Watchman Newsletter

Indonesia's quake kills one, wounds 88

China View (Link) (November 9, 2009)

A powerful quake of 6.7 on Richter scale in West Nusa Tenggara province on Monday has killed one person, wounded 88 others and damaged hundreds of houses, the Health Ministry said here. Head of the crisis center of the ministry Rustam Pakaya said that six out of the 88 suffered from serious injuries.

The quake damaged two health facilities and 282 houses, he told Xinhua. Four school buildings and one religious building collapsed in Bima town, spokesman of the Disaster Management Agency Priyadi Kardono told Xinhua.

The quake occurred at 02:41 Jakarta time (1941 GMT Sunday) with the epicenter 28 km southwest Raba of West Nusa Tenggara province and 25 km under sea bed, an official of the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency named only Ardiatno told Xinhua.

The intensity of the quake was felt at 4 to 5 MMI (Modified Mercally Intensity) at Bima, Dompu, at 3 to 4 MMI at Sumbawa Besar,3 MMI at Mataram of the province, he said.

West Sumatra and West Java provinces had been hit by respectively 7.6-magnitude and 7.3-magnitude quakes recently, which killed more than 100 people.

Indonesia with over 230 million people sits on a quake-prone zone called the "Pacific Ring of Fire," where two continental plates meet that cause frequent seismic and volcanic movements.

Massive earthquake rocks the Pacific Ocean

Thaindian News (Link) (November 8, 2009)

A massive earthquake rocked the Pacific Ocean on Thursday morning, according to seismologists.

The earthquake, which struck about 232 miles north-northwest of Vanuatu’s Santo, had a preliminary magnitude of 8.1, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

Tsunami warnings have been issued for Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Kiribati, Kosrae, wallis-Futuna and Howland-Baker.

A tsunami watch is in effect for the Marshall Islands, Tokelau, the Kermadec Islands, Pohnpei, New Zealand, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Australia, Niue, Cook Islands, Chuuk, Indonesia, Wake Island, Jarvis Island, Palmyra Island, Guam, North Marianas, Johnston Island, Yap, Marcus Island and Belau.

It is not yet known if a tsunami was created. The earthquake struck about 15 miles deep, making it an extremely shallow earthquake. Shallow earthquakes often tend to cause more damage, and increase the risk of a tsunami.

“An earthquake of this size has the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines near the epicenter within minutes and more distant coastlines within hours,” a bulletin from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center read.

TAU scientists use lightning to 'take the sun's pulse'

The Jerusalem Post (Link) - Judy Siegel-Itzkovich (November 8, 2009)

Tel Aviv University geophysicists have unintentionally struck pay dirt by discovering that ordinary lightning hitting Earth can be assessed to use sunspots for measuring the sun's rotation and preparing long-range predictions of the planet's future.

Sunspots are temporary dark blotches that seem to float over the sun's surface and tell scientists much about the Earth. They are caused by intense magnetic activity, which inhibits convection, forming areas of reduced temperatures on the sun's surface.

Sunspots expand and contract as they move across the surface of the sun and can be as large as 80,000 kilometers in diameter, making the larger ones visible from Earth without the aid of a telescope (though the ordinary eye can never look at them directly).

Scientists rely on them, among other things, to measure the sun's rotation. But some years, like this one, sunspots cannot be viewed clearly from Earth. That poses a problem for scientists in a new scientific field called "space weather," which studies the interaction between the sun and the Earth's environment.

Thanks to a serendipitous discovery by TAU Prof. Colin Price, a leading climate change expert and head of the department of geophysics and planetary science, and his graduate student Yuval Reuveni, a more definitive and reliable tool for measuring the sun's rotation when sunspots aren't visible is available.

Climate tops Brussels' agenda for EU-US summit

EU Observer (Link) - Valentina Pop (November 2, 2009)

Climate change will feature heavily at an EU-US summit on Tuesday (3 November) as Brussels and Washington each try to find out what the other side is going to bring to the global negotiating table next month.

