Category: Black Horse

Atlantic plankton all but wiped out in catastrophic loss of life

Mark Howarth – July 17, 2022

Scientists have discovered a catastrophic loss of life in our oceans, we can reveal.

An Edinburgh-based research team fears plankton, the tiny organisms that sustain life in our seas, has all but been wiped out after spending two years collecting water samples from the Atlantic.

The landmark research blames chemical pollution from plastics, farm fertilisers and pharmaceuticals in the water. Previously, it was thought the amount of plankton had halved since the 1940s, but the evidence gathered by the Scots suggest 90% has now vanished.

The scientists warn there are only a few years left before the consequences become catastrophically clear when fish, whales and dolphins become extinct, with grave implications for the planet. In the report, the researchers from the Global Oceanic Environmental Survey Foundation (Goes) state: “An environmental catastrophe is unfolding. We believe humanity could adapt to global warming and extreme weather changes. It is our view that humanity will not survive the extinction of most marine plants and animals.”

The findings have prompted calls for urgent action on a number of fronts as observers warn the promises of Cop26 to ease the climate crisis have, so far, amounted to little.

Fiona Nicholls, an oceans campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said: “Our oceans can be our allies in fighting climate change, but there is simply no time to waste.”

Goes – based at Edinburgh University’s Roslin Innovation Centre in Midlothian – has been collecting samples from the Atlantic and the Caribbean from its yacht, Copepod. Setting out from Scotland, it sailed along French and Portuguese coasts before crossing the Atlantic. The yacht is currently moored in Cartagena, Colombia, before setting sail for Panama this week.

In addition to their own samples, the Goes researchers have provided monitoring equipment to other sailing boat crews so that they can perform the same trawls and report back with their results.

https://www.sundaypost.com

A Supervolcano in New Zealand Is Rumbling So Much It’s Shifting The Ground Above It

JESS COCKERILL –  July 12, 2022

The vast expanse of Lake Taupō’s sky blue waters, crowned by hazy, mountainous horizons, invokes an extreme sense of tranquility.

And yet, deep in the ground below, geological unrest is brewing, according to a new paper in the New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics.

Lake Taupō is the largest freshwater lake in Australasia, located at the center of New Zealand’s north island. And while it appears peaceful today, the lake has a violent origin story.

The lake’s waters sit within a prehistoric caldera – a word based on the Spanish for ‘cauldron’ or ‘boiling pot’ – formed during Earth’s most recent supereruption, the Oruanui eruption, 25,400 years ago.

When magma is released from a supervolcano (defined as having released at least 1,000 cubic kilometers of material in any one eruption) in an event like the Oruanui eruption, the depleted magma vents cave in, Earth’s surface sinks, and the landscape is permanently changed into a caldera.

In the last 12,000 years, the Taupō volcano has been active 25 times. Its most recent eruption in 232 AD is described by authors of the new paper as “one of the Earth’s most explosive eruptions in historic times”. Since then, the volcano has had at least four documented “episodes of unrest”, causing destructive earthquakes and, in 1922, a massive ground subsidence.

It’s the supervolcano’s more modern periods of unrest that the researchers have studied, analyzing up to 42 years of data collected at 22 sites dotted around and across the lake. And there’s evidence that the supervolcano is still rumbling.

https://www.sciencealert.com

Global Food Crisis ‘Will Kill Millions’ By Disease, Health Executive Warns

AFP –   June 23, 2022

The global food crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine will kill millions by leaving the hungriest more vulnerable to infectious diseases, potentially triggering the world’s next health catastrophe, the head of a major aid organisation has warned.

A Russian naval blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports has stopped grain shipments from the world’s fourth-largest exporter of wheat and corn, raising the spectre of shortages and hunger in low-income countries.

The knock-on effects of the food shortages mean many will die not only of starvation but from having weaker defenses against infectious diseases due to bad nutrition, Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria told AFP this week.

“I think we’ve probably already begun our next health crisis. It’s not a new pathogen but it means people who are poorly nourished will be more vulnerable to the existing diseases,” he said in an interview on the sidelines of a G20 health minister meeting in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta.

“I think the combined impact of infectious diseases and the food shortages and the energy crisis… we can be talking about millions of extra deaths because of this,” he said.

World governments should minimize the impact of the food crisis by providing frontline healthcare to their poorest communities, who will be the most vulnerable, said the British former banker who now heads the $4 billion fund.

“That means focusing on primary healthcare so the healthcare that is delivered in the villages, in the communities. Hospitals are important but when you are faced with this kind of challenge, the most important thing is primary healthcare.”

“It’s been a disaster for TB,” said Sands.

https://www.barrons.com

South Carolina rocked by two of the largest earthquakes in years, Quake swarm continues, residents on edge

ETH – June 29, 2022

South Carolina was rocked by several earthquakes Wednesday, including the two strongest yet in a “swarm” of earthquakes that have rattled the state this year according to USA Today. 

Two quakes that are unusually strong for the region struck central South Carolina on Wednesday — a magnitude 3.5 and a magnitude 3.6, according to data from the United States Geological Survey. Over the weekend, a magnitude 3.4 earthquake also shook the state.

The quakes are the most powerful to hit the state in years, and at least one of Wednesday’s tremblers could be felt near Charlotte, North Carolina, according to reports published by the United States Geological Survey.

In a video shared by the state’s Emergency Management Division, geologist Wendy Bohon said more than 30 quakes have hit the state this year, a part of an “earthquake swarm.” Such swarms are familiar occurrences in more earthquake-prone areas, but less common in the South.

The South Carolina swarm has been going on for over half a year and included seven quakes above a magnitude 3, according to seismologist Lucy Jones. “Swarms happen in all seismic regions and the earthquakes continue until they stop,” Jones tweeted.

“That may not seem helpful, but knowing this is normