Does it seem to you like there has been an unusual amount of seismic activity around the world lately? Well, it isn’t just your imagination. The Ring of Fire is roaring to life and that is really bad news for the west coast of the United States. Approximately 90 percent of all earthquakes and approximately 75 percent of all volcanic eruptions occur along the Ring of Fire. Considering the fact that the entire west coast of the United States lies along the Ring of Fire, we should be very concerned that the Ring of Fire is becoming more active. On Wednesday, the most powerful strike-slip earthquake ever recorded happened along the Ring of Fire. If that earthquake had happened in a major U.S. city along the west coast, the city would have been entirely destroyed. Scientists tell us that there is nearly a 100% certainty that the “Big One” will hit California at some point. In recent years we have seen Japan, Chile, Indonesia and New Zealand all get hit by historic earthquakes. It is inevitable that there will be earthquakes of historic importance on the west coast of the United States as well. So far we have been very fortunate, but that good fortune will not last indefinitely.

In a previous article, I showed that earthquakes are becoming more frequent around the globe. In 2001, there were 137 earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 or greater and in 2011 there were 205. The charts and data that I presented in that previous article show a clear upward trend in large global earthquakes over the past decade, and that is why what happened this week is so alarming.

On Wednesday, a magnitude 8.6 earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia and that was rapidly followed by a magnitude 8.2 earthquake off the coast of Indonesia.

Fortunately those gigantic earthquakes did not produce a devastating tsunami, but that doesn’t mean that those earthquakes were not immensely powerful.

Normally we only see about one earthquake of magnitude 8.0 or greater per year. The magnitude 8.6 earthquake was the most powerful strike-slip earthquake in recorded history. If that earthquake had happened in the United States, it would have probably been the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. The following is from an article posted on The Extinction Protocol….

I’ve never heard of a strike-slip lateral earthquake of this great a magnitude; especially under water. Preliminary assessment of the Indonesian quakes by U.S. geologists suggests one plate lurched past each other as much as 70 feet. San Andreas is a strike-slip, lateral- can we even imagine two sections of ground moving 70 feet near San Francisco? Had the force of the Sumatra quakes been unleashed upon San Andreas, the city would have been completely destroyed.

And earthquake activity along the west coast has definitely been heating up in recent days.

On Wednesday, a magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck approximately 160 miles off of the coast of Oregon.

Early on Thursday, there were two major earthquakes (magnitude 6.9 and magnitude 6.2) in the Gulf of California.

It is only a matter of time before the “Big One” hits California.

Sadly, most Americans (especially young Americans) can’t even tell you what the Ring of Fire is. The following is how Wikipedia defines the “Ring of Fire”….

The Pacific Ring of Fire (or sometimes just the Ring of Fire) is an area where large numbers of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur in the basin of the Pacific Ocean. In a 40,000 km (25,000 mi) horseshoe shape, it is associated with a nearly continuous series of oceanic trenches, volcanic arcs, and volcanic belts and/or plate movements.

The entire west coast of the United States falls along the Ring of Fire and a massive network of faults runs underneath California, Oregon and Washington.

At this point, scientists tell us that the west coast is long overdue for a major earthquake. An article in Time Magazine a few years ago stated the following….

California has more than 300 faults running beneath its surface, including the massive San Andreas Fault, yet the quake to end all quakes has yet to occur. In 1980, a federal report declared the likelihood of a major earthquake striking California within the next 30 years to be “well in excess of 50%.”

Unfortunately, the truth is that is a very, very conservative estimate. The west coast has always been extremely unstable and it always will be. At some point there is going to be a tragedy of unimaginable proportions on the west coast.

Just hope that you are not there when it happens.

But it isn’t just California, Oregon and Washington that should be concerned.

According to the Arizona Geological Survey, there were 131 earthquakes in the state of Arizona in 2011. That was a huge increase from just 53 in 2010.

And of course an absolutely nightmarish earthquake could occur along the New Madrid fault at any time, but that is a topic for another article.

As far as the Ring of Fire is concerned, another major threat is volcanic activity.

One of these days, one or more of the major volcanoes on the west coast is going to experience a major eruption again. There have been signs that Mt. Rainier has been becoming more active, and a major eruption of Mt. Rainier could potentially be absolutely devastating for much of the northwest United States.

Of even greater concern along the Ring of Fire is Mt. Fuji. As I wrote about the other day, Mt. Fuji has been dormant for about 300 years but is now rapidly roaring to life. New craters have appeared and these new craters are venting gas. There has been a swarm of earthquakes under Mt. Fuji this year, including a magnitude 6.4 earthquake on March 15th.

If Mt. Fuji were to experience a full-blown eruption, the consequences could be absolutely catastrophic. Mt. Fuji is not too far from Tokyo – one of the most densely populated cities on the entire planet. The loss of life resulting from a full-blown eruption of Mt. Fuji would be almost unimaginable.

But it is not just along the Ring of Fire that we are seeing a rise in volcanic activity. The truth is that we are seeing a rise in volcanic activity all over the globe. The following are just a couple of recent examples which have been in the news….