Top officials from the European Commission and the Swedish EU presidency will meet US president Barack Obama and his team in Washington in a bid to feel out the American position a month ahead of the UN-led climate change conference in Copenhagen aimed at securing a global political agreement on carbon emissions.

The first formal EU-US summit since Mr Obama took office, apart from an informal get together in April this year in Prague, will have one and half hours on Tuesday (3 November) dedicated to four topics: climate change, economic recovery after the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, Afghanistan-Pakistan and Iran.

Leading Climate Scientist: Cap and Trade Could Ruin US Economy

Northern News Network (Link) (October 28, 2009)

As debate over climate change legislation heats up on Capitol Hill, the Director of the University of Montana’s Climate Change Studies Program, and a co-author of a Nobel Prize winning report, says cap and trade legislation could ruin the US economy.

During a Wednesday morning interview with statewide radio talk show host Aaron Flint on “Voices of Montana,” Dr. Steve Running said any climate change solution needs to involve all nations.

“We have to have all the major nations in agreement on future progress,” said Running.

Running is a co-author of the Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and founder of the Climate Change Studies program at the University of Montana. He added, “If the US passed a cap and trade and other countries did not, it wouldn’t work. It would ruin the US economy and it wouldn’t save the climate either. So this is a global issue, the global climate statistics are global in nature, global carbon emissions are global in nature, and we really have to have an international consensus of what to do. That is going to stretch our international diplomacy to its limit, there’s no doubt about that.”

Nonetheless, Running called on the United States to show leadership on the issue of addressing climate change, saying other countries will follow suit.

Annual Conference of the Institute for Security Studies of the European Union

Council of the European Union (Link) - European Union High Representative For Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana (October 22, 2009)

Dear friends, We are working hard to make a difference on every international question that is affecting our interests and values. We are now able to take decisions in real time; not just publish a communiqué one week after the event. From climate change to the International Criminal Court, we can say with a straight face that the EU is playing a leadership role. The European Union, more than anyone else, is constantly defending a vision of the world where rules are respected, the vulnerable are protected and solidarity is enacted.

Often we talk ourselves down in Europe. You all know the refrain of Europe being too divided, too slow and too soft. Long on rhetoric, short on delivery. And Yes in various areas we still under-perform compared to our potential. But a little perspective is in order here. Now we are taking executive action in a fast-moving world.

Building on the improvements of the last ten years, and with the new opportunities of the Lisbon Treaty within reach, we should plan our next steps : alert to new problems and dangers; guided by our common values. In partnership with others. And with the conviction that each on our own is unable to deal effectively with the problems of our globalised world. We know that acting together is the only way to defend our interests. But we have also defined acting together as being a strategic common interest. That is why European integration is both a means but also an end in itself.

I am convinced that it is only through further integration that Europeans will be able to assert themselves in a more complex world. A world characterised by big power shifts, multi-polarity and new security threats. A world where other narratives and other ways of doing things are gaining ground. We need to understand this world - at a deeper level than we often do. For this we need more common European assessments of what is driving change; how it is affecting our interests and what our options are to respond.

Strong earthquake strikes Afghanistan and Pakistan

Associated Press (Link) (October 22, 2009)

A strong earthquake centered in the towering Hindu Kush mountains shook a wide area of eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan early Friday, swaying buildings in the Afghan and Pakistani capitals.

There were no initial reports of damage or casualties from the quake, which struck about 12:21 a.m. Afghan time (1951 GMT, 3:51 p.m. EDT Thursday).

However, the temblor was centered in a remote mountain area where communications are poor and reports of casualties take time to reach the capital.

The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.2 and was centered in the mountains about 167 miles (268 kilometers) northeast of Kabul and 140 miles (230 kilometers) west of Mingaora, Pakistan, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Thatcher adviser: Copenhagen goal is 1-world government

WorldNet Daily (Link) - Jerome R. Corsi (October 17, 2009)

A former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher says the real purpose of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen on Dec. 7-18 is to use global warming hype as a pretext to lay the foundation for a one-world government.

"At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed," Lord Christopher Monckton told a Minnesota Free Market Institute audience on Thursday at Bethel University in St. Paul.

