The number of earthquakes has changed over the past several years within central and eastern United States. Nearly 450 earthquakes scale 3.0 and higher happened in the four years from 2010-2013, an average of over 100 each year, compared with an average rate of 20 earthquakes each year noticed from 1970-2000. 

Seismicity of the coterminous United States and surrounding areas, 2009–2012. Black spots represent earthquakes with a magnitude ≥ 3.0 are shown; bigger spots represent events with a magnitude ≥ 4.0. Background colors show earthquake threat levels from the US National Seismic Hazard Map (NSHM).

Credit:USGS

This changed magnitude in earthquakes reminds two important questions: Are they natural, or human induced earthquake? In addition, what should be done in the future as we deal with the causes and effects of these actions to decrease associated risks? USGS researchers have been examining the changes in earthquakes as well as the likely causes, and they have some answers.

Mini ice age is on the way? Scientists let know the Sun has ‘gone to sleep’ and say, it could because temperature ranges to plunge. 2013 was due to be season of the ‘solar maximum’. Researchers say solar power is at a portion of what they expect.

The Mini Ice Age is a period between about 1300 and 1870 during which European countries and North America were exposed to much chillier winter seasons than during the 20^th century. The period can be separated in two stages, the first starting around 1300, and recurring until the late 1400s. There was a little bit hotter interval in the 1500s, after which the environment worsened. The interval between 1600 and 1800 represents the height of the Mini Ice Age. Developing European trade and developing European sea, born Empire has classified the interval. This was straight connected to developments in technological innovation using more of nature’s power and towards the end of the interval fossil-fueled power. These two hundred years also saw the expertise of farming areas, which produced particular products for regional and worldwide market.

The nuclear power is predicted to continue to grow globally regardless of the stop to the use in several countries post-Fukushima. Almost 69 nuclear power reactors currently under construction around the world where power demand continues to rise especially in hydrocarbon-poor Asia.

Japan in the 1960s was the first to adopt nuclear power among Asian nations. Nuclear capacity in Asia rose nearly 250 percent between 1980 and 2012, led mainly by South Korea, Japan, and India, with China during the last decade also adopting nuclear power.
The trend is expected to continue. According to the United States Energy Information Agency (EIA), nuclear power is among the world’s fastest-growing energy source, increasing by 2.5 percent every year.

While the U.S. has not put a halt to its nuclear power generation program, Fukushima officials are concerned about the clean up and the impact to the nuclear power industry.

Immediately after visiting the plant, U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said in a statement, “The United States stands ready continuing helping Japan as they continue to charting the cleanup and works to settle the future of their energy economy.” The United States and Japan created the Bilateral Commission to strengthen our strategic and practical engagement on civil nuclear R&D.

The two Jamaicans happened to be out fishing on a Sunday morning (November 2013) when they hooked what ended to be a 900-pound scale less beast of a fish. Both fishers, Desmond Phillips and Michael Grant, had never seen anything that looked like their strange, midmorning catch and at one point were frightened that they had someway captured an alien.

The monstrous fish was later identified as a “sunfish”. Not a native inhabitant of the waters along the coast of Bryans Bay in Portland, Jamaica. The sunfish consumes mostly jellyfish; however has a taste for squids, sponges, Portuguese man of war and other various invertebrates.

The Ocean Sunfish (Mola or Mola Mola) is a slow-moving fish that likes to move with the ocean currents. Although a 900-pound fish is enormous, for this species it is just a baby. The typical adult size of a sunfish is 2,200 lbs. However, the largest sunfish documented weighed in at 4,927 pounds and was 10 feet long with a large 14-foot measurement from dorsal to anal fin (top and bottom fins).

A group of sailor who were onboard the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan as it delivered aid in the results of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in Japan nearly three years ago are taking another shot at a lawsuit over the health issues they say they have suffered since their radiation exposure.

Their lawyer, California environmental law expert Paul C. Garner, has until January 6 to change their complaint against the Tokyo Electric Power Co. and resubmit it for a judge’s ruling.

“What we say is this: The TEPCO people realized what was happening there,” Garner told Navy Times. “They knew the degree of what was happening, because now you have radiological releases into the environment ... and the tsunami just cleaned it all in, and washed it all-out, and the Reagan was in the backwash.”

Garner originally presented the case a year ago. A federal judge in Southern California granted the company’s November 26 motion to disregard the case, but Garner and the sailors will have another opportunity, he told Navy Times.

