A Spanish doctor has been found living in an Italian forest 20 years after he went missing. Carlos Sanchez Ortiz De Salazar, 47, was reportedly discovered with “a dirty face and large beard” by two mushroom pickers in Tuscany two weeks ago. He showed the foragers his passport to prove his identity and said: “I’m Spanish, my name is Carlos and I’ve been living here since 1997.
Source: ‘Dead’ Man Found Alive In Forest After 20 Years – Yahoo News UK
Sydney – A new study called “Explaining Extreme Events of 2014 from a Climate Perspective” has definitely added some heat to the climate debate. This is going to be another highly controversial report. Pity of it is that nothing new will be said about it.
The study is actually the result of 32 groups of scientists researching 28 localized events. It’s a long list, continent by continent. Some might call it a study in thermodynamics in a closed system, others might call it a statement of the obvious.
It must be said that it’s interesting reading with some almost counter-intuitive stuff as well. Even the Table of Contents is worth reading. Antarctic sea ice formation offshore, for example, is the result of cold air going away from the continent, forming ice out to sea. It’s all basically thermodynamics, just on a gigantic scale.
The full download is a PDF on the AMS website, published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
There are 32 case studies. The first thing you’ll notice reading this report is a lot of number crunching and pretty stringent choice of expression. This isn’t a press release. It’s a study, and the citations, backups, comparative analyses, etc. are all pretty much according to the current norm of “spell everything out”.
Considerable effort has been put in to graphics, which for a nice change are useful and clear, showing comparative data and anomalies.
The other thing you’ll notice is a total lack of any claims to omniscience. There simply are no “pronouncements”, despite the media image of NOAA as some sort of shill for climate science. The overall impression I get is of someone calling a sports event as it happens. One part, the cold winter of 2013-14, is basically just saying what happened. The finding is that the risks of extremes are caused by mean temperatures but no clear long term trend because of the nature of the events.
“Sensationalism”, it ain’t. The overall impression is that the extreme weather events aren’t a great basis for prediction, but even the very careful long term predictions include the increasing likelihood of more extreme events.
One very hot topic, pun intended, is the jet stream’s “waviness”. The jet stream is a major dynamic, which has so far been credited with everything from the disastrous Russian fires of 2013 to the US ice storms. The theory here is that the jet streams, penetrating further south, cause extreme weather, and this is exacerbated by temperature rises.
1. The water cycle
2. The oxygen cycle
3. The nitrogen cycle
4. The carbon cycle.
Discussion
The finding of human caused events causing changes, also, naturally, put a bomb under the “natural cycle” theory of climate change denial. Climate does change naturally, and has changed drastically, many times. That’s normal; but in many cases, it changes the world into a very different Earth.
Humans couldn’t have lived at all in some geological eras and climates. The climate and the environment were quite different. In the dinosaur ages, many familiar plants didn’t exist. Grasses, on which human economy has depended since the hunter gatherer days, didn’t exist, for example. Nor did flowering plants, until the Cretaceous.
In other eras, the equator was so hot even the dinosaurs couldn’t live there, albeit in a very different continental configuration. These days, the equator is the sweat band of the Earth, and the seas are comparatively hot.
The various cycles are directly impacted by climate and land use:
Oxygen cycle – Oxidization is a core process of life. CO2 eats up a lot of oxygen. There are currently anoxic (no oxygen) areas in many traditional fishing grounds. These fishing grounds are full of giant jellyfish, protected from predators by lack of oxygen. Lack of oxygen doesn’t help human metabolisms much, either.
Water cycle – The water cycle responds to temperatures. Deluges and droughts often coexist side by side. Some of the worst droughts we’ve ever had in Australia coincided with severe flooding.
Nitrogen cycle – The nitrogen cycle is a core element of plant growth. No plants = no food for just about everything. This cycle depends on water and oxygen at the micro and macro levels.
Carbon cycle – The movement of carbon through ecologies is critical to carbon-based life. Screw that up enough, and you get anomalies. In some cases, the greenhouse effect actually is acting like a greenhouse, promoting plant growth. That said – heat only supports growth to a point. After that, it consumes energy and affects plant health.
The fact is that the climate is changing, and not for the better. Humans contributing billions of tons of carbon per day obviously isn’t helping. The average car generates more toxins per mileage than an army of smokers over its product life.
The weird cocktails of chemical compounds are another imponderable factor. It’s halfwit alchemy on a global scale. Heat mixes chemicals and elements. The result, which includes virtually any mix of industrial materials, chemical byproducts and oxides, isn’t “safe for baby”. Particulate materials, the usual suspects for just about all pollution and respiratory issues, also conduct heat. So heat loss is slower, therefore temperatures remain higher than they would otherwise be. So an increase in temperatures is therefore hardly unexpected. If you know anything at all about thermodynamics, you won’t need a lot of help reading this report.
NOAA is simply calling a spade a spade. This is simply a series of studies of major events, all happening in one year. This is the fourth study since 2011, and of course, someone will simply say it’s not happening, or that any number of other causes are involved, from a mini-solar winter to natural change.
The fact is that if the climate changes, there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it. The resources now being wasted so prolifically won’t be around to help manage the effects. Ironically, the most valuable resource of all, carbon, which can be used for far more valuable and more environmentally responsible purposes, is the one most wasted.
Poetic or karmic justice; the world doesn’t need humans, humans need it. When it comes to a choice between money and breathing, however, I’m sure some committee will find in favor of money. Nice knowing you, humanity – Well, not really. Do drop in again sometime.
This opinion article was written by an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily intended to reflect those of DigitalJournal.com or andrewchernoff.wordpress.com
Source: Op-Ed: NOAA 2014 study — Humans definitely influencing climate
Charging inmates a daily fee while they are locked up in jail is a common practice around the country. Civil liberties advocates say the debt that results is another obstacle returning citizens don’t need.
SWNS: LONG WAIT: Julie Wenn holds up sign for her daughter
GETTY: NO FLY ZONE: North Africa and the Middle East may be off limits for westerners.
AFP/GETTY: TRAGEDY: Inspection of the wreckage of the Russian passenger jet“Unless you view risk like Bear Grylls you should avoid flying to places like North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and other countries with an extremist Islamic presence”
Professor Anthony Glees
Isis has claimed responsibility, but had been unwilling to say how the aircraft had been downed.
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said: “If this turns out to be a device planted by an Isil operative or by somebody inspired by Isil then clearly we will have to look again at the level of security we expect to see in airports in areas where Isil is active.
“That may mean additional costs. It may mean additional delays at airports as people check in.’’
Mr Hammond told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show the incident could open up the renewed cooperation between the West and Russia over how to tackle Islamic State.
He said Brit tourists waiting to leave Sharm-el-Sheikh could face delays of “two or three days”.
Around 2,600 were yesterday still stuck at the Red Sea resort.
Holidaymakers returning to the UK described chaos with people trampled as they rushed for planes.
They also claimed that swamped security staff carried out only cursory check
Reuters, 09/11 00:35 CET
By Mitch Phillips
LONDON (Reuters) – A report by the World Anti-Doping Agency on Monday is set to deepen an athletics scandal that, according to one of the document’s authors, eclipses even the alleged corruption at football’s governing body FIFA.
According to leaks to a French investigative news organisation, Mediapart, the WADA report will say that athletics officials tried to extort money from leading athletes, including a Turkish Olympic champion, in return for concealing the fact that they had failed drugs tests.
One of the co-authors of the report, Richard McLaren, a Canadian law professor and sports lawyer, told the Sunday Times: “This is a whole different scale of corruption than the FIFA scandal. This report is going to be a real game-changer.
“Here you potentially have a bunch of old men who put a whole lot of extra money in their pockets — through extortion and bribes — but also caused significant changes to actual results and final standings of international athletics competitions.”
FIFA has been thrown into turmoil by the U.S. indictments of 14 football officials and sports marketing executives for alleged corruption, and its president Sepp Blatter is suspended and facing criminal investigation in Switzerland.
The former head of the International Association of Athletics Federations, Lamine Diack of Senegal, was last week placed under formal judicial investigation in France on suspicion of corruption, along with two other former IAAF officials.
His successor, Briton Sebastian Coe, told Reuters on Sunday: “My job is very simple now and there is no ambiguity about it. It is to rebuild trust in our sport.”
He said it would be “a long road to redemption”.
RUSSIAN CONNECTION
The WADA report, according to the leaked French account, is expected to implicate relations of Diack. One of his sons has left his marketing role within the IAAF while under investigation for corrupt practices. The family has dismissed what they described as excessive and insignificant accusations.
The report is also expected to single out former Russian athletics federation head Valentin Balakhnichev.
On Saturday Balakhnichev rejected allegations that his federation worked with top IAAF officials to try to blackmail athletes in the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics.
“Let them present their claims to me, I will fight them,” Russian news agencies quoted him as saying.
Among athletes allegedly targeted for extortion was Russian marathon runner Liliya Shobukhova, who featured in a German documentary in December 2014 that alleged systematic doping by Russian athletes.
Shobukhova was banned for doping and was stripped of marathon victories in London and Chicago. But two months ago, WADA cut her ban, saying she had provided it with important information to expose wrongdoing by others.
Turkey’s Asli Cakir Alptekin, the 1,500 metres Olympic champion in 2012, was also approached by IAAF officials demanding payment of $500,000, according to the leaks.
She was give a second doping ban last summer and stripped of her Olympic medal.
On Sunday IAAF chief Coe said neither he nor anyone else at the IAAF had seen the report, but he was shocked and saddened by the accusations against his predecessor Diack.
“I will await the WADA report but I think the focus of those allegations was about the ability of people to be in a position to manipulate systems and that is what we will look at very carefully,” Coe told Reuters after announcing he had accelerated a planned internal reform process.
“If that is found to be the case, then clearly we need to have systems in place that are not just about secure systems but people inside those systems being secure and proper people.”
WADA will release its report at 1400 GMT on Monday and hold a news conference immediately afterwards in Geneva.
Source: Sport braced for damning revelations from anti-doping agency – Latest sport news
Andrew Phillip Chernoff 