"Your president will sign it. Most of the Third World countries will sign it, because they think they're going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regimes from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won't sign it," he told the audience of some 700 attendees.

"I read that treaty and what it says is this: that a world government is going to be created. The word 'government' actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity.

"The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to Third World countries, in satisfaction of what is called, coyly, 'climate debt' – because we've been burning CO2 and they haven't. We've been screwing up the climate and they haven't. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government is enforcement."

What happened to global warming?

BBC News (Link) - Paul Hudson (October 9, 2009)

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.

They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?

6.7 magnitude quake strikes near Philippines

Reuters (Link) (October 7, 2009)

A magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck southeast of the Sulu archipelago of the Philippines, the U.S. Geological Survey said on Wednesday.

The epicenter of the quake, which struck at 5:41 a.m. local time on Thursday, was located 184 miles southeast of Jolo on the Sulu archipelago. The depth was 362.2 miles, the agency said.

Initially, the U.S. Geological Survey registered a 6.9 magnitude quake.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damages and no tsunami warning was issued.

8.1 magnitude earthquake strikes northwest of Vanuatu

Reuters (Link) (October 7, 2009)

An 8.1 magnitude earthquake struck off the northwest of Santo, Vanuatu, the U.S. Geological Survey said on Wednesday.

The epicenter of the quake was located 232 miles north-northwest of Santo, Vanuatu, at a depth of 20.5 miles, the agency said.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage and no tsunami warning was issued.

---

Follow-up: The Australian (Link) (October 8, 2009)

A second major earthquake has hit Vanuatu, this time recording a magnitude of 7.3 on the Richter scale.

The US Geological Survey reports the second quake struck 330km north-west of Santo, almost on top of the original 7.8 quake which struck at 09:08 AEDT.

The second quake struck 10 minutes later at a depth of 35km.

'Robust Sequence' of Earthquakes Shake Eastern California

Fox News (Link) - AP (October 2, 2009)

Earthquakes up to magnitude 5.2 struck Friday evening in a remote area of eastern California that was been shaken by a sequence of temblors a day earlier.

Inyo County sheriff's dispatcher Carol Drew said no damage or injuries were reported, but the department received several calls about the quakes.

The quakes' epicenters were just southeast of the town of Lone Pine in the arid Owens Valley below the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, about 180 miles north of Los Angeles.

"It's a very robust sequence," said California Institute of Technology seismologist Anthony Guarino.

The 5.2 quake occurred at 6:15 p.m. at a very shallow depth and was preceded by tremors of 4.7 and 4.9 in a six-minute span, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Guarino said most California quakes are six to 10 miles deep, but the biggest quake was centered less than a kilometer beneath the earth's surface, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's measurements.

This means more intense shaking felt over a wider area and maybe even a visible crack in the ground, he said.

Indonesia quake deaths pass 1,000

BBC News (Link) - AFP - P. Parameswaran (October 1, 2009)

At least 1,100 people have died in the earthquake that struck the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Wednesday, the UN humanitarian chief has said.

John Holmes said many hundreds more had been injured, and both figures were set to rise further.

Rescuers are working into the night to find survivors in the rubble of hundreds of collapsed buildings.

The 7.6-magnitude quake struck close to the city of Padang, the capital of West Sumatra province.

The earthquake brought down hospitals, schools and shopping malls, cut power lines and triggered landslides.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited some of the worst-hit areas.

"I ask rescue workers to continue working in teams with clear goals to keep looking for survivors...," he said.

"This is a natural disaster, so let us remain strong in dealing with it."

Deadly tsunami strikes in Pacific

BBC News (Link) (September 30, 2009)

A tsunami triggered by a strong quake in the South Pacific has killed more than 100 people in several islands.

At least 77 people were reported dead in Samoa, more than 25 in American Samoa and at least six in Tonga.

Residents and tourists fled to higher ground as whole villages were destroyed. Boats were swept inland and cars and people out to sea.

The 8.3-magnitude quake struck at 1748 GMT on Tuesday, generating 15ft (4.5m) waves in some areas of the islands.