*The volcanoes in Iceland that caused such huge problems a few years ago are becoming very active once again.

*Authorities in Colombia have declared a “red alert” and believe that an eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano is imminent.

*Ash is venting at the world famous Anak Krakatau volcano in Indonesia.

Something really strange is going on.

Most scientists will deny it or will attempt to downplay it until they are blue in the face, but the truth is that the trembling of our planet is getting worse.

If this shaking continues to get worse, there are going to be some absolutely horrific tragedies in the years ahead.

Source

“Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around us in awareness.” – James Thurber 

The Powers-That-Be seem to be ramping-up efforts to drive a stake right into America’s heart(land).  Natural disasters are on the rise, and an increasing amount of evidence is leading to the conclusion that these natural disasters might not be completely natural.

Some already have speculated that we are entering a time of weather and earthquake wars, as the incidence of mega disasters has risen across the world.  Is government experimentation simply going awry, or is it being orchestrated on purpose? Are they hiding behind or even amplifying current natural earth changes such as the strong solar cycle and the on-going magnetic pole shift to accomplish some furtive plot?

The hidden hand has always cloaked itself using a wide array of techniques to conceal its divide-and-conquer agenda.  By owning the ultimate weapon – the very climate upon which we all depend – entire regions can now be put under a full spectrum of remote control already served up through climate change, economic instability,  and the military-surveillance complex brought in under the false threat of terrorism.

Let’s first look at the evidence for the manipulation of natural disasters and the proposed government solutions, then move to the massive preparation being undertaken by FEMA indicating that something big is on the way for the area of The New Madrid Fault as indicated by the current cluster of disasters in the region.  We’ll then finish with the solutions at our disposal to thwart the efforts of the elite cabal of gangsters that seeks control over humanity.

Continues in full at source…

A new study conducted by researchers from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., suggests that the ill-famed California mega-earthquake could happen literally any day now. Overdue for experiencing the “big one” by as much as 100 years, the San Andreas fault line, which stretches about 810 miles along the California coastline and branches inland to the south where it ends at the Salton Sea, could very soon experience a devastating 7.5 magnitude or greater quake.

Experts have been speculating for years about when the next California mega-quake might occur because it has been a long time since the last one occurred. The last semi-major earthquake to cause significant damage in California was the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which clocked in at 6.7 magnitude on the Richter scale. That quake produced the strongest ground motions ever recorded in an urban area inside North America, at least 33 people died, and total damage topped $20 billion – and yet that quake is smaller than what is predicted to come.

Historically, the Salton Sea area, which is located roughly 70 miles to the east of the San Diego area, experiences a major earthquake every 180 years. The lake, which lies directly on the San Andreas fault line, at one time experienced regular, moderate seismic activity. But as engineering officials began to dam areas of the Colorado River that fed directly into the lake, those quakes have largely ceased. Serious tension has been building as a result, and experts believe that because the area is already about 100 years overdue for a major earthquake, the writing is on the wall.

California is riddled with many highly-active fault zones, and a great number of them have not seen major seismic activity for a long time. Based on the pattern of heavy seismic activity taking place around the Pacific “Ring of Fire” in recent months, which represents the patchwork of fault line-ridden land masses circling the Pacific Ocean, California appears to be next in line for a major shaker.

Sources for this story.

Source 

What in the world is happening in the middle of the United States right now?  Thousands of birds are falling dead from the skies, tens of thousands of fish are washing up on shore dead, earthquakes are popping up in weird and unexpected places and people are starting to get really freaked out about all of this.  Well, one theory is that the New Madrid fault zone is coming to life.  The New Madrid fault zone is six times bigger than the San Andreas fault zone in California and it covers portions of Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi.  The biggest earthquakes in the history of the United States were caused by the New Madrid fault.  Now there are fears that the New Madrid fault zone could be coming to life again, and if a “killer earthquake” does strike it could change all of our lives forever.

So exactly what events have happened recently that are causing people to take a close look at the New Madrid fault zone?  Well, just consider the following examples of things that have been popping up in the news lately….

*According to the U.S. Geological Survey, more than 500 measurable earthquakes have been recorded in central Arkansas just since September.

*A magnitude-3.8 earthquake that shook north-central Indiana on December 30th is being called “unprecedented”. It was strong enough to actually cause cracks along the ground and it was felt in portions of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin and Kentucky.

*More than 3,000 red-wing blackbirds fell out of the sky dead in the Arkansas town of Beebe on New Year’s Eve.

*Large numbers of dead birds were also found in Kentucky right around Christmas.

*Approximately 500 dead blackbirds and starlings were also recently discovered in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana.

*Approximately 100,000 fish washed up dead on the shores of the Arkansas River just last week.

So could all of these things have some other very simple explanation?

Possibly.

But the fact that they all happened in or around the New Madrid fault zone is starting to raise some eyebrows.

About 200 years ago, in 1811 and 1812, there were four earthquakes that were so powerful in the area of the New Madrid fault zone that they are still talked about today.  All four of the quakes were estimated to have been magnitude-7.0 or greater.  It is said that those earthquakes opened deep fissures in the ground, caused the Mississippi River to run backwards and that they were felt as far away as Boston.

