Plane Madness




If you thought the volcanic eruption in Iceland was awesome, wait till
you see what Mother Nature has in store for us. Increased seismic
activity around volcanoes suggests we can look forward to more
spectacular eruptions in the months ahead. Mount Redoubt in Alaska is stirring from its slumber while Mount Etna in Italy threatens to enter a new eruptive period. Preparations are being made to evacuate 3,000 people from the Gaua Volcano on the Pacific island of Vanuatu as renewed activity suggests a large eruption is imminent. The Ischia Volcano
off the coast of Naples in Italy has some observers worried, although
as SOTT.net pointed out in its Connecting the Dots installment for March,
it's the 13 major underwater volcanoes off Italy's southern coast that
are scientists' primary concern. Somebody had better contact air traffic
controllers in central America and explain to them the intricacies of
ash particles and jet propulsion. When an eruption at Guatemala's
Santiaguito Volcano sent a plume of ash 30,000 feet into the atmosphere
and dusted a large swathe of western Guatemala
late April, regional airspace remained open for business. Either
politicians there care nothing for airlines' safety or they know
something the "experts" in Europe do not.




The Global Warmists have jumped on the hysteria generated by
this "ash cloud" to claim that increasing volcanic activity is due to decreasing pressure from melting ice caps, which of course is due to 'man-made global warming'. But the ice caps cannot be melting because the increasing extent of sea ice in the Arctic broke records throughout April. Other warmists found their silver lining in the flight ban itself, claiming to have quantified the amount of evil CO2 the planet was saved from grounded planes! Admittedly, the skies were brilliant blue over Europe during the flight ban's first week, but that is besides the point. The point is that oceans absorb and thus regulate the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere.
It is statistically redundant attempting to quantify the net
atmospheric CO2 levels from a 70% reduction in air traffic over one
continent for 6 days! It may seem like a significant factor from a local perspective, but in terms of the overall system, it isn't. Fred Goldberg explains that "one can never find more than 4 percent of CO2 in the atmosphere coming from humans."







Thou shalt not ask questions


Al Gore's financial links to chemical and oil
companies keep bubbling to the surface and yet his convenient lies
continue to hold court with official culture. In the UK, Lord Oxburgh's
"Inquiry" recently found "absolutely no evidence of any impropriety
whatsoever" after its brief whitewash
of an investigation into Climategate. All he had to say on the matter
was that "We found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised
researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public
attention." The British government followed this up by announcing that it will be employing 'experts in extremism' hunting down anyone who so much as doubted the CRU's (un)scientific work.




Clearly something beyond humanity's role is causing the planet's surface
to open up. Following the strong earthquake in Sumatra earlier last
month, locals noticed that the seabed has risen along the Aceh coastline
and that rocks and mud are spewing out from fissures, prompting them to
wonder if "an undersea volcano could be forming." The strong seismic
activity gives us an indication of the activity going on beneath our
feet and especially below the oceans, where much bigger and much more
active volcanoes are warming the oceans. I wonder if the Deepwater Horizon
oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico came off its hinges due to the
sea floor rupturing? One angle now being examined is that a bubble of methane triggered the blast onboard the rig. This jives with SOTT.net's observations of reports of methane bubbling up
from below the oceans in ever greater quantities. There have been
devastating explosions caused by underground methane leaks at mines in Russia, China and the US in the past month alone.




Whatever the weather




Copious amounts of rainfall hit Rio de Janeiro last month as Brazil's second largest city experienced the biggest deluge in its history. Around 150 people were swept to their deaths in the initial flooding and soon 200 more were buried when a devastating landslide hit the Morro Bumba slum. Already in May there has been heavy flooding in Dagestan, southern Russia and flash floods have killed at least 66 in Afghanistan. A landslide in northern Italy killed 11 late last month when a train was knocked clean off its tracks; last week massive landslides were reported
in the Chongqing province of southern China, where sudden downpours
flooded the city of Hunan and left at least 39 people dead. A severe
cyclone in eastern India that killed at least 140 people also left over 500,000 homeless last month, while to the north of the country over 40 people were killed in devastating thunderstorms last week. Tornado season arrived in the western hemisphere with The Bahamas and then the southeastern US seeing twisters level homes and wreak "utter obliteration" in Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi and most recently Oklahoma. But the biggest precipitation event hit Tennessee, which experienced sudden record-breaking flooding late in the month as storms dumped up to 16 inches of rain over two days, turning highways into rivers and prompting mass evacuations from Nashville. In fact, the scale of the flooding there only became apparent days after the event. Shades of Katrina: