IPCC climate report: six things we've learned

The IPCC's long-awaited fifth assessment report says it is 'extremely likely' that humanity is to blame for global warming. What else can we learn from the report?

theguardian.com, Adam Vaughan, Friday 27 September 2013

Nearly dried-up area of the Jialing River, China. The IPCC report warns we

 are likely to surpass rises of 2C by 2100, beyond which dangerous consequences

 including drought, floods and storms are expected. Photograph: Diego Azubel/

epa/Corbis

• Scientists are more certain than ever that humanity is to blame for rising temperatures. The head of the United Nations' World Meteorological Organisation, Michel Jarraud, said "it is extremely likely that changes in our climate system in the past half century are due to human influence." The report says: "Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident from the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system."

• Concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have increased to levels that are unprecedented in at least 800,000 years. The burning of fossil fuels is the main reason behind a 40% increase in CO2 concentrations since the industrial revolution.

• We're likely to surpass rises of 2C by 2100, the threshold of warming that governments have pledged to hold temperatures to, and beyond which dangerous consequences including drought, floods and storms are expected. "What is very clear is we are not" on the path to keeping temperatures below 2C, said Thomas Stocker, one of the co-chairs of today's report. Global temperatures are likely to rise by 0.3C to 4.8C by the end of the century, the report said.

• Sea level rises are coming. "Global mean sea level will continue to rise during the 21st century," says today's report, by a further 26-82cm by 2100, but Stocker said "there is no consensus in the scientific community over very high sea level rises".

• Scientists said claims that the rate of temperature rises in the last 15 years has slowed did not affect the big picture, and temperatures are going up in the long-term. Climate trends "should not be calculated for periods of less than 30 years," said Stocker.

• The amount of carbon the world can burn without heading for dangerous levels of warming is far less than the amount of fossil fuels left in the ground. "The IPCC carbon budget to stay below 2C is 800-880 gigatonnes of carbon (GTC). 531 GTC had already been emitted by 2011. So we have 350 GTC left, which is much less than the carbon stored in fossil fuel reserves," notes our correspondent Fiona Harvey.

Related Articles:

IPCC Headline Statements from the Summary for Policymakers

Arctic ice melt slows down: NASA

Warming 'pause' gives thought for scientists, sceptics

THE RELATIONSHIP TO GAIA - April 2010 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll)

New Mini Ice Age

"The weather you have today, and all the alarming attributes of it, is a scenario of what was scheduled to happen on Earth anyway. I review again that the weather changes you are seeing prophesied by myself, 21 years ago, are not a surprise. The changes are not caused by the pollutants you put in the air. You call it global warming and that's a nice phrase, and perhaps that will get you to put less pollutants in the air – a very good thing. But what you are seeing in the weather shift today was not caused by Humans putting things into the air. It would have happened anyway in about 300 years."

"We've called this process the water cycle, since it's all about water, not about air. The water is the predominant attribute of Gaia and of the weather cycle you're seeing. More predominant is the temperature of it. The cycle is ice to water and water to ice, and has been repeated on this planet over and over and over. It is not new. It is not exceptional. It is not frightening. But it's a cycle that modern humanity has not seen before, and it's a long cycle that is beyond the life span of a Human Being. Therefore, it tends to be overlooked or not seen at all !"

"In the days of the Lemurians, the water level of the Pacific Ocean was almost 400 feet lower, and that's only 50,000 years ago. [Kryon invites science to check this out – the water level at that time.] That was a water cycle working, and the reason it was lower was due to so much of the water being stored as ice. Today you're going through another water cycle that will eventually lead to cooling. The last one was in the 1400s."

"Science sees that at about 1650. As mentioned, they are so slow there is no remembrance that a Human has of them except in past writings and in the rings of the trees. The time span of the changes is so great that environmental record keeping does not exist in the form that it does today. But you can still look at the rings of the trees and at the striations of the rocks and can generally figure out that a few hundred years ago, you had a mini-ice age. Now you're going to have another one." 

