USGS Study: Yellowstone Eruption Would Send Ash Across North America

An example of the possible distribution of ash from a month-long Yellowstone supereruption. The distribution map was generated by a new model developed by the U.S. Geological Survey using wind information from January 2001. The improved computer model, detailed in a new study published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, finds that the hypothetical, large eruption would create a distinctive kind of ash cloud known as an umbrella, which expands evenly in all directions, sending ash across North America. Ash distribution will vary depending on cloud height, eruption duration, diameter of volcanic particles in the cloud, and wind conditions, according to the new study. Credit: USGS

In the unlikely event of a volcanic supereruption at Yellowstone National Park, the northern Rocky Mountains would be blanketed in meters of ash, and millimeters would be deposited as far away as New York City, Los Angeles and Miami, according to a new study.

An improved computer model developed by the study’s authors finds that the hypothetical, large eruption would create a distinctive kind of ash cloud known as an umbrella, which expands evenly in all directions, sending ash across North America.

Large Holes Forming Near The New Madrid Fault And A Giant Crack In The Earth In North Mexico

Michael Snyder

Did you know that the number of big earthquakes during the first three months of 2014 was more than double the yearly average of what we have experienced since 1979? And did you know that the number of earthquakes in the central and eastern U.S. has quintupled in recent years? If you do not believe this, just keep reading.

We live at a time when earthquakes are increasing in frequency and severity.  And we are starting to see some very unusual activity in places that have been quiet for a very long time.  For example, large holes are starting to mysteriously appear in Indiana near the New Madrid fault zone.  And a giant crack in the ground nearly a kilometer long has appeared in northern Mexico.  Could these be indications that even greater earthquake activity is on the way?

Scientist Warns 'Solar Super-Storms' Are Inevitable and a Significant Threat

Activist Post

Solar flare NASA gif

In this month's issue of Physics World, Ashley Dale from the University of Bristol warns of the "catastrophic" and "long-lasting" impacts of "solar super-storms" and the dangers we face if the threat continues to go unnoticed.

Dale, who was a member of an international task force – dubbed SolarMAX – set up to identify the risks of a solar storm and how its impact could be minimized, explains how it is only a matter of time before an exceptionally violent solar storm is propelled towards Earth. Such a storm would wreak havoc with our communication systems and power supplies, crippling vital services such as transport, sanitation and medicine.

"Without power, people would struggle to fuel their cars at petrol stations, get money from cash dispensers or pay online. Water and sewage systems would be affected too, meaning that health epidemics in urbanized areas would quickly take a grip, with diseases we thought we had left behind centuries ago soon returning," Dale writes.

Stanford biologist warns of early stages of Earth's 6th mass extinction event

Bjorn Carey

James Temple image

The planet's current biodiversity, the product of 3.5 billion years of evolutionary trial and error, is the highest in the history of life. But it may be reaching a tipping point.

In a new review of scientific literature and analysis of data published in Science, an international team of scientists cautions that the loss and decline of animals is contributing to what appears to be the early days of the planet's sixth mass biological extinction event.

Since 1500, more than 320 terrestrial vertebrates have become extinct. Populations of the remaining species show a 25 percent average decline in abundance. The situation is similarly dire for invertebrate animal life.

And while previous extinctions have been driven by natural planetary transformations or catastrophic asteroid strikes, the current die-off can be associated to human activity, a situation that the lead author Rodolfo Dirzo, a professor of biology at Stanford, designates an era of "Anthropocene defaunation."

EMP Threat Panel Assembles 2 Weeks After Near Miss

Activist Post

On July 29th, former Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey, led a panel discussion on the growing -- and perhaps imminent -- threat of a natural or nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to the U.S. electric grid and other critical infrastructures that sustain modern civilization and the lives of millions of Americans.

Other participants were Ambassador Henry Cooper and Dr. Peter Vincent Pry.

"There had been a near miss about two weeks ago, a Carrington-class coronal mass ejection crossed the orbit of the Earth and basically just missed us," said Peter Vincent Pry.

Huge Area of Sea Floor Movement Off Iberian Coast

Chris Carrington

Continental Europe has started to move towards the United States as a new subduction zone forms off the Portuguese coast. This is the start of a cycle that will see the Atlantic Ocean reduce in size and finally close as what scientists refer to as a ‘passive margin’ becomes active.

A subduction zone is an area where one of the plates that cover the Earths’ surface is driven underneath the plate it is colliding into. Such faults are known to produce mega-thrust earthquakes when they get stuck and then slip allowing massive pressure to be released.

The Indonesian quake of 2004 was caused by the subduction of the Indian Plate under the Burmese Plate and the Japanese quake of 2011 was caused by the subduction of the Pacific Plate under the Okhotsk Plate.

2012 Documentary of an Uncertain Future

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2013: The Year of the Comets

Last Great Comet Hale-Bopp (1997)
Wiki image

Nicholas West

Some ancient cultures referred to them as "the Menace of the Universe" and "the Harbinger of Doom." Comets have almost universally been viewed by the ancients as messengers or omens carrying bad news from the gods.

In the midst of our busy lives it's difficult to keep in mind that we reside on a ball that's corkscrewing through space around a ball of gas called our sun, which is also sweeping through our galaxy.

The ancients didn't have distractions like TVs and the Internet. They looked to the sky for clues and guidance for life on Earth, and comets brought mythology of angry gods and instilled fear in them.

Strangely, in more modern times, comets have been associated with actual dark events.

Mayans protest government sponsored apocalypse party and slam “doomsday myth”

The world will not end. It will be transformed. -- Mayan elders.

JG Vibes

For years the Mayans have been fighting against the doomsday myth surrounding the incorrect reading of their ancient calendar. As the date of December 21, 2012 approaches the hype has caused an increasing amount of distress for the indigenous Mayan people, especially with their homeland in Guatemala being turned into a cheap tourist attraction for the coming “apocalypse”.

Just this week, Guatemala’s Mayan people accused the government and state sponsored tour groups of perpetuating the myth that their calendar predicts the end of the world, so they can benefit financially from tourist revenue.

The Culture Ministry of Guatemala is hosting a massive event in Guatemala City, which as many as 90,000 people are expected to attend, all being promoted under the pretext of a “doomsday” celebration.

Megastorm Prompts State Emergencies and Mandatory Evacuations

Activist Post

As what some are calling the 'storm of the century' approaches, Governors of northeastern states are each declaring a state of emergency and demanding mandatory evacuations along the coastal areas.

Image Source

Hurricane Sandy, which has weakened to a tropical storm, regained Category 1 hurricane strength over night and is expected to collide with a nor'easter winter storm as it makes landfall on late Monday or early Tuesday.

Our World is Changing: Looking Beyond 'the 2012'

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Migrating North Pole Contributing to Severe Weather?

Activist Post

Few can argue that severe weather is currently impacting the globe. Certainly the record droughts in America have become a huge concern for food prices, which has subsequently sparked an uptick in alarming climate change rhetoric.

As the Northern Hemisphere has experienced one of the warmest summers on record, Arctic ice has receded considerably, prompting the typical global warming "collapse" discussion. While northern ice has indeed reached new modern lows, ice in the southern hemisphere continent of Antarctica has reached record highs. Charts for both hemispheres can be seen here.

So, clearly some kind of shift is happening, but perhaps the answer is not as simple as CO2 concentrations like the establishment would like us to believe. There seem to be much larger galactic-scale forces at play that are affecting not just Earth but all planets in the solar system. One of those forces appears to be Earth's rapidly migrating magnetic North Pole, as can be seen in the video below. 

NASA Scientist Warns of a Pole Shift in 2016

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Yellowstone National Park is moving

Norris Geyser Basin sinking at Yellowstone
Wikimedia Commons image

Brent Hunsaker
ABC 4 News

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyoming (ABC 4 News) - The nation's oldest park is also one of the most studied. The interest is not just in its amazing vistas and wildlife, but in the volcanic beast below the park.

Yellowstone sits atop one of the world's biggest, active volcanoes, one capable of laying waste to much of north America.

Scientists keep an eye on it using a network of seismic and GPS sensors.

Professor Emeritus Robert Smith of the University of Utah is one of those scientists. A geophysicist, Smith a leading expert on the Yellowstone super volcano. "We monitor it in real time for earthquake swarms and ground deformation."

He says the park is in constant motion. Visitors can't see it, but the ground at their feet is moving up and down as magma pushes against the thin crust and powers the park's many geysers.

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Three White Buffalo born in Oregan - Time for Change!

The legend of the White Buffalo

Sioux mythology has a female character of supernatural origin referred to as the White Buffalo Calf Woman.

According to legend, two men were sent out by their starving and demoralized villages to look for buffalo herds near the Sacred Hills, also know as the Black Hills, in western South Dakota.

They had a vision of a maiden dressed in white buckskin, who told them to prepare the villages for her arrival. She appeared soon after and brought prayers, teachings, a sacred pipe and other offerings.

She promised to return someday to renew the people's faith and spirit, and as she departed, she turned into a buffalo calf. She rolled over repeatedly, changing from black to brown to yellow to white. Ever since, the white buffalo has been viewed as a return of the maiden and her promise of renewal.



From WhiteWolfPack Blog 

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UN document would give 'Mother Earth' same rights as humans

Steven Edwards
Canada.com

UNITED NATIONS — Bolivia will this month table a draft United Nations treaty giving "Mother Earth" the same rights as humans — having just passed a domestic law that does the same for bugs, trees and all other natural things in the South American country.

The bid aims to have the UN recognize the Earth as a living entity that humans have sought to "dominate and exploit" — to the point that the "well-being and existence of many beings" is now threatened.

The wording may yet evolve, but the general structure is meant to mirror Bolivia's Law of the Rights of Mother Earth, which Bolivian President Evo Morales enacted in January.

That document speaks of the country's natural resources as "blessings," and grants the Earth a series of specific rights that include rights to life, water and clean air; the right to repair livelihoods affected by human activities; and the right to be free from pollution.

It also establishes a Ministry of Mother Earth, and provides the planet with an ombudsman whose job is to hear nature's complaints as voiced by activist and other groups, including the state.

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HAARP Data Says Japan Quake was Induced

ExoHuman

THE UNITED STATES Air Force and Navy has provided a visual insight into what caused the 9.0 magnitude off of Japan on March 11, 2011 at 05:46:23 UTC. The image above was downloaded from the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP*) website. It is a time-frequency spectrogram, which shows the frequency content of signals recorded by the HAARP Induction Magnetometer. This instrument, provided by the University of Tokyo, measures temporal variations in the geomagnetic field (Earth’s magnetosphere) in the ULF (ultra-low frequency) range of 0-5 Hz. Notions have been added to the image to show you what was happening the day the Japan earthquake and tsunami struck.

Japanese volcano erupts

Shinmoedake saw first eruption in 52 years in January
Wikimedia Commons

Times LIVE

A volcano in southwestern Japan erupted Sunday after nearly two weeks of relative silence, sending ash and rocks up to four kilometres (two and a half miles) into the air, a local official says.

It was not immediately clear if the eruption was a direct result of the massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake that rocked northern areas Friday, unleashing a fierce tsunami and sparking fears that more than 10,000 may have been killed.

The 1,421-metre (4,689-feet) Shinmoedake volcano in the Kirishima range saw its first major eruption for 52 years in January. 

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RELATED ARTICLE:
8 Strange Earth Changes

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An 8.9 Quake in California Could Have Irradiated the Entire US

Wikimedia Commons

Harvey Wasserman
Common Dreams

Had the massive 8.9 Richter-scale earthquake that has just savaged Japan hit off the California coast, it could have ripped apart at least four coastal reactors and sent a lethal cloud of radiation across the entire United States.

The two huge reactors each at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon are not designed to withstand such powerful shocks. All four are extremely close to major faults.

All four reactors are located relatively low to the coast. They are vulnerable to tsunamis like those now expected to hit as many as fifty countries.

San Onofre sits between San Diego and Los Angeles. A radioactive cloud spewing from one or both reactors there would do incalculable damage to either or both urban areas before carrying over the rest of southern and central California.

Diablo Canyon is at Avila Beach, on the coast just west of San Luis Obispo, between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A radioactive eruption there would pour into central California and, depending on the winds, up to the Bay Area or southeast into Santa Barbara and then to Los Angeles. The cloud would at very least permanently destroy much of the region on which most Americans rely for their winter supply of fresh vegetables.


By the federal Price-Anderson Act of 1957, the owners of the destroyed reactors---including Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison---would be covered by private insurance only up to $11 billion, a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars worth of damage that would be done. The rest would become the responsibility of the federal taxpayer and the fallout victims. Virtually all homeowner insurance policies in the United States exempt the insurers from liability from a reactor disaster.

The most definitive recent study of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster puts the death toll at 985,000.  The accident irradiated a remote rural area. The nearest city, Kiev, is 80 kilometers away.

But San Luis Obispo is some ten miles directly downwind from Diablo Canyon. The region around San Onofre has become heavily suburbanized.

Heavy radioactive fallout spread from Chernobyl blanketed all of Europe within a matter of days. Itcovered an area far larger than the United States.

Fallout did hit the jet stream and then the coast of California, thousands of miles away, within ten days. It then carried all the way across the northern tier of the United States.

Chernobyl Unit Four was of comparable size to the two reactors at Diablo Canyon, and somewhat larger than the two at San Onofre.

But it was very new when it exploded. California's four coastal reactors have been operating since the 1970s and 1980s. Their accumulated internal radioactive burdens could exceed what was spewed at Chernobyl.

Japanese officials say all affected reactors automatically shut, with no radiation releases. But they are not reliable. In 2007 a smaller earthquake rocked the seven-reactor Kashiwazaki site and forced its lengthy shut-down.

Preliminary reports indicate at least one fire at a Japanese reactor hit by this quake and tsunami.

In 1986 the Perry nuclear plant, east of Cleveland, was rocked by a 5.5 Richter-scale shock, many orders of magnitude weaker than this one. That quake broke pipes and other key equipment within the plant. It took out nearby roads and bridges.

Thankfully, Perry had not yet opened. An official Ohio commission later warned that evacuation during such a quake would be impossible.

Numerous other American reactors sit on or near earthquake faults.

The Obama Administration is now asking Congress for $36 billion in new loan guarantees to build more commercial reactors.

Harvey Wasserman's Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org. 

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US deploys two nuclear experts to Japan

© AFP Kazuhiro Nogi

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Saturday it has sent two experts to Japan, where authorities were seeking to calm fears of a reactor meltdown in the aftermath of a massive earthquake.

"We have some of the most expert people in this field in the world working for the NRC and we stand ready to assist in any way possible," commission chairman Gregory Jaczko said in a statement announcing the deployment.

The NRC -- an independent agency mandated by Congress to regulate US commercial nuclear power plants and other nuclear materials -- said the pair were experts in boiling water nuclear reactors and are part of a broader US aid team sent to the disaster zone.


The commission has activated "its Maryland-based headquarters Operations Center since the beginning of the emergency in Japan, and is operating on a 24-hour basis," the statement added.

A blast at a Japanese nuclear plant triggered fears of a meltdown after a massive earthquake and tsunami left more than 1,000 dead and at least 10,000 unaccounted for.

As workers doused the stricken reactor with sea water to try to avert catastrophe, Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the chaos unleashed by Friday's 8.9 magnitude quake was an "unprecedented national disaster."

On Sunday in Japan, the operator of the plant said the cooling system of another reactor was not working and risked a possible explosion.

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