The last major earthquake to hit the region was a 5.4-magnitude quake that struck the town of Dale, Illinois in 1968.  Things have been strangely quiet in the region since then until recently.

If a true “killer earthquake” struck along the New Madrid fault zone today, cities such as St. Louis, Missouri and Memphis, Tennessee could potentially be completely destroyed.

Unfortunately, this is not an exaggeration.

The following video describes just how incredibly powerful the earthquakes along the New Madrid fault in 1811 and 1812 actually were….

So could such a thing happen today? 

Well, that is exactly what many seismologists now fear.  The following video news report from ABC News explains why so many scientists are so concerned about the New Madrid fault zone….

One interesting theory is that the “oil volcano” unleashed by the BP oil spill in 2010 may have sparked renewed seismic activity in that part of the world.

Jack M. Reed, a retired Texaco geologist-geophysicist, has been carefully studying the geology of the Gulf of Mexico for over 40 years.  Reed is convinced that the Gulf of Mexico is currently tectonically active, and that the Gulf of Mexico is the source for most seismic activity along the New Madrid fault.

According to Reed, there is substantial evidence that the New Madrid fault zone is directly connected to “deeply buried tectonics” in the Gulf of Mexico….

This entire zone through the United States is suffering some type of tectonic activity that I believe is tied to the deeply buried tectonics in the Gulf of Mexico.”

 So did BP disturb those “deeply buried tectonics” by drilling such a deep well and unleashing all that oil that flowed into the Gulf of Mexico?

Let’s hope not.

If a truly historic earthquake did strike along the New Madrid fault the amount of damage that could be done to surrounding states such as Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Indiana, Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas and Tennessee could potentially be unimaginable.

Jeremy Heidt of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency says that life in the region would be instantly transformed in the event of a major earthquake along the New Madrid fault….

According to a recent study by the University of Illinois, a 7.7-magnitude earthquake along the New Madrid fault would leave 3,500 people dead, more than 80,000 injured and more than 7 million homeless.

So what would happen if an 8.0 earthquake struck?

Or an 8.5?

Or a 9.0?

Remember, an 8.7-magnitude earthquake would be ten times worse than a 7.7-magnitude earthquake.

There are even some who believe that if a powerful enough earthquake hit the New Madrid fault someday it could potentially alter the surrounding geography enough that it could actually create a new major body of water in the middle of the United States.

So, no, it is not just California that needs to worry about “the Big One”.

Right now seismic activity has been dramatically increasing all over the globe.  Just think of the unprecedented number of volcanic eruptions that we have seen over the past year.  Major earthquakes have been popping up all along the “Ring of Fire”.  Just over the past couple of days a magnitude-7.1 earthquake hit central Chile and a magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck northern Argentina.

So to think that “it can’t happen” in the United States is just being totally naive.

Let us hope and pray that a devastating earthquake does not hit the New Madrid fault any time soon, because such an event could completely wipe out our economy.  The U.S. economy is already teetering on the brink of disaster, and all it would take is one major blow to bring the entire house of cards crashing down.

Just remember what happened in Haiti.  A magnitude-7.0 earthquake killed 230,000 people and caused such horrific devastation that it is still hard to even try to put it into words.  Let us hope and pray that nothing like that happens in any U.S. city any time soon.

Source

What these mysterious vibrations say about future earthquakes is far from certain. But some think the deep tremors suggest underground stress may be building up faster than expected and may indicate an increased risk of a major temblor.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, monitored seismic activity on the fault’s central section between July 2001 and February 2009 and recorded more than 2,000 tremors. The tremors lasted mere minutes to nearly half an hour.

Unlike earthquakes, tremors occur deeper below the surface and the shaking lasts longer.

During the study period, two strong earthquakes hit—a magnitude-6.5 in 2003 and a magnitude-6.0 a year later. Scientists noticed the frequency of the tremors doubled after the 2003 quake and jumped six-fold after 2004.

Tremor episodes persist today. Though the frequency of tremors have declined since 2004, scientists are still concerned because they are still at a level that is twice as high as before the 2003 quake.

The team also recorded unusually strong rumblings days before the 2004 temblor.

Results of the research appear in Friday’s issue of the journal Science. The work was funded by the U.S. Geological Survey and National Science Foundation.

“The fact that the tremors haven’t gone down means the time to the next earthquake may come sooner,” said Berkeley seismologist and lead researcher Robert Nadeau.

Nadeau first discovered tremors deep in the San Andreas Fault in 2005. Before that, the phenomenon was thought only to occur in Earth’s subduction zones, where one tectonic plate dives beneath another.

USGS seismologist Susan Hough found the latest observations intriguing, but said it’s too soon to know what they mean.

“We don’t have enough data to know what the fault is doing in the long term,” said Hough, who had no part in the research.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jficMB9R4grVIH4DsO8bMOCskHqgD99B30O81

Two paragraphs from the British newspaper The Observer about a Pentagon study:

“A secret report, suppressed by US defense chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.”