The Samoa islands comprise two separate entities - the nation of Samoa and American Samoa, a US territory. The total population is about 250,000.

A general tsunami warning was issued for the wider South Pacific region but was cancelled a few hours later.

Separately on Wednesday a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck a different fault line off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, killing at least 75 people.

CO2 is not melting the Arctic

The Migrant Mind (Link) - G. R. Morton (September 24, 2009)

It is modern myth that CO₂ is melting the Arctic sea ice. No doubt many people will take immediate offence at the mere title of this post but they would do well to listen to the data before they jump. CO₂ is supposed to heat the earth's atmosphere and then would melt the ice from above. The atmosphere can't get past the ice to warm the water below so the only logical conclusion is that a warm atmosphere should melt the ice from above.

But what is happening is the Arctic ice is melting from below due to warm waters that normally are about 100-200 m below the surface. I am going to show that due to a change in the winds, the Arctic ocean became more salty (salinization). The increase in salinity caused the underlying deeper waters to come into contact with the ice above, which melts the Arctic ice from below. Unless one can demonstrate that the wind change is due to global warming, one can't claim that CO₂ is melting the Arctic ice.

Let's start by looking at the vertical temperature profile of the Arctic ocean. The surface layer, the layer in which the ice floats, is in general is fresher than the warm Atlantic sea water below.

Pacific tsunami rescue stepped up

BBC News (Link) - AFP - P. Parameswaran (September 24, 2009)

Rescue workers on the Samoan islands and Tonga are continuing to search for survivors after a tsunami struck, killing at least 149 people.

The prime minister of Samoa said 110 people were dead on his islands and the devastation "was complete".

Officials said planes carrying aid supplies were arriving on Samoa and nearby American Samoa.

They said tens of thousands of people need help in villages swamped by waves triggered by Tuesday's huge earthquake.

The United Nations said it was sending an emergency team to Samoa.

'No house standing'

"The devastation caused was complete," Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele told Radio New Zealand after inspecting the south-east coast of the main island of Upolu, the hardest-hit area.

"In some villages absolutely no house was standing. All that was achieved within 10 minutes by the very powerful tsunami."

U.N. climate meeting was propaganda: Czech president

Reuters (Link) - Louis Charbonneau (September 22, 2009)

Czech President Vaclav Klaus sharply criticized a U.N. meeting on climate change on Tuesday at which U.S. President Barack Obama was among the top speakers, describing it as propagandistic and undignified.

"It was sad and it was frustrating," said Klaus, one of the world's most vocal skeptics on the topic of global warming.

"It's a propagandistic exercise where 13-year-old girls from some far-away country perform a pre-rehearsed poem," he said. "It's simply not dignified."

At the opening of the summit attended by nearly 100 world leaders, 13-year-old Yugratna Srivastava of India told the audience that governments were not doing enough to combat the threat of climate change.

Klaus said there were increasing doubts in the scientific community about whether humans are causing changes in the climate or whether the changes are simply naturally occurring phenomena.

But politicians, he said, seem to be moving closer to a consensus on climate change. "The train can't be stopped and I consider that a huge mistake," Klaus said.

Strong quake rocks remote Bhutan: USGS

Breitbart (Link) (September 21, 2009)

A strong 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan and northeast India on Monday, the US Geological Survey said, with tremors felt in nearby Bangladesh and China.

According to the USGS, the epicentre was located just inside Bhutan's border with India, 180 kilometres (115 miles) east of the Bhutanese capital Thimpu, at a shallow depth of 7.2 kilometres.

There were no immediate reports of any casualties or damage. The Indian Meteorological Department said the epicentre was in a remote, sparsely populated area.

Strong tremors lasting up to 20 seconds were felt 125 kilometres away in Guwahati, the capital of India's northeastern state of Assam, where nervous residents ran into the streets.

Cracks appeared in several buildings in the city but there was no serious damage, witnesses said.

The tremors were also felt in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka and in Lhasa, the capital of the Chinese region of Tibet, according to Chinese state media.

Earth approaching sunspot records

CJ Online (Link) - Corey Jones (September 20, 2009)

The average person may not associate coolness with the sun. The sun releases energy through deep nuclear fusion reactions in its core and has surface temperatures as hot as 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, according to NASA's Web site. Not cool at all.

But the sun's recent activity, or lack thereof, may be linked to the pleasant summer temperatures the midwest has enjoyed this year, said Charlie Perry, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Lawrence.

The sun is at a low point of a deep solar minimum in which there are few to no sunspots on its surface.

In July through August, 51 consecutive days passed without a spot, one day short of tying the record of 52 days from the early 1900s.

As of Sept. 15, the current solar minimum ranks third all-time in the amount of spotless days with 717 since 2004. There have been 206 spotless days in 2009, which is 14th all-time. But there are still more than 100 days left in the year, and Perry expects that number to climb.

"Quiet" Sun can also hit Earth with wild winds

Reuters (Link) (September 18, 2009)

The Sun can lash the Earth with powerful winds that can disrupt communications, aviation and power lines even when it is in the quiet phase of its 11-year solar cycle, U.S. scientists say.

Observers have traditionally used the number of sunspots on the surface of the Sun to measure its activity. The number of sunspots reaches a peak at what is called the solar maximum, then declines to reach a minimum during a cycle.

At the peak, intense solar flares and geomagnetic storms eject vast amounts of energy into space, crashing into the Earth's protective magnetic fields, knocking out satellites, disrupting communications and causing colorful aurorae.

But scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the United States and the University of Michigan found that the Earth was bombarded with intense solar winds last year despite an unusually quiet phase for the Sun.

"The Sun continues to surprise us," said Sarah Gibson of the center's High Altitude Observatory and lead author of the study. "The solar wind can hit Earth like a fire hose even when there are virtually no sunspots."

Six Volcanoes Erupt in Russia

New Tang Dynasty Television (Link) (September 17, 2009) Video of text at link

Six volcanoes are currently erupting in Russia's remote Kamchatka region. Volcanologist Yaroslav Muraviyev says so much activity was last recorded 55 years ago. He says the number of eruptions is increasing all over the world.

[Yaroslav Muraviyev, Deputy Director of Science, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatka Institute]:
"We have seen two, three, up to five volcanoes erupting simultaneously, but we have six volcanoes erupting this year and it is not just happening here, this is a global trend."

Despite the obvious dangers, there is mixed reaction among local people.

Powerful 6.4 Quake Rattles Venezuela

BBC News (Link) (September 13, 2009)

A strong earthquake has struck off the coast of Venezuela, knocking out power in the capital and sending people rushing into the streets.

The 6.4-magnitude quake's epicentre was 65 miles (110km) west of Caracas, at a depth of 6.2 miles (10km).

Buildings were damaged and at least seven people were injured in the north-western Falcon state, the worst hit.

The closest town to the epicentre was the oil port of Puerto Cabello, on the country's northern coast.

No damage has been reported to any of the country's oil installations.

Tremors were also felt in nearby Carabobo and Aragua states.

Reuters reported that power was out in one area of the capital and media reports suggested that other regions were also without electricity.

The country's minister for light industry said that efforts were being made to repair any damage to telephone networks or gas and electricity supplies that may have failed after the earthquake.

Guatemala in 'public calamity' as drought and famine worsen

The China Post (Link) (September 11, 2009)

Guatemala's President Alvaro Colom has declared a "public calamity" from drought and famine that have claimed more than 460 lives since the start of the year.

"I have decided to declare a state of public calamity throughout the country," Colom declared in a nationally-broadcast address Tuesday.

"This will allow us to have access to international aid resources and to mobilize resources within our budget with greater ease," the Guatemalan leader said.

The country's health minister said 462 people have died, including 54 children.

Most of the deaths occurred in the impoverished northern section of Guatemala bordering Mexico, where more than half of the 13 million inhabitants in the region subsist below the poverty line.