“2011 and Beyond” - What you are seeing, and why - Jan 16, 2010 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Text version)

“… So now we've refreshed that which we have said before, a review. You are in the middle of a cycle that will bring cooling to the planet. It is not a heat cycle, but rather a cooling cycle. But it always starts with a short heat cycle. It has been here before. It will come again. It is a long cycle - one generation plus five years. That's how long it's going to last. It starts with the melting of the ice caps, which is far more than any of you have seen in your lifetime or those of your ancestors. It is a cycle whose repetition is thousands of years long, but one that has not yet been recorded to the books of Human record. But it's definitely been recorded in the cores of the ice and in the rings of the trees.

Thousands of years old, it is, and it happens in a cyclical way. It's about water. It starts with that which is the melting of the ice caps to a particular degree, which has a profound effect on the planet in all ways. You can't have that happen without seeing life change as well as Gaia change and you've seeing it already. What happens when you take that which is heavy on the poles [ice] and you melt it? It then becomes cold water added to that which is a very, very gentle and finite balance of temperature in the seas of the planet (1). The first thing that happens is a redistribution of the weight of water on the thin crust of the earth from ice at the poles to new water in the seas. The results become earthquakes and volcanoes, and you're seeing them, aren't you? You are having earthquakes in places that are not supposed to have earthquakes. Volcanoes are coming to life in a way that you've not seen before on a regular basis. There will be more. Expect them.

Is it too much to ask of a Human Being that if you live by a volcano that you know might erupt, maybe you ought to move? Yet there will be those who say, "It hasn't erupted in my lifetime or my parents' lifetime or my grandparents' lifetime; therefore, it won't." You may have a surprise, for all things are changing. That is what is happening to Gaia. ….“

"Recalibration of Knowledge" – Jan 14, 2012 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Channelling, God-Creator, Benevolent Design, New Energy, Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Reincarnation, Gaia, Old Energies (Africa,Terrorists, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela ... ), Weather, Rejuvenation, Akash, Nicolas Tesla / Einstein, Cold Fusion, Magnetics, Lemuria, Atomic Structure (Electrons, Particles, Polarity, Self Balancing, Magnetism, Higgs Boson), Entanglement, "Life is necessary for a Universe to exist and not the other way around", DNA, Humans (Baby getting ready, First Breath, Stem Cells, Embryonic Stem Cells, Rejuvenation), Global Unity, ... etc.) - (Text Version)

"...The Weather...

My partner has been "against the grain" in the past years, giving you what I have channelled about the weather. Is it global warming? No. Is it going to get better? No. This is a two-generation cycle. There will continue to be earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and storms. This is a recalibration of life in the ocean, and humanity must go through this in any way they can. This is a cycle, a known and expected one, but since you haven't gone through it in modern times, it's not well understood yet. ..."

"Recalibration of Free Choice"–  Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Subjects: (Old) Souls, Midpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Loose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth,  4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Paddle wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 – Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical)  8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.) - (Text version)

“…  4 - Energy (again)

The natural resources of the planet are finite and will not support the continuation of what you've been doing. We've been saying this for a decade. Watch for increased science and increased funding for alternate ways of creating electricity (finally). Watch for the very companies who have the most to lose being the ones who fund it. It is the beginning of a full realization that a change of thinking is at hand. You can take things from Gaia that are energy, instead of physical resources. We speak yet again about geothermal, about tidal, about wind. Again, we plead with you not to over-engineer this. For one of the things that Human Beings do in a technological age is to over-engineer simple things. Look at nuclear - the most over-engineered and expensive steam engine in existence!

Your current ideas of capturing energy from tidal and wave motion don't have to be technical marvels. Think paddle wheel on a pier with waves, which will create energy in both directions [waves coming and going] tied to a generator that can power dozens of neighborhoods, not full cities. Think simple and decentralize the idea of utilities. The same goes for wind and geothermal. Think of utilities for groups of homes in a cluster. You won't have a grid failure if there is no grid. This is the way of the future, and you'll be more inclined to have it sooner than later if you do this, and it won't cost as much….”

Sonar mapping for oil killed Madagascar whales: study

Google – AFP, 27 Sep 2013

Residents in western Madagascar carry a melon-headed whale which

was found dead on June 3, 2008 (AFP/File, Helene Gallard)

Washington — A noisy technology that blasts high-frequency sounds below water to map the ocean for oil probably caused the deaths of 75 melon-headed whales off Madagascar, experts said Thursday.

An independent panel of scientists found that sonar surveying by ExxonMobil in late May 2008 led to the sudden displacement of around 100 whales, of which at least three-quarters died.

"This is the first known such marine mammal mass stranding event closely associated with relatively high frequency mapping sonar systems," said the report released by the International Whaling Commission.

"Earlier such events may have been undetected because detailed inquiries were not conducted."

The researchers described a "highly unusual event" in which melon-headed whales became stranded in shallow waters in the Loza Lagoon system in northwest Madagascar in May and June 2008.

The culprit was named as a high-power 12 kilohertz multibeam echosounder system, or MBES, operated by an ExxonMobil vessel on May 29 about 65 kilometers (40 miles) offshore from the first known stranding.

The five-member independent scientific review panel said the vessel's MBES was "the most plausible and likely behavioral trigger for the animals initially entering the lagoon system."

The sounds would have been "clearly audible over many hundreds of square kilometers of melon headed whale deep water habitat areas."

The report said that seismic airguns, long opposed by environmental groups for the potential harm they can cause to marine life, were not to blame for the event.

"They used the multi-beam echo sounder first. That scared the animals into the lagoon and then the air guns were used afterward," explained marine scientist Matt Huelsenbeck of the advocacy group Oceana.

"So that is not to say that air guns would not have caused it had they been used first. They are even louder than the multi-beam echo sounder."

A spokesman for ExxonMobil said the company disagrees with the findings.

"ExxonMobil believes the panel's finding about the multi-beam echo sounder is unjustified due to the lack of certainty of information and observations recorded during the response efforts in 2008," spokesman Patrick McGinn told AFP in an email.

He added that observers employed by the Madagascar government and the oil giant "were on board the vessel and did not observe any whales in the area."

Nevertheless, the company has, since 2008, developed a "detailed risk assessment process" that takes into account the local characteristics and the potential for harm to marine life, McGinn said.

High frequency echo sounders are often used to map the ocean floor and can be dangerous to smaller whales and dolphins, while the air gun blasts that follow are lower frequency and may endanger large whales, according to Oceana.

Even though sonar mapping is used frequently to reveal details about the ocean floor and to find fish, the report said "there may well be a very low probability that the operation of such sources will induce marine mammal strandings -- animals may simply avoid them or even ignore them most of the time."

"Now we are seeing that (sonar) disturbance is an even more important thing than was previously assumed," said Huelsenbeck.

"You don't have to kill the animal outright. If you are scaring it into a situation where it can die, that is just as serious of an issue."

The evidence was compiled by the International Whaling Commission, the US Marine Mammal Commission, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, ExxonMobil, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Government of Madagascar.

The mystery of Pakistan’s new quake island

Arabiya – AFP, Wednesday, 25 September 2013

In this photo released by the Pakistani Government, Pakistani men walk
 on an island that appeared 2 kilometres off the coastline of Gwadar on
September 25, 2013, after an earthquake the day before. (AFP)

A small island created in the Arabian Sea by the huge earthquake that hit southwest Pakistan has fascinated locals but experts say it is unlikely to last long.

The 7.7-magnitude quake struck on Tuesday in Baluchistan’s remote Awaran district, killing more than 200 people and affecting hundreds of thousands.

Off the coastline near the port of Gwadar, some 400 kilometers from the epicenter, locals were astonished to see a new piece of land surface from the waves.

“It is not a small thing, but a huge thing which has emerged from under the water,” Gwadar resident Muhammad Rustam told AFP.

“It looked very, very strange to me and also a bit scary because suddenly a huge thing has emerged from the water.”

Mohammad Danish, a marine biologist from Pakistan’s National Institute of Oceanography, said a team of experts had visited the island and found methane gas rising.

“Our team found bubbles rising from the surface of the island which caught fire when a match was lit and we forbade our team to start any flame. It is methane gas,” Danish said on GEO television news.

The island is about 18 to 21 meters high, up to 91 feet wide and up to 36 meters long, he said. It sits about 200 meters away from the coast.

Gary Gibson, a seismologist with Australia’s University of Melbourne, said the new island was likely to be a “mud volcano,” created by methane gas forcing material upwards during the violent shaking of the earthquake.

“It’s happened before in that area but it’s certainly an unusual event, very rare,” Gibson told AFP, adding that it was “very curious” to see such activity some 400 kilometers from the quake’s epicenter.

The so-called island is not a fixed structure but a body of mud that will be broken down by wave activity and dispersed over time, the scientist said.