“The [secret] document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.” http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1153513,00.html

This study was conducted in 2003, and the Pentagon has since refuted it to be only a ‘worst case scenario’. Well, guess what. This past year, the data that has been flowing in is showing that the climate is changing as fast as the worst case scenarios of our climate scientists!

- The rise in CO2 is above what they thought it would be. -

The increase in global and regional mean temperatures is breaking every record, and is higher than they predicted it would be. – The melting at the poles is more and faster than they thought it would be. – The sea level rise is higher than they thought it would be.

In the past few years, everywhere the scientists look they find that things are happening at or faster than the upper ranges of their previous predictions.(1) The scientific reports from around the world about the accelerating changes have not made it to the US corporate media, though.

US Chief Climatologist Dr. James Hansen released a report last week which stated grave consequences for the human race if the gigantic task of reducing green house gas is not quickly tackled.(2) He used stronger than usual language about the severity of the looming climate change in an effort to get things moving. His report was given little if any print in the US corporate media, of course.

The subtitle of the report is “The Earth Today: Imminent Peril”. It states “Instead of sea levels rising by about 40 centimeters, as the IPCC predicts……. the true rise might be as great as several meters by 2100.” The huge difference here is because the models have no data for the recent discovery of accelerating glacier movements to the oceans caused by increased melt water at the glacier’s bases

Global warming deniers are starting to move from “There is no global warming” to “OK, the earth is warming, but it isn’t caused by man”. They are now trying to convince us that the warming is natural, but these are just a few who are being funded by the energy giants. They are succeeding, however, in clouding the issue enough that the changes that need to be made are not happening.

It actually matters very little whether the warming of the Earth’s climate is caused by solar activity, or the Earth’s orbital variations, or man’s emissions of CO2. There is not just one thing affecting the climate. There are many, and they all contribute to the state of our changing climate.

The situation is made extremely dire because of some disturbing circumstances here in the US:

-The climate is very slow to react to the forces acting on it. And, even if the entire world stopped using fossil fuels, the CO2 that is in the atmosphere now has the power to accelerate the warming for many decades. But most of us feel no change in the climate, so most are not concerned. – We hear conflicting reports (like we did from the tobacco companies) being spewed from paid hacks that are essentially working for the energy giants to keep the public ignorant. – We would prefer to believe that it is not serious and that we do not have to give up our gas guzzling cars. – Our own government is watering down the scientists’ reports, even altering them to make the situation sound benign. – The US media is not delivering the news on climate science from from around the world that is telling us that the changes are happening as fast as the worst predictions. – China and India are thumbing their noses at us. They refuse to give up the opportunity to make mega profits from their masses by curtailing their industrial growth. – The American people ARE becoming aware that the Halliburtons and ExxonMobiles are in complete control of the US Government, and that the wishes of the people along with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are not in the thoughts of our elected leaders.

An excellent expose’ of the Bush Administration’s efforts at mis-informing the public by Tim Dickinson is published in the current issue of the Rolling Stone magazine. It tells in great detail the extent of their willingness to keep the truth away from us.(3)

From Emails made public by a recent FOIA request, the article in the Rolling Stone said the “industry-formulated disinformation campaign designed to actively mislead the American public on global warming and to forestall limits on climate polluters” was “sanctioned at the highest levels of our government, in a policy formulated by the vice president, implemented by the White House Council on Environmental Quality and enforced by none other than Karl Rove.”

If the American people were informed about the severity of the future climate change they would be marching in the streets in the millions. But they are under-informed, misinformed, and they seem not to care that they are being led off a devastating cliff by the corporate world with the help of paid political hacks and a docile media.

Europeans are much more informed about the climate. Last year in England, 50,000 people marched in London in the largest ever demonstration against global warming. Even that, though, is not enough to bring about the changes needed.

There is a huge, slow moving monster approaching that is barely visible. And to make things twice as bad, the people are being kept in the dark by the energy industry and their despicable minions. Dr. Hansen told us we have ten years to start reducing CO2 emissions or the Earth will become “a different planet”.

He said that three years ago.

1) Why the recent Climate Report was so Harsh http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/04/09/18392772.php
June 24, 2007 By: Don Beck, No rights reserved. Please help by sending or posting this everywhere you can.

2) Climate Change and trace gases, {full text] 6/19/07 http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/l3h462k7p4068780/fulltext.pdf

also: The Earth today stands in imminent peril http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2675747.ece

3) The Secret Campaign of President Bush’s Administration To Deny Global Warming http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/15148655/the_secret_campaign
_of_president_george_bushs_administration_to_deny_global
Source: http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2007/06/24/p17799

Humankind received yet another harsh message from its landlord last week. In the agony of Kashmir, in the laments of Guatemala, the planet once again laid down the hard truths of its brutal gospel: The earth doesn’t love you. The earth doesn’t need you. The earth doesn’t know you are here.

