Rice yields falling under global warming

Russia reduces grain harvest forecast

GM plants 'established in the wild'

The impact of this lopsided CME probably won't trigger a major geomagnetic storm---but the SOHO data show it couldbe bigger than expected. High latitude sky watchers shouldbe alert for auroraswhen the cloud arrives probably on August 10th.

The human misery has begun...get used to it because it will be increasing...

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/China-searches-survivors-flooding-spreads-death/ss/events/wl/062110chinarain

(29 pics)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10909818

Buried a little, on the BBC website.

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/asia/127-Dead-2000-Missing-in-China-Landslides-100215424.html

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/08/08/russia.wildfires/index.html?hpt=T2

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10909818

Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Current Dying
Loop Current in Gulf of Mexico Already Dead

Extreme heat/drought in Russia, Flooding in Asia,
Killing Cold in South America
All Connected To BP Oil Disaster

By The Earl of Stirling

Our planet is experiencing a real life version of the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" right now. Record breaking heat (up to 39-40C or 100-104F in Moscow) and drought in Russia, heat and flooding in large parts of Asia (China, Pakistan, etc.), and killing cold temperatures in South America are all reflective of a rapidly changing global weather pattern that is caused by dramatic changes in the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Current (also called the North Atlantic Drift) and the Norway Current/etc. brought on by the large amounts of oil discharged into the Gulf of Mexico by the BP Oil Disaster.

An Italian theoretical physicist, Dr. Gianluigi Zangari, of the prestigious Research Division of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics at Frascati National Laboratories (LNF) of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Italy, has come up with some startling scientific findings. Dr. Zangari has specialized in global climate research and analysis. He has found that the massive amount of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, from the BP Oil Disaster, has caused a disruption of the Loop Current in the Gulf. And further, that this has resulted in a dramatic weakening in the vorticity of the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Current, and a reduction in North Atlantic water temperatures of 10C.

It is a university level physics experiment to use a tub of cool water and inject a colored stream of warm water into it. You can see the boundary layers of the warm water stream. If you add oil to the tub it breaks down the boundary layers of the warm water stream and effectively destroys the current vorticity . This is what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Atlantic Ocean.

The entire 'river of warm water' that flows from the Caribbean to the edges of Western Europe is dying due to the Corexit that the Obama Administration allowed BP to use to hide the scale of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster. The approximately two million gallons of Corexit, plus several million gallons of other dispersants, have caused the over two hundred million gallons of crude oil, that has gushed for months from the BP wellhead and nearby sites, to mostly sink to the bottom of the ocean. This has helped to effectively hide much of the oil, with the hopes that BP can seriously reduce the mandated federal fines from the oil disaster. However, there is no current way to effectively 'clean up' the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, which is about half covered in crude oil. Additionally, the oil has flowed up the East Coast of America and into the North Atlantic Ocean, and there is no way to effectively clean up this 'sea bottom oil'.

This massive amount of crude oil, covering such an enormous area, has seriously affected the Loop Current, the Gulf Stream, and the North Atlantic Current system, by breaking up the boundary layers of the warm water flow.

There are several names to the themoregulation 'river of warm water' that keeps the Northern Hemisphere from going into a new Ice Age. The first section is named the "Loop Current" and it begins in the Caribbean, flows around the Yucatan Peninsula and goes into the Gulf of Mexico, then loops around the Gulf and exits on the east side and runs between Cuba and Florida. At this point the current is called the "Florida Current" and it flows from the Keys up the East Coast of America (Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and part of North Carolina) to the Outer Banks. At the Outer Banks the current heads east into the North Atlantic where it is known as the "Gulf Stream". Eventually the Gulf Stream becomes the North Atlantic Current, which itself eventually becomes the Norway Current and the Canary Current. The reason that this system has several names, and not one, is historical. It was not all discovered at the same time and the flow was not fully known or understood for years. Ben Franklin, one of my favorite American 'founding fathers' is the person that named one section of this system the "Gulf Stream" in the 1760s. It should be noted that this 'river of warm water' does not begin with the Loop Current, it is part of a much larger system that includes the Atlantic South Equatorial Current which flows north along the coast of Brazil (the North Brazil Current), and becomes the Caribbean Current, and is renamed the Yucatan Current as it flows north into the Yucatan Channel. This entire system is one of the main global themoregulation processes that regulates the planet's temperatures.

Based on what has already happened (to the Loop Current and the Gulf Stream/North Atlantic Current/etc. and global weather patterns), and what is continuing to happen, we can project increased global climate changes that are both serious and near in terms of time. We may be entering a full new Ice Age.

There is no known way to clean up the massive amount of free crude oil, stripped of its lighter elements by dispersants, now on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and in significant parts of the Atlantic Ocean (where the Gulf Stream flows). The use of Corexit and other dispersants by BP, with the full cooperation of the Obama Administration has created the most significant danger to the entire planet in recorded history. This is what happens when a great nation slips into being a Third World type of nation, where money alone is the key driving force in government actions.