Svensmark: “global warming stopped and a cooling is beginning” – “enjoy global warming while it lasts”

Watts Up With That? (Link) - Professor Henrik Svensmark (September 10, 2009)

This opinion piece from Professor Henrik Svensmark was published September 9th in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Translation is from Google translation with some post translation cleanup of jumbled words or phrases by myself. In cases were the words were badly jumbled or didn’t quite make sense I inserted [my interpretation in brackets]. Hat tip to Carsten Arnholm of Norway for bringing this to my attention. – Anthony

While the sun sleeps HENRIK SVENSMARK, Professor, DTU, Copenhagen

Indeed, global warming stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth, on the contrary. This means that projections of future climate is unpredictable, writes Henrik Svensmark.

The star which keeps us alive, has over the last few years almost no sunspots, which are the usual signs of the sun’s magnetic activity.

Last week, reported the scientific team behind Sohosatellitten (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) that the number of sunspot-free days suggest that solar activity is heading towards its lowest level in about 100 years’.  Everything indicates that the Sun is moving into a hibernation-like state, and the obvious question is whether it has any significance for us on Earth.

If you ask the International Panel on Climate Change IPCC, representing the current consensus on climate change, so the answer is a reassuring ‘nothing’. But history and recent research suggests that it is probably completely wrong. Let us take a closer look at why.

Solar activity has always varied.  Around the year 1000, we had a period of very high solar activity, which coincided with the medieval warmth. It was a period when frosts in May was an almost unknown phenomenon and of great importance for a good harvest.  Vikings settled in Greenland and explored the coast of North America. For example, China’s population doubled over this period.  But after about 1300, the earth began to get colder and it was the beginning of the period we now call the Little Ice Age. In this cold period  all the Viking settlements in Greenland disappeared. Swedes [were surprised to see Denmark to freeze over in ice], and the Thames in London froze repeatedly. But more serious was the long periods of crop failure, which resulted in a poorly nourished population, because of disease and hunger [population was reduced] by about 30 per cent in Europe.

Deadly 7.0 Earthquake hits Indonesia

BBC News (Link) (September 2, 2009)

A powerful earthquake has struck off the Indonesian island of Java, killing 44 people, officials say.

More than 300 have been injured and it is feared the death toll will rise as many homes have reportedly been buried by a landslide triggered by the quake.

More than 700 houses were badly damaged by the magnitude 7.0 quake, a social affairs ministry official told AP.

The quake struck around 1500 (0800 GMT). Its epicentre was offshore, 115km (70 miles) south-west of Tasikmalaya.

Medical teams have been dispatched to the city, where damaged properties included the mayor's home and a mosque.

The tremors were felt in the capital, Jakarta, 200km to the north, where hundreds fled into the streets from offices and shops.

A local tsunami alert was issued but revoked shortly afterwards.

6.4-magnitude earthquake jolts NW China

China View (Link) (August 28, 2009)

An earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale struck remote Qinghai Province in northwest China at 9:52 a.m. Friday, the China Earthquake Administration said, but no casualties have been reported.

A total of 128 aftershocks had been registered by 11 a.m. near the epicenter in the Da Qaidam (also known as Dachaidan) district in the Mongolian-Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Haixi, with the strongest measuring 5.3 magnitudes that struck at 10:14, according to the Qinghai Provincial Seismological Network.

"Frequent aftershocks can still be felt here, but we have not received any reports of casualties," Li Daqing, deputy director of the Haixi Seismological Bureau, told Xinhua at about 3 p.m. at the Da Qaidam Township where the Da Qaidam District Administrative Committee seats.

More earthquakes reported in central Oklahoma

News OK (Link) - Robert Medley (August 28, 2009)

More rumblings underground, all in the same location, have been reported as earthquakes by the Oklahoma Geological Survey in Norman, bringing the total to 9 separate earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the state, the U.S. Geological Survey reports today.

All but one of the earthquakes was reported in eastern Oklahoma County, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The other quake one was reported northeast of Ada early Thursday.

The largest earthquake was registered as 3.7 magnitude on the Richter scale Thursday night in Jones.

No damages have been reported.

The last quake in the eastern Oklahoma County area was recorded at 10:30 p.m. Thursday on the north and northeast side of Jones, reading 2.4 magnitude on the Richter scale.

In the same location at 10:15 p.m. on the north and northeast side of Jones, an earthquake reading 2.3 magnitude on the Richter scale, according to the survey.

The survey reports the largest was at 9:09 p.m. Thursday, a 3.7 magnitude earthquake was felt in the same area.

Anyone who felt the quake can fill out a report online at the Oklahoma Geological Survey's Web site, www.okgeosurvey1.gov, or the U.S. Geological Survey's Web site, www.earthquake.usgs.gov.

Taiwan confirms 543 dead, 117 missing after typhoon

Relief Web (Link) - AFP (August 27, 2009)

Taiwan on Thursday confirmed that 543 people were killed and 117 were missing after Typhoon Morakot struck more than two weeks ago, causing the worst flooding in the island's history.

The National Fire Agency said that the latest figures included 397 confirmed deaths from the worst-hit southern village of Hsiaolin, where another 53 people were still unaccounted for.

Previously, the death toll from the typhoon stood at 461.

The toll was expected to rise futher, with the agency saying around 60 bodies had yet to be identified.

The typhoon struck the island on August 8, bringing a record three metres (118 inches) of rain, submerging houses and streets and destroying dozens of bridges and hundreds of roads.

President Ma Ying-jeou has said the scale of damage caused by Morakot was more severe than a 1959 typhoon that killed 667 people and left around 1,000 missing.

The deadliest natural disaster in the island's history was a 7.6-magnitude quake that claimed around 2,400 lives in September 1999.

Carbon Dioxide irrelevant in climate debate says MIT Scientist

The Examiner (Link) - Dianna Cotter (August 18, 2009)

In a study sure to ruffle the feathers of the Global Warming cabal, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT has published a paper which proves that IPCC models are overstating by 6 times, the relevance of CO₂ in Earth’s Atmosphere. Dr. Lindzen has found that heat is radiated out in to space at a far higher rate than any modeling system to date can account for.

Editorial: The science is in. the scare is out. Recent papers and data give a complete picture of why the UN is wrong.

The pdf file located at the link above from the Science and Public Policy Institute has absolutely, convincingly, and irrefutably proven the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming to be completely false.

Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT’s peer reviewed work states “we now know that the effect of CO₂ on temperature is small, we know why it is small, and we know that it is having very little effect on the climate.”

“The global surface temperature record, which we update and publish every month, has shown no statistically-significant “global warming” for almost 15 years. Statistically-significant global cooling has now persisted for very nearly eight years. Even a strong el Nino – expected in the coming months – will be unlikely to reverse the cooling trend.

More significantly, the ARGO bathythermographs deployed throughout the world’s oceans since 2003 show that the top 400 fathoms of the oceans, where it is agreed between all parties that at least 80% of all heat caused by manmade “global warming” must accumulate, have been cooling over the past six years. That now prolonged ocean cooling is fatal to the “official” theory that “global warming” will happen on anything other than a minute scale.” | SPPI Monthly CO₂ Report: July 2009

If for no other reason than this: the IPCC assumes that the concentration of CO₂ in 2100 will be 836 ppmv (parts per million volume). However, current graphs based on real data show that CO₂ concentrations will only be 570 ppmv in 2100, cutting the IPCC’s estimates in half right there.

UN chief warns of 'incalculable' suffering without climate deal

Yahoo! News (Link) - AFP (August 17, 2009)

UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned Tuesday of "incalculable" human suffering if the world fails to reach a deal at crucial climate change talks this December.

The United Nations is orchestrating the talks in the Danish capital in hopes of securing an agreement to slash greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.

"As we move toward Copenhagen in December, we must seal a climate change deal that secures our common future," Ban told an environmental forum in Incheon city west of Seoul.

The UN secretary general, who began a visit to his homeland Sunday, warned of catastrophes if the world fails to work out a deal.

Ban said unchecked climate change would intensify drought, floods and other natural disasters and bring water shortages and malnutrition -- aggravating tensions and social unrest and even sparking violence.

"The human suffering will be incalculable," Ban said.