A similar event happened in the same area in 1945 when an 8.1-magnitude earthquake at Makran triggered the formation of mud volcanoes off Gwadar.

Professor Shamim Ahmed Shaikh, chairman of the department of geology at Karachi University, said the island, which has not been named, would disperse within a couple of months.

He said it happens along the Makran coast because of the complex relationship between tectonic plates in the area. Pakistan sits close to the junction of three plates - the Indian, Arabian and Eurasian.

“About a year back an island of almost similar size had surfaced at the similar distance from the coast in the Makran region. This would disperse in a week to a couple of months,” Shaikh told AFP.

Gibson said the temporary island was very different from the permanent uplift seen during major “subduction zone” earthquakes, where plate collisions force the Earth’s crust suddenly and sometimes dramatically upwards.

For example, in the massive 9.5-magnitude earthquake in Chile in 1960 - known as the world’s largest ever - whole fishing villages were thrust “several meters” upwards and wharves suddenly located hundreds of meters inland, Gibson said.

Such uplift events are relatively common in the Pacific’s so-called “Ring of Fire,” a hotbed of seismic and volcanic activity at the junction of several tectonic plates.

A thundering 8.0-magnitude quake in the Solomon Islands in 2007 thrust Ranogga Island upwards by three meters, exposing submerged reefs once popular with divers and killing the vibrant corals, expanding the shoreline outwards by several meters in the process.

During the massive 9.2-magnitude earthquake off Sumatra which triggered a devastating tsunami across the Indian Ocean in 2004, several islands were pushed upwards while others subsided into the ocean.

The Aceh coast dropped permanently by one meter while Simeulue Island was lifted by as much as 1.5 meters, exposing the surrounding reef which became the island’s new fringe.

Russia opens piracy probe over Greenpeace oil protest

Google – AFP, 24 Sep 2013

The Arctic Sunrise, Greenpeace's Arctic protest ship, somewhere off

the coast of Russia on September 17, 2013 (Greenpeace/AFP/File,

Denis Sinyakov)

MOSCOW — Russia on Tuesday opened a piracy probe over a Greenpeace protest against the Arctic oil activities of the Gazprom energy giant, saying it will prosecute all activists involved.

Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said a criminal probe for piracy undertaken by an organised group had been opened over Greenpeace's September 18 protest on a Gazprom oil rig in the Barents Sea.

"It should be noted that all persons who attacked the (oil) platform, regardless of their citizenship, will be brought to criminal responsibility," Markin said in a statement.

The Dutch-flagged Arctic Sunrise had been monitoring the exploration activities of Gazprom since August in the hope of exposing the dangers of drilling for oil in one of the world's great nature reserves.

A Russian Coast Guard officer points a

 knife at a Greenpeace activist (L)

 in the Pechora Sea, September 18, 2013

(Greenpeace/AFP, Denis Sinyakov)

Russian security forces seized the global environmental lobby group's ship and its 30-member crew a day after two activists from Finland and Switzerland climbed up the side of a Gazprom platform to draw attention to its controversial work.

The two were detained after Russian navy patrol boats opened warning shots at the ship. They and the entire crew were later placed under arrest and locked up in the Arctic Sunrise's mess.

The group says the Russian action was illegal because the Arctic Sunrise was in international waters at the time of the raid.

But Markin argued that the Greenpeace ship was located "in the exclusive economic zone of the Russian Federation" when it was boarded by agents from Russia's Federal Security Service (the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB).

It was not immediately clear from Markin's comments whether the investigation had been launched against just the two activists who had attempted to scale the platform or all activists on board the ship.

The Arctic Sunrise was approaching the shoreline of Russia's Far Northern city of Murmansk on Tuesday after being tugged from the scene of the action by a Russian border guards boat.

Related Articles:

Putin: Greenpeace activists 'not pirates,' but did break law

The Netherlands demands Russia explains Greenpeace ship seizure

Greenpeace activists arrested in Arctic

Warming 'pause' gives thought for scientists, sceptics

Google – AFP, Richard Ingham (AFP), 24 Sep 2013

Remains of dead trees, due to rising sea levels, are pictured on May 7,

2013, on the beach in northern Senegal (AFP/File, Seyllou)

PARIS — A slowdown in warming that has provided fuel for climate sceptics is one of the thorniest issues in a report to be issued by UN experts on Friday.