All across the Hindu Kush, spreading through Central and South Asia, an underground tsunami of stone sent tens of thousands down to Sheol — old and young, male and female, good and evil alike. On that same day, on the other side of the world, hundreds more were drowned in mud and rock when the backwash of a hurricane tumbled down on the Mayan Indians of Panabaj.

As on the day when the ocean surges and river floods destroyed America’s Gulf Coast, the blind, implacable processes of nature made short work of humanity’s pretensions to significance. All of the petty, pointless human divisions into religions, tribes, races and political factions, all the prideful ambitions for power and wealth, all the private hopes for love and fulfilment, all the prayers of the faithful and the scorn of the defiant — everything of human worth and meaning — all were obliterated without mercy by the swift, iron hand.

“The situation is very, very bad,” an official in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province told The New York Times after Saturday’s quake. “There are bodies lying everywhere. Those who have survived are lying in the open without food, shelter or medicine. The situation has been made worse by the rain and hailstorm that followed the earthquake. There is no way we can reach out to them.”

“Entire families have disappeared,” a local aid worker in Santiago Atitlan told Reuters after Saturday’s storm-triggered mudslide buried Panabaj in 40 feet of mud. “In some cases, there is no one that can identify the cadavers. And in other cases, it is because of the state of decomposition that we are going to have to bury them without names.”

Bury them without names. The earth doesn’t know your name. The earth doesn’t care. The earth doesn’t dote on your children. The earth doesn’t tend your sick and your old. The earth neither accepts nor rejects you. You are simply one of the literally innumerable organisms battening on its flanks. For billions of years, there were none of your kind here; billions of years from now, your kind will be long gone — buried without a name — and even the planet itself will be consumed in the great slow fiery death of the sun. And the earth doesn’t care about that either.

So where is the human factor in this vast indifferent planetary engine? Obviously, our accelerating rapine of the earth is destabilizing global weather patterns, exacerbating killer storms, bringing droughts here and floods there, quietly targeting untold millions of people living on the coastlines of rising oceans. But this, too, doesn’t trouble the earth; its mechanics grind on irregardless of the particular mixture of heat and gases fed into the system. If the oceans boil, they boil; if nations starve, they starve; if the human community tears itself to pieces in a vicious war of all-against-all for dwindling resources — as even the Pentagon now predicts for the coming century, The Guardian reports — why then, so be it. The aftermath rain will still lash the survivors lying in the open without food, shelter or medicine; it won’t ask who supported the Kyoto Treaty or who voted for President George W. Bush.

Although we’ve already passed the tipping point on global warming, we could still mitigate some of the effects, we could lessen the blow — but we won’t. Too many of those meaningless divisions bind us: too much greed, too much self-righteousness, too much ignorance and fear. And of course there is no mitigation for the tectonic plates shifting beneath the skin of the earth; they’ll continue to push on relentlessly, creating new deadly fissures, ripping open ocean floors, bringing down mountains and raising mountains up. Against this no human action can prevail.

Where the human factor shows most starkly is in the extent of unnecessary suffering in these unavoidable catastrophes. In Pakistan and Guatemala — as in New Orleans — the poor died in overwhelmingly greater proportions than the rich, who build their homes on higher, firmer ground. The rickety apartment blocks that collapsed in Islamabad caught no mine-owners or telecommunications entrepreneurs in their ruins. The poor drowned by the hundreds in low-rent Gulf Coast districts shorn of protection by ruthless commercial development, insufficient funding of levees and reclamation projects, and bipartisan, corruption-bloated political posturing, as The Washington Post shows in a devastating report.

And as in all disasters, those with political pull will benefit most from “reconstruction” aid. In Sri Lanka, poor villagers are being banned from re-settling on tsunami-hit beachfronts for “safety reasons” — yet their land is being given to developers for five-star hotels, the Guardian reports. In New Orleans, the feasting on the dead by Bush cronies has grown so brazen that Washington has now been forced to re-bid some of the early pork payoffs, The New York Times reports. This is largely a show to allay public outrage, of course; billions more will remain safely stuffed in Bushist coffers.

At every turn, human greed compounds our suffering. The urge to eat each other alive for power and profit, to consign whole sections of the common human family to degradation and exposure is a cruel mimicry of the planetary indifference that shadows us all. Of course, the earth isn’t human, it has no capacity for conscience and compassion — but what’s our excuse for cruelty?

Annotations
Sleeping in Fields, Eating Ice And Dirt
Guardian, Oct. 12, 2005

The Slow Drowning of New Orleans
Washington Post, Oct. 9, 2005

50 Million Environmental Refugees Expected in Next Five Years
BBC, Oct. 11, 2005

Now the Pentagon Tells Bush: Global Warming Will Destroy Us
The Observer, Feb. 22, 2004

Aftershocks Hamper Earthquake Effort
Guardian, Oct. 13, 2005

Millions at Risk From Hunger and Cold as Winter Sets In
Guardian, Oct. 13, 2005

Harsh Urban Renewal in New Orleans
Associated Press, Oct. 12, 2005

Kashmiris Are Paying Heaviest Price in Earthquake
New York Times, Oct. 11, 2005

The Government Does Nothing-No Help for the Poor Man
Guardian, Oct. 11, 2005

More Guatemalans Evacuated as Reality of Loss Sets In
The New York Times, Oct. 10, 2005

Scientists Renew a Warning About a Himalayan Danger Zone
The New York Times, Oct. 10, 2005

617 Killed in Central American Rain, Floods
Washington Post, Oct. 10, 2005

http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/10/14/120.html

Future historians, looking back from a much hotter and less hospitable world, are likely to play special attention to the first few weeks of 2005. As they puzzle over how a whole generation could have sleepwalked into disaster – destroying the climate that has allowed human civilisation to flourish over the past 11,000 years – they may well identify the past weeks as the time when the last alarms sounded.