Garner made the decision to drop some of the accusations in the lawsuit, with a conspiracy charge, and said the judge would reevaluate the case in the New Year.

Oh, boy Al Gore is not getting to be happy. The Russian cruise liner Akademik Shokalskiy has been stuck at sea since Christmas morning, once it had been taken over by ice on the edge of the continent. 

The ship contacted the Australian Maritime Safety Authority for help, and three icebreakers that were within the region are racing through blizzard conditions to reach the vessel.

Sure, this happens despite everything it is the Antarctic Ice Cap, however typically it happens throughout the winter. In the southern hemisphere, December 25 is right smack in the middle of summer. The ice cap is meant to retreat not freeze up and lock ships in the ice. Heck, in line with the global warming freaks, there is not even supposed ice left in Antarctica. Do not worry though, the need find the way to justify this latest summer blizzard.

Russian cruise liner Akademik
Shokalskiy stuck in Antarctic ice

The Chinese ship Snow Dragon (Xue Long) is predicted to reach the ship Friday. In addition, the French vessel Astrolabe and the Australian ship, the Aurora Australis, can arrive before long once, according to Chris Turney, a professor of climate change at the University of New South Wales, Australia. 

The passengers include twenty-two crew and fifty-two tourists, scientists and explorers. The ship that left New Zealand last month, is on a special research voyage to honor the one hundredth day of remembrance of famed Australian explorer Douglas Mawson.

Thankfully, it looks as if the seventy-four people on the ship are going to be all right.

Zaballa (Iruña de Oca) was a medieval settlement abandoned in the fifteenth century. To build a manor cloister at the center of it undermined organizing the village in the tenth century with creating a rent-seeking system. It was later become a real factory, a specialized estate in the hands of local lords who, below protecting the economic boom in cities like Vitoria-Gasteiz, tried to get the most profits attainable. In the end, the "flight" of its settlers towards the cities caused it to be abandoned.

Today, it is archaeologists from the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country who are striving to rebuild and salvage our rural heritage by finding out deserted settlements like Zaballa.

Farming site at Zaballa.
The thousand year old vineyard
discovered in Alava, Spain
(Photo credit: UPV/EHU) 

Zaballa is one among the over three hundred deserted settlements glorious in Alava-Araba; they're rural areas abandoned in historical times however now being studied by the UPV/EHU's Cultural Heritage and Landscapes research group. Its director, Juan Antonio Quirós-Castillo, highlights the importance of Zaballa and Alavese sites. Normally, they're part of one among the most importance archaeological records of the medieval era throughout northern Iberia, and on a par with few sites in Europe. "The issue is not simply the number, but that within the decade that we have been working on this project. Extensive work has been done on nearly half a dozen of them, and work at other levels has been done on nearly a hundred,” Antonio Quirós-Castillo said.

We were all assumed to be dead by now, deep-fried to a toasty potato like chip. Alternatively, doomed to die with the polar bears. It was to be a soggy finish for the first lovely planet within the cosmos and for all the passengers riding on it. The world alarmists never got their story of fright and worry straight, whether by now we might be fried or frozen.

First, they warned of global warming, and once they needed a replacement story “global warming” became “climate change.” They finally settled on one thing they might prove because the climate does, in fact, change. First, it rains, and then the sun comes out. Then it rains once more. Rain, sun, rain, sun, drip, drip, and dry. The story is ever new.

Global Warming Scam

There was continuously an insufficiency of proof the globe was on a wild tear; however, there was never a scarcity of alarm. We have a tendency to got bedtime stories of ghosts and goblins from the graveyard, wild monsters from slouchy Creek, even a creature from a black lake and all types of different things that create the night a time of horrific fun and games. Al Gore, who had much time on his hands when his White House gig was canceled, even created a movie about it. It is still common in certain circles on Halloween night.

Only thirteen years past (and thirteen is the unluckiest of the numbers, which is scary, too), a scientist at the climate-research unit of Britain’s University of East Anglia expected that “within a few years” a snowfall would be “a vary rare and exciting event. Kids simply aren’t aiming to understand what snow is.” A number of the newspapers thirstily cooperated with spreading the “news.” One among them reported that for the first time a widely known toyshop on London’s Regent Street had no sleds on display. Who wants scientific proof once you have a story like that?