Over the past 15 years, the world's average surface temperature rose far slower than many climate models have predicted.

According to projections, global warming should go in lockstep with the ever-rising curve of heat-trapping carbon emissions.

But in recent years, warming has lagged. So, where has the missing heat gone?

For climate sceptics, the answer is clear. Either the computer models used to project temperature rise are flawed, or man-made global warming is just a green scam, they say.

Swedish Environment Minister Lena Ek,

 Thomas Stocker and Dahe Qin of the

 IPCC in Stockholm, Sweden, 

September 23, 2013 (AFP/File,

Bertil Enevag Ericson)

The report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will confirm warming has recently slowed.

The document, being debated line-by-line in Stockholm, is the first volume of a vast trilogy that will be released by the Nobel-winning group over the coming months, and only its fifth overview in a quarter of a century.

Over the past 50 years, the mean global temperature rise was 0.12 degrees Celsius (0.2 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade, slowing to an average 0.05 C (0.09 F) per decade over the past 15 years.

Half of the slowdown could be attributed to volcanic eruptions, whose particles reflect sunlight, and a bigger-than expected drop in heat from the Sun's changing activity cycle, said a summary of the report.

The other half is attributed to a "cooling contribution from internal variability".

Laurent Terray with the French computer modelling agency Cerfacs said the term is used to explain a shift in the way heat is distributed between land, sea and air.

Still unclear is what causes the variation or determines its duration.

"We know that this kind of episode, of a decadal length or thereabouts, can occur once or twice a century," said Terray.

"If it (the present one) continues for two more decades, we may start to think that the computer models are underestimating internal variability."

New research by Britain's Met Office suggests the "missing" heat, or some of it, is being transferred from the ocean surface to the deeps.

Temperatures at depths below 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) have been rising since the 1990s, implying a source of heat-trapping today will contribute to warming tomorrow.

A massive ash clouds rise from the crater

 of the Mount Sinabung volcano during

 a fresh eruption on September 17,

2013 (AFP/File, Ade Sinuhaji)

Governments, which have the right to vet and amend the summary but not the main text on which it is based, are looking with concern at the brief section on the warming pause.

This reflects jitters after the IPCC's last big report in 2007 was shown to contain several background errors, denting the agency's credibility.

The panel's main conclusions were not affected but the mistakes were a windfall for sceptics.

Together with the 2008 financial crisis and the disastrous 2009 Copenhagen UN climate summit, this almost sent global warming into political limbo.

In comments of the IPCC summary draft, China, India and Norway want to know why the section dealing with the warming pause fails to refer to the role of the deep ocean.

Others complain the text is dangerous gobbledegook.

"This is an example of providing a bunch of numbers, then leave them up in the air without a concrete conclusion," says an angry US objection seen by AFP.

"(...) [T]he way it is written, it may set itself up for misleading conclusions."

Some countries take the opposite line.

Hungary says an anomaly that has lasted 15 years -- a blink of an eye on the geological timescale -- is too short and laden with unknowns to even rate a mention.

Illustration: a slowdown in global warming

 has led sceptics to say the theory of

 man-made global warming is a scam

(AFP/File, Giuseppe Cacace)

The controversy touches on the sensitive issue of scientific uncertainty.

To scientists, admitting to uncertainty is not merely honest but entirely legitimate -- something to be acknowledged and debated, to be rejected or overcome.

But admitting to uncertainty is often misunderstood by the outside world and, says Andreas Levermann of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) near Berlin, exploited by sceptics.

"They can't stop physical reality, but they are slowing down" tougher action on carbon emissions, he said in a phone interview.

Alden Meyer, with the US environment group the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), urged the IPCC draft to spell out what is known about the warming pause.

"Otherwise, the denialists will claim that the IPCC's silence on this issue shows that global warming isn't as serious as scientists thought," he said in an email.

"The recent slowdown in temperature increases isn't unprecedented, and should be seen as a 'speed bump' on the way to a warmer world."

Related Articles:

Why has global warming stalled?