Last week, 200 of the world’s leading climate scientists – meeting at Tony Blair’s request at the Met Office’s new headquarters at Exeter – issued the most urgent warning to date that dangerous climate change is taking place, and that time is running out.

Next week the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty that tries to control global warming, comes into force after a seven-year delay. But it is clear that the protocol does not go nearly far enough.

The alarms have been going off since the beginning of one of the warmest Januaries on record. First, Dr Rajendra Pachauri – chairman of the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – told a UN conference in Mauritius that the pollution which causes global warming has reached “dangerous” levels.

Then the biggest-ever study of climate change, based at Oxford University, reported that it could prove to be twice as catastrophic as the IPCC’s worst predictions. And an international task force – also reporting to Tony Blair, and co-chaired by his close ally, Stephen Byers – concluded that we could reach “the point of no return” in a decade.

Finally, the UK head of Shell, Lord Oxburgh, took time out – just before his company reported record profits mainly achieved by selling oil, one of the main causes of the problem – to warn that unless governments take urgent action there “will be a disaster”.

But it was last week at the Met Office’s futuristic glass headquarters, incongruously set in a dreary industrial estate on the outskirts of Exeter, that it all came together. The conference had been called by the Prime Minister to advise him on how to “avoid dangerous climate change”. He needed help in persuading the world to prioritise the issue this year during Britain’s presidencies of the EU and the G8 group of economic powers.

The conference opened with the Secretary of State for the Environment, Margaret Beckett, warning that “a significant impact” from global warming “is already inevitable”. It continued with presentations from top scientists and economists from every continent. These showed that some dangerous climate change was already taking place and that catastrophic events once thought highly improbable were now seen as likely (see panel). Avoiding the worst was technically simple and economically cheap, they said, provided that governments could be persuaded to take immediate action.

About halfway through I realised that I had been here before. In the summer of 1986 the world’s leading nuclear experts gathered in Vienna for an inquest into the accident at Chernobyl. The head of the Russian delegation showed a film shot from a helicopter, and we suddenly found ourselves gazing down on the red-hot exposed reactor core.

It was all, of course, much less dramatic at Exeter. But as paper followed learned paper, once again a group of world authorities were staring at a crisis they had devoted their lives to trying to avoid.

I am willing to bet there were few in the room who did not sense their children or grandchildren standing invisibly at their shoulders. The conference formally concluded that climate change was “already occurring” and that “in many cases the risks are more serious than previously thought”. But the cautious scientific language scarcely does justice to the sense of the meeting.

We learned that glaciers are shrinking around the world. Arctic sea ice has lost almost half its thickness in recent decades. Natural disasters are increasing rapidly around the world. Those caused by the weather – such as droughts, storms, and floods – are rising three times faster than those – such as earthquakes – that are not.

We learned that bird populations in the North Sea collapsed last year, after the sand eels on which they feed left its warmer waters – and how the number of scientific papers recording changes in ecosystems due to global warming has escalated from 14 to more than a thousand in five years.

Worse, leading scientists warned of catastrophic changes that once they had dismissed as “improbable”. The meeting was particularly alarmed by powerful evidence, first reported in The Independent on Sunday last July, that the oceans are slowly turning acid, threatening all marine life (see panel).

Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, presented new evidence that the West Antarctic ice sheet is beginning to melt, threatening eventually to raise sea levels by 15ft: 90 per cent of the world’s people live near current sea levels. Recalling that the IPCC’s last report had called Antarctica “a slumbering giant”, he said: “I would say that this is now an awakened giant.”

Professor Mike Schlesinger, of the University of Illinois, reported that the shutdown of the Gulf Stream, once seen as a “low probability event”, was now 45 per cent likely this century, and 70 per cent probable by 2200. If it comes sooner rather than later it will be catastrophic for Britain and northern Europe, giving us a climate like Labrador (which shares our latitude) even as the rest of the world heats up: if it comes later it could be beneficial, moderating the worst of the warming.

The experts at Exeter were virtually unanimous about the danger, mirroring the attitude of the climate science community as a whole: humanity is to blame. There were a few sceptics at Exeter, including Andrei Illarionov, an adviser to Russia’s President Putin, who last year called the Kyoto Protocol “an interstate Auschwitz”. But in truth it is much easier to find sceptics among media pundits in London or neo-cons in Washington than among climate scientists. Even the few contrarian climatalogists publish little research to support their views, concentrating on questioning the work of others.

