME CHANGE?]
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) slowed Democrats' attempt to pass a sweeping climate-change legislation Friday evening, reading page-by-page through a 300-page Democratic amendment before allowing a roll call vote.... "...the House is going to spend a whopping five hours debating the most profound piece of legislation to come to this floor in 100 years. And the chairman has the audacity to drop a 300-plus page amendment in the hopper at 3:09 a.m. this morning. And so I would ask my colleagues, don't you think the American people expect us to understand what's in this bill before we vote on it?"
wind speeds across the country have decreased by an average of .5 percent to 1 percent per year since 1973.... more in the East than in the West, and more in the Northeast and the Great Lakes.... [Researchers "think that global warming will cause lighter winds" but there's no mention in this article of the range of variability, shorter-term or longer-term trending, or the margin of error. But of three possible causes, "There are some good theoretical reasons to think that global warming will cause lighter winds"... yeah... like US Gov funding? Oh, pardon my cynical and suspicious nature....]
As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming. Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S....
Researchers recently showed that dry granular materials such as sands, seeds and grains have properties similar to liquid, forming water-like droplets when poured from a given source. The finding could be important to a wide range of industries that use "fluidized" dry particles for oil refining, plastics manufacturing and pharmaceutical production.
A newfound vulture-bone flute is likely the world's oldest recognizable musical instrument, a new study says. The 40,000-year-old flute may add to evidence that music helped do in the Neanderthals.
A chance recording by astronauts on the International Space Station has captured the moment a volcano explosively erupted, sending massive shockwaves through the atmosphere.
Huge geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus may be fed by a salty sea below its surface, boosting the odds of extraterrestrial life in our own Solar System
President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged Congress to pass "historic legislation" to fight global warming, prompting his fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives to aim for a vote on Friday on the bill to reduce industrial emissions of carbon dioxide.... incentives to encourage utilities, manufacturers and other companies to switch from higher-polluting oil and coal to cleaner energy alternatives... [Better incentive for everyone: IMPEACH!]
Modern glaciers, such as those making up the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, are capable of undergoing periods of rapid shrinkage or retreat, according to new findings by paleoclimatologists.
a jet stream deep inside the sun is migrating slower than usual through the star's interior, giving rise to the current lack of sunspots.
first-ever comprehensive computer model of sunspots. The resulting visuals capture both scientific detail and remarkable beauty.
Scientists have discovered that the original statistical model used to calculate dinosaur mass is flawed, suggesting dinosaurs have been oversized.... implications for numerous theories about the biology of dinosaurs, ranging from their energy metabolism to their food requirements and to their modes of locomotion....
radar to give them a 3-D close-up of the San Andreas Fault... will map the fault segment by segment, repeating the same radar observations in hopes of measuring deformations in the crust that might occur between observations...
a new analog to DNA that assembles and disassembles itself without the need for enzymes. Because the new system comprises components that might reasonably be expected in a primordial world, the new chemical system could answer questions about how life could emerge.
skull characteristics of a new species of parrot-beaked dinosaur and its associated gizzard stones indicate that the animal fed on nuts and/or seeds. These characteristics present the first solid evidence of nut-eating in any dinosaur.
More than 100 feet deep in Lake Huron, on a wide stony ridge that 9,000 years ago was a land bridge, researchers have found the first archeological evidence of human activity preserved beneath the Great Lakes.
element 112... zinc and lead nuclei merge in a nuclear fusion to form the nucleus of the new element...
Surprised scientists say that typhoons which hit Taiwan unleash long, slow earthquakes, a phenomenon that may save the island from devastating temblors.
Study calculates the odds that two planets collide or one crashes into sun in the next 5 billion years... For the new study, the researchers started with the best known information about the position and orbital velocity of each of the 10 bodies, and marched simulations forward in nine-day steps for the next 5 billion years, the projected life of the sun... Mercury collides with Venus about 1.76 billion years from now...
Nearby Star May Be Getting Ready to Explode, Red giant Betelgeuse has suddenly shrunk in size, which means it may soon explode in a supernova.... It's possible we're observing the beginning of Betelgeuse's final collapse now.... If so, the star, which is 600 light-years away, will already have exploded — and we'll soon be in for a spectacular, and perfectly safe, interstellar fireworks show....
"Twelve of the 22 hospitalized children are in grave condition...." victims ranging in age from a few months to 3 years....
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