Hot Issues - Solar Storms, Killer Eruption, Biofuel Scam, Saving Seeds

Earth Change Report - Issue 028 Feb 09 2008

Earth Change Report is dedicated to bringing you information about the world in which you live so you can decide for yourself how you will prepare for what’s happening and what’s ahead.

It includes Dr Miceal Ledwith, former adviser to the Vatican and featured in "What The Bleep Do We Know" who says (backed by an atom bomb explosion that subjected 10,000 soldiers to radiation) "We are a civilization given to destruction."

But in a few short years, the warmongering will be over.

This new DVD with its transcendent message is produced to the highest industry standards (so it looks superb on your new flat screen TV - and you can buy it here).

Each issue of Earth Change Report is deliberately different.

This issue for example deals with

* the sun and its looming solar cycle,

* a damning report that finds biofuels production will make matters worse

* a wrap up on this week’s world weather

* A plague of rats (not in your local capital)

* Restless volcanoes

* And Science Headlines.

Both will be very handy when the current Solar Cycle reaches its peak in the next few years.

That’s because it will knock out many if not all devices that generate or depend on electricity.

Scientists are already studying the sun very closely because although they won’t say it in detail (at least publicly) they know that a Coronal Mass Ejection – a sun storm or flare – takes only minutes to reach this planet.

If it is powerful enough – and that is what they’re concerned about with Solar Cycle 24 – we can expect to be saying goodbye to the International Space Station, satellites, GPS navigation, fly-by-wire plane controls, radio, television, automobiles, digital watches and clocks, missile guidance systems, A-bombs, power grids.

If they have time, they’ll warn us – but what happens if there are only minutes between the warning and the arrival of these intense radio waves? Chaos.

Aircraft carriers require crews of as many as 2000 personnel. The film industry could make a great drama on board just one such vessel – like Britain’s HMS Illustrious caught at sea during a routine training exercise.

Suddenly, everything goes dead. The top guns doing their fly-by crash their multi-million dollar planes – and they’re unable to eject as the plane goes down. Like the aircraft carrier, they’;re dead in the water.

Back on board – who knows for how long it’ll last – all engines have quit. The whole ship has been plunged into darkness. Radars fry. Communications are totally lost, both internally and externally. The pumps quit. Water stops running. The galley goes midnight black. Flashlights don’t work. Nor do the toilets. Refrigeration quits. Food rots.

And there's no way out, or off, because lifeboats can not be launched - and even if they were, their motors would not run.


Cargo ships and super tankers will be left floating helplessly in whatever storm or calm conditions they’re in at the time.

Now imagine the World’s biggest ship – at almost 1500 meters in length 0r 100 per cent larger than the ill-fated Exxon Valdez – powerless, rudderless, at the mercy of the wind and the sea, inevitably running aground.

What price crude oil then?

What might happen to an aircraft carrier or any cargo vessel, super tanker, cruise liner or fishing boat at sea can by imagination be extended to what will happen to cities and their millions of inhabitants.

To paraphrase movie promo jargon - coming to a city near you.

Heavy flooding in Peru has killed nearly 20 people and left another 1500 homeless.

Tungurahua was quiet for 80 years, then started coming back to life in 1999.

It threw ash and rocks three miles into the air from its crater on Thursday, and there are official fears a stronger eruption will occur.

Fifteen hundred villagers have been evacuated.

Tungurahua has previously destroyed entire villages on its slopes, and this week’s eruption has already caused heavy damage in four villages.

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The tornadoes have arrived much sooner than usual, some of them touching down and staying on the ground - destroying everything in their path - much longer than usual.

Meanwhile the mid west of the United States has been dumped on by 20 inches of snow in the past two days, raising fears of more flooding as its eventually melts.

Flood warnings have been issued in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and New York after three days of heavy rain and melting snow.

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In New Zealand the driest January in over a century has led to the first ever declaration of the Waikato region as a drought zone.

The normally lush dairying province is now a wasteland of brown pasture and farmers are selling stock or drying off their herds months earlier than usual.

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A plague of rats has destroyed the crops of tens of thousands of people living in Bangladesh's remote Chittagong Hill Tracts.

Aid workers have warned that the destruction of crop has left the people in a "near-famine situation".

The rat population has soared in recent weeks as they feed off the region's bamboo forests which are blossoming for the first time in decades.

Do some quick research on biofuels - those fuels derived from plants and animal fats to supplement what's made from crude oil - and you'll find its praises being sung louder than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Like manna from heaven biofuels will supposedly ease our dependence on fossil fuels, provide income for farmers, and reduce atmospheric pollution.

Now it's true that some inventive geniuses have been able to convert their diesel machinery to run on recycled vegetable oil - but the fact is that Von Diesel invented his engine to run on plant oil in the first place. (Bet you didn't know that).

WRONG....

The Independent - along with some apparently independent scientists – today revealed some damning evidence about biofuels.

The Independent article says Scientists have produced damning evidence to suggest that biofuels could be one of the biggest environmental con-tricks because they actually make global warming worse by adding to the man-made emissions of carbon dioxide that they are supposed to curb.

Next time you start your car, think about how you have been 'helping' the planet for decades....and how much oil a year is extracted from the earth, goes through our machinery, and forms a toxic soup ion the air we breathe."In 2003, transportation worldwide burned up almost 500 billion gallons of crude — 192 billion gallons of diesel and 307 billion gallons of gasoline.

"That same year, the United States used 176 billion gallons of petroleum, almost double that of the EU, the next highest consumer at 92 billion gallons. China, Japan, Canada, Russia, Mexico, and Brazil rounded out the top consumers of crude oil for transportation purposes."

Note that the United States, which says the Kyoto protocol on climate change is fatally flawed, is the largest polluter on the planet, but is doing the least to reverse the problem.

Water planners call for fundamental shift to deal with changing climate...(map at right illustrates expected areas of severe water shortage).

The past is no longer a reliable base on which to plan the future of water management.

So says a new perspectives piece written by a prominent group of hydrologists and climatologists, published Feb. 1 in Science magazine, that calls for fundamental changes to the science behind water planning and policy.

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African seed collection first to arrive in Norway on route to Arctic seed vault

"Twenty-one boxes filled with 7,000 unique seed samples from more than 36 African nations were shipped to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a facility being built on a remote island in the Arctic Circle as a repository of last resort for humanity's agricultural heritage."

Parting comment: See Earth Change Report's take on this "repository of last resort" - and wonder, "what do they know about coming earth changes that we should know?"