Now a new scientific consensus is emerging – that the warming must be kept below an average increase of two degrees centigrade if catastrophe is to be avoided. This almost certainly involves keeping concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main cause of climate change, below 400 parts per million.

Unfortunately we are almost there, with concentrations exceeding 370ppm and rising, but experts at the conference concluded that we could go briefly above the danger level so long as we brought it down rapidly afterwards. They added that this would involve the world reducing emissions by 50 per cent by 2050 – and rich countries cutting theirs by 30 per cent by 2020.

Economists stressed there is little time for delay. If action is put off for a decade, it will need to be twice as radical; if it has to wait 20 years, it will cost between three and seven times as much.

The good news is that it can be done with existing technology, by cutting energy waste, expanding the use of renewable sources, growing trees and crops (which remove carbon dioxide from the air) to turn into fuel, capturing the gas before it is released from power stations, and – maybe – using more nuclear energy.

The better news is that it would not cost much: one estimate suggested the cost would be about 1 per cent of Europe’s GNP spread over 20 years; another suggested it meant postponing an expected fivefold increase in world wealth by just two years. Many experts believe combatting global warming would increase prosperity, by bringing in new technologies.

The big question is whether governments will act. President Bush’s opposition to international action remains the greatest obstacle. Tony Blair, by almost universal agreement, remains the leader with the best chance of persuading him to change his mind.

But so far the Prime Minister has been more influenced by the President than the other way round. He appears to be moving away from fighting for the pollution reductions needed in favour of agreeing on a vague pledge to bring in new technologies sometime in the future.

By then it will be too late. And our children and grandchildren will wonder – as we do in surveying, for example, the drift into the First World War – “how on earth could they be so blind?”

What could happen? Wars break out over diminishing water resources as populations grow and rains fail.

How would this come about? Over 25 per cent more people than at present are expected to live in countries where water is scarce in the future, and global warming will make it worse.

How likely is it? Former UN chief Boutros Boutros-Ghali has long said that the next Middle East war will be fought for water, not oil.

What could happen? Low-lying island such as the Maldives and Tuvalu – with highest points only a few feet above sea-level – will disappear off the face of the Earth.

How would this come about? As the world heats up, sea levels are rising, partly because glaciers are melting, and partly because the water in the oceans expands as it gets warmer.

How likely is it? Inevitable. Even if global warming stopped today, the seas would continue to rise for centuries. Some small islands have already sunk for ever. A year ago, Tuvalu was briefly submerged.

What could happen? London, New York, Tokyo, Bombay, many other cities and vast areas of countries from Britain to Bangladesh disappear under tens of feet of water, as the seas rise dramatically.

How would this come about? Ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica melt. The Greenland ice sheet would raise sea levels by more than 20ft, the West Antarctic ice sheet by another 15ft.

How likely is it? Scientists used to think it unlikely, but this year reported that the melting of both ice caps had begun. It will take hundreds of years, however, for the seas to rise that much.

What could happen? Global warming escalates to the point where the world’s whole climate abruptly switches, turning it permanently into a much hotter and less hospitable planet.

How would this come about? A process involving “positive feedback” causes the warming to fuel itself, until it reaches a point that finally tips the climate pattern over.

How likely is it? Abrupt flips have happened in the prehistoric past. Scientists believe this is unlikely, at least in the foreseeable future, but increasingly they are refusing to rule it out.

What could happen? Famously wet tropical forests, such as those in the Amazon, go up in flames, destroying the world’s richest wildlife habitats and releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide to speed global warming.

How would this come about? Britain’s Met Office predicted in 1999 that much of the Amazon will dry out and die within 50 years, making it ready for sparks – from humans or lightning – to set it ablaze.

How likely is it? Very, if the predictions turn out to be right. Already there have been massive forest fires in Borneo and Amazonia, casting palls of highly polluting smoke over vast areas.

What could happen? Britain and northern Europe get much colder because the Gulf Stream, which provides as much heat as the sun in winter, fails.

How would this come about? Melting polar ice sends fresh water into the North Atlantic. The less salty water fails to generate the underwater current which the Gulf Stream needs.

How likely is it? About evens for a Gulf Steam failure this century, said scientists last week.

What could happen? Food production collapses in Africa, for example, as rainfall dries up and droughts increase. As farmland turns to desert, people flee in their millions in search of food.

How would this come about? Rainfall is expected to decrease by up to 60 per cent in winter and 30 per cent in summer in southern Africa this century. By some estimates, Zambia could lose almost all its farms.

How likely is it? Pretty likely unless the world tackles both global warming and Africa’s decline. Scientists agree that droughts will increase in a warmer world.

What could happen? The seas will gradually turn more and more acid. Coral reefs, shellfish and plankton, on which all life depends, will die off. Much of the life of the oceans will become extinct.

How would this come about? The oceans have absorbed half the carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming, so far emitted by humanity. This forms dilute carbonic acid, which attacks corals and shells.