As full knowledge of the scope of the oncoming mega-disaster to the planet becomes known, the Obama Administration will find itself in a political crisis way beyond Watergate (that cost Nixon his presidency) or the sex affair that almost cost Clinton his presidency. The effect on this years mid-term Congressional elections are apt to be dramatic.

Article continues along with charts and graphs at...

http://europebusines.blogspot.com/2010/08/special-post.html

Several people have commented about the color of this ning. I'm on this ning upwards of 10 hours a day and the light/bright colors hurt my eyes. But for the next little while I'm going to be trying out some other colors, so don't freak out.

This is your home too, so I'll do my best to accommodate the majority's wishes. I'll post those that work for me and everyone gets to vote on earthchanges ning new colors!

If you missed the trials, go to your MyPage and change the colors of your profile page to the ones I list below and that way you can see, then vote. In the inbox section, click on Settings, then click on MyPage, then click on Appearance.

By ANDREW E. KRAMER Published: August 5, 2010

MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin banned all exports of grain on Thursday after millions of acres of Russian wheat withered in a severe drought, driving up prices around the world and pushing them to their highest level in two years in the United States.

The move was the latest of several abrupt interventions in the Russian economy by Mr. Putin, who called the ban necessary to curb rising food prices in the country, which is suffering from the worst heat wave since record-keeping began here more than 130 years ago.

“We need to prevent a rise in domestic food prices, we need to preserve the number of cattle and build up reserves for next year,” Mr. Putin said in a meeting broadcast on television. “As the saying goes: reserves don’t make your pocket heavy.”

During his years as president and prime minister, Mr. Putin has never hesitated to marshal the power of the state to protect Russian economic interests, and this decision showed that this has remained his prerogative even after he stepped down as president.

Mr. Putin has also proven adept at deflecting criticism of the government with grand gestures, and the export ban was widely seen as one of a series of populist moves by Mr. Putin to address rising resentments over the calamitous heat wave and the fires it has spawned.

Pressure was also brought to bear by multinational grain trading companies, which have been lobbying for the ban as a way to escape futures contracts drawn up before the drought, when prices were far lower. A Russian subsidiary of Glencore, the Swiss-based commodities trading company that has close ties to the Russian government, pressed hard as the scope of the drought’s devastation became clear.

Wheat prices have soared by about 90 percent since June because of the drought in Russia and parts of the European Union, and floods in Canada, and the ban pushed prices even higher.

Russia, the largest grain-exporting nation before World War I, has largely recovered from failed Soviet agricultural policies, lifted by rising global food prices and economic reforms that encouraged private farmers and companies to once again till the country’s expansive and fertile croplands. Before this year’s drought, yields had risen steadily, and Russian grain exports totaled 21.4 million tons last year, about 17 percent of the global grain trade.

But on Thursday, rail cars heaped with fresh grain came to a halt around Russia, stopped in mid-harvest and mid-journey from the country’s fields to the main exporting ports on the Black Sea. The order covered a variety of grains, including barley and corn, but will have its greatest impact on wheat exports.

Mr. Putin said that the government might extend the ban if the harvest yields even less than the current grim forecasts. The projected yield is about 70 million tons of grain, according to the Russian Grain Union, a lobbying group for farmers, about equal to domestic needs and down sharply from last year’s total of 97 million tons.

The group was sharply critical of Mr. Putin’s decision. “First of all, you can congratulate American farmers who are going to take the niche that Russian farmers are leaving,” in global markets because of the ban, said Anton V. Shaparin, a spokesman. He added that Russia’s reserves could cover the shortages from this year.

Owing to last year’s bumper crop, Russia currently holds about 24 million tons in grain elevators, the group said.

In Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer and a major customer of Russia, officials said only that they hoped current contracts would be honored.

The abrupt ban — just this week, a deputy agricultural minister had said no such measure would be taken — recalled other decisive actions by Mr. Putin. Last summer, he canceled Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organization, saying the country would apply only as customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan. Mr. Putin twice ordered natural gas shutoffs to Europe amid disputes with Ukraine ostensibly over pricing.

The Russian agro-business sector, which has just been emerging here from the ashes of the failed Soviet collective farm system, was also left pondering its future.

Russia, blessed with the greatest reserve of fertile but fallow land in the world, is thought by many experts to have the greatest potential of any country to meet mounting demand for food from a growing global population.

Michel Orloff, the founder of Black Earth Farming, one of the new corporate farming operations that have raised yields by consolidating and reforming collective farms, said Mr. Putin’s ban made sense from the perspective of curbing domestic food prices but would cost companies like his.

“We are on the verge of national need,” Mr. Orloff said. “Of course, the freer the market the better. But his job is not only to take care of the farmers of this country, but the citizens of this country.”

Kingsmill Bond, chief analyst at Troika investment bank in Moscow, which has studied the revolution in Russian farming, said the ban would damage shares in corporate farming operations like Black Earth, Razgulai and Cherkizov.

Still, he said, “grain is an emotive issue, you want to make sure you have sufficient supplies.”