THE RELATIONSHIP TO GAIA - April 2010 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll)

New Mini Ice Age

"The weather you have today, and all the alarming attributes of it, is a scenario of what was scheduled to happen on Earth anyway. I review again that the weather changes you are seeing prophesied by myself, 21 years ago, are not a surprise. The changes are not caused by the pollutants you put in the air. You call it global warming and that's a nice phrase, and perhaps that will get you to put less pollutants in the air – a very good thing. But what you are seeing in the weather shift today was not caused by Humans putting things into the air. It would have happened anyway in about 300 years."

"We've called this process the water cycle, since it's all about water, not about air. The water is the predominant attribute of Gaia and of the weather cycle you're seeing. More predominant is the temperature of it. The cycle is ice to water and water to ice, and has been repeated on this planet over and over and over. It is not new. It is not exceptional. It is not frightening. But it's a cycle that modern humanity has not seen before, and it's a long cycle that is beyond the life span of a Human Being. Therefore, it tends to be overlooked or not seen at all !"

"In the days of the Lemurians, the water level of the Pacific Ocean was almost 400 feet lower, and that's only 50,000 years ago. [Kryon invites science to check this out – the water level at that time.] That was a water cycle working, and the reason it was lower was due to so much of the water being stored as ice. Today you're going through another water cycle that will eventually lead to cooling. The last one was in the 1400s."

"Science sees that at about 1650. As mentioned, they are so slow there is no remembrance that a Human has of them except in past writings and in the rings of the trees. The time span of the changes is so great that environmental record keeping does not exist in the form that it does today. But you can still look at the rings of the trees and at the striations of the rocks and can generally figure out that a few hundred years ago, you had a mini-ice age. Now you're going to have another one." 

“2011 and Beyond” - What you are seeing, and why - Jan 16, 2010 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Text version)

“… So now we've refreshed that which we have said before, a review. You are in the middle of a cycle that will bring cooling to the planet. It is not a heat cycle, but rather a cooling cycle. But it always starts with a short heat cycle. It has been here before. It will come again. It is a long cycle - one generation plus five years. That's how long it's going to last. It starts with the melting of the ice caps, which is far more than any of you have seen in your lifetime or those of your ancestors. It is a cycle whose repetition is thousands of years long, but one that has not yet been recorded to the books of Human record. But it's definitely been recorded in the cores of the ice and in the rings of the trees.

Thousands of years old, it is, and it happens in a cyclical way. It's about water. It starts with that which is the melting of the ice caps to a particular degree, which has a profound effect on the planet in all ways. You can't have that happen without seeing life change as well as Gaia change and you've seeing it already. What happens when you take that which is heavy on the poles [ice] and you melt it? It then becomes cold water added to that which is a very, very gentle and finite balance of temperature in the seas of the planet (1). The first thing that happens is a redistribution of the weight of water on the thin crust of the earth from ice at the poles to new water in the seas. The results become earthquakes and volcanoes, and you're seeing them, aren't you? You are having earthquakes in places that are not supposed to have earthquakes. Volcanoes are coming to life in a way that you've not seen before on a regular basis. There will be more. Expect them.

Is it too much to ask of a Human Being that if you live by a volcano that you know might erupt, maybe you ought to move? Yet there will be those who say, "It hasn't erupted in my lifetime or my parents' lifetime or my grandparents' lifetime; therefore, it won't." You may have a surprise, for all things are changing. That is what is happening to Gaia. ….“

"Recalibration of Knowledge" – Jan 14, 2012 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Channelling, God-Creator, Benevolent Design, New Energy, Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Reincarnation, Gaia, Old Energies (Africa,Terrorists, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela ... ), Weather, Rejuvenation, Akash, Nicolas Tesla / Einstein, Cold Fusion, Magnetics, Lemuria, Atomic Structure (Electrons, Particles, Polarity, Self Balancing, Magnetism, Higgs Boson), Entanglement, "Life is necessary for a Universe to exist and not the other way around", DNA, Humans (Baby getting ready, First Breath, Stem Cells, Embryonic Stem Cells, Rejuvenation), Global Unity, ... etc.) - (Text Version) 

"...The Weather... Again

My partner has been "against the grain" in the past years, giving you what I have channelled about the weather. Is it global warming? No. Is it going to get better? No. This is a two-generation cycle. There will continue to be earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and storms. This is a recalibration of life in the ocean, and humanity must go through this in any way they can. This is a cycle, a known and expected one, but since you haven't gone through it in modern times, it's not well understood yet. ..."