How likely is it? It is already starting. Scientists warn that the chemistry of the oceans is changing in ways unprecedented for 20 million years. Some predict that the world’s coral reefs will die within 35 years.

What could happen? Malaria – which kills two million people worldwide every year – reaches Britain with foreign travellers, gets picked up by British mosquitos and becomes endemic in the warmer climate.

How would this come about? Four of our 40 mosquito species can carry the disease, and hundreds of travellers return with it annually. The insects breed faster, and feed more, in warmer temperatures.

How likely is it? A Department of Health study has suggested it may happen by 2050: the Environment Agency has mentioned 2020. Some experts say it is miraculous that it has not happened already.

What could happen? Hurricanes, typhoons and violent storms proliferate, grow even fiercer, and hit new areas. Last September’s repeated battering of Florida and the Caribbean may be just a foretaste of what is to come, say scientists.

How would this come about? The storms gather their energy from warm seas, and so, as oceans heat up, fiercer ones occur and threaten areas where at present the seas are too cool for such weather.

How likely is it? Scientists are divided over whether storms will get more frequent and whether the process has already begun.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/apocalypse-now-how-mankind-is-sleepwalking-to-the-end-of-the-earth-485640.html

On December 1, 2004 barely reported in the media, in one of “the largest weather events in recorded human history, 86,800 square miles of China was shrouded in fog, bringing transportation systems (especially air travel) to a virtual standstill throughout the country.”

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to the Russian Academy of Sciences
December 22, 2004

An increasingly panicked global effort is now underway by the world’s top scientists to understand an unprecedented series of ‘blasts’, energy surges, which the planet has been taking from an as yet unknown source which has been bombarding Antarctica with cosmic rays and disrupting Northern Hemisphere weather systems on a global scale.

The first of these cosmic ray blasts occurred nearly 5 years ago and have been increasing in their frequency and intensity since the end of November. The once normally darkened skies of the Northern Hemisphere’s Arctic regions are now in twilight due to these blasts. Wayne Davidson, from the Canadian Government’s weather station at Resolute Bay, located in the Arctic Circle, says about this mysterious lighting, “The entire horizon is raised like magic, like the hand of God is bringing it up.”

On December 1, 2004 the largest recorded blast sent not only shockwaves through the world scientific community but also through the Northern Hemisphere resulting in one of the largest weather events in recorded human history when 86,800 square miles of China was shrouded in fog, bringing transportation systems (especially air travel) to a virtual standstill throughout the country.

As reported by the BBC in this article from October, 2002, “German scientists have found a significant piece of evidence linking cosmic rays to climate change. They have detected charged particle clusters in the lower atmosphere that were probably caused by the space radiation. They say the clusters can lead to the condensed nuclei which form into dense clouds.”

These German scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg go on to say that their measurements “have for the first time detected in the upper troposphere large positive ions with mass numbers up to 2500″, and “Our observations provide strong evidence for the ion-mediated formation and growth of aerosol particles in the upper troposphere.”

What they hadn’t expected to happen though has been the large- scale occurrences of this over the past few weeks, to include China on December 2nd and 14th and then India on the 21st, which is due to both China’s and India’s reliance on fossil fuels and the continuing degradation of their air quality.

The effects of these blasts have also been felt throughout the rest of the Northern Hemisphere resulting in such freak occurrences as, hurricane force winds in Paris , Germany, Canada, Russia, England and the United States on an almost simultaneous basis. Accompanying these hurricane force winter winds have been the massive cold fronts following them dropping normal winter lows to record lows throughout the entire Northern Hemisphere.

Though not yet at a point to acknowledge this publicly, some of the world’s top scientists are beginning to see an astrophysical correlation between these cosmic ray blasts to our planet and an ever-increasing number of global events relating to atmospheric explosions of inbound meteors, such as those in Indonesia, where a meteorite was picked up by their Air Forces radar, China, where a meteorite explosion turned ‘night into day’ and Washington D.C. where one police official stated, “It looked like a ball of fire falling out of the sky.”

The world’s top scientists have begun coordinating with Dr. Eun-Suk Seo from the United States University of Maryland, and her team, in a ‘search’ for answers to the origin of these cosmic ray blasts directed from an unknown origin in space towards the South Pole and disrupting our global weather systems.

Under Dr. Eun-Suk Seo’s and her international team’s direction NASA launched a stratospheric balloon on December 20th from Antarctica’s McMurdo base and have stated,

“The balloon, following circulation of winds high, will sail around the ice continent for about three weeks. During this time, data of great scientific interest will be gathered. These data concern flows of charged particles of highest energy (cosmic rays) coming from Space.”

But as one Russian scientist said to us, and who wished to remain anonymous,

“Why this game? We all know what’s happening”

–an apparent reference to the fact though these events are well known to both world governments and the scientific establishments they are beyond the understanding of the general public at large.

Whatever the end results these experiments reveal for these scientists, it remains an undisputed fact that this world of ours is facing a type of global cataclysmic event buried in our common geological past, and maybe, as some social scientists report, in our common ancestral memory also.
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/FAA412A.html