Arctic ice melt slows down: NASA

Google – AFP, 22 Sep 2013

Arctic sea ice pack roughly northeast of the New Siberian Islands

(NASA/AFP/File)

WASHINGTON — Arctic sea ice melted less this summer and continued to cover a greater expanse than last year's record minimum, NASA data shows.

Following unusually cold summer temperatures in the northernmost latitudes, the US space agency said Friday that the sea ice extent shrunk to 1.97 million square miles (5.10 million square kilometers).

The analysis was based on September 13 data by NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

On September 16, 2012, Arctic sea ice shrunk to its smallest surface ever recorded by satellite at 1.32 million square miles, about half the size of the average minimum in the previous two decades.

Over the long term, Arctic sea ice surface has dropped 12 percent per decade since the end of the 1970s, a decline that accelerated after 2007, according to the NSIDC.

"I was expecting that this year would be higher than last year," said Walt Meier, a glaciologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"There is always a tendency to have an uptick after an extreme low; in our satellite data, the Arctic sea ice has never set record low minimums in consecutive years."

But the remaining Arctic sea ice cover is much thinner overall compared to the previous decades by as much as 50 percent. Scientists say thinner seasonal ice is replacing older, thicker ice as it melts away.

"Thinner ice melts completely at a faster rate than thicker ice does, so if the average thickness of Arctic sea ice goes down, it's more likely that the extent of the summer ice will go down as well," said Goddard senior scientist Joey Comiso.

"At the rate we're observing this decline, it's very likely that the Arctic's summer sea ice will completely disappear within this century."

820kg of dolphin meat seized from Taiwan fisherman's fridge

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2013-09-20

Huang was found in possession of bottlenose and Risso's dolphin meat,
as well as other prohibited species including shark and seal. (Photo/
ROC Coast Guard)

Some 820 kilograms of dolphin meat was seized by Taiwan's coast guard at the home of a fisherman named Huang in Yunlin county on the country's western coast on Sept. 17, reports our sister paper China Times.

The sale of dolphin meat is illegal and can be punished with a fine of between US$10,000-$50,000 under Taiwanese law.

Huang told authorities that he and his wife began to sell dolphin to local restaurants two years ago lured by the money to be made from strong demand for dolphin sausage around the time of the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival holiday.

Huang had been under surveillance by the authorities for four months and the haul of 820 kilograms consisted of both bottlenose and Risso's dolphin.

The authorities also found the meat of other protected marine species including shark and seal in Huang's refrigerator. Huang said he bought the dolphin meat from a supplier in northern Taiwan at a price of US$5 per catty (600g) and resold it for US$8 per catty.

On this occasion Huang had bought a total of 1,000 kilograms of dolphin meat in total and had shifted 180 kg in just two days.

Rubber Duck attracts 200,000 admirers on first day in Kaohsiung

Want China Times, CNA 2013-09-20

Rubber Duck in Kaohsiung, Sept. 19. (Photo courtesy of Kaohsiung
City Government)

Some 200,000 spectators flocked to Kaohsiung's harbor Thursday for a peep at the world-famous Rubber Duck sculpture, despite the threat of an approaching typhoon.

No ordinary bath toy, this duck comes in at 18 meters tall and 1,000 kilograms in weight, making it the largest of Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman's Rubber Duck series to nest in Asia.

Due to expected inclement weather brought by Typhoon Usagi, however, the duck will have to be temporarily put back to coop.

Kaohsiung Information Bureau chief Lai Jui-lung said that Rubber Duck will be deflated and flattened by Friday afternoon for safe storage until the storm passes.

Construction teams are equipped with lighting so they can work through the night in case of a need to get the duck to roost quickly if the wind picks up, he said.

Hofman spoke at the duck's unveiling earlier in the day, where he said he was moved by the passion of the Taiwanese and praised the quality of the duck, which was manufactured locally.

Kaohsiung is the first leg of Rubber Duck's migration around Taiwan, which will see it nest in Taoyuan and Keelung in the north.

The southern city predicts an influx of some 3 million visitors and around NT$1 billion (US$33.7 million) for local businesses, many of which have hatched duck-themed products and services.

Since 2007, Hofman's duck sculptures have visited 15 cities around the world, including Amsterdam, Sydney and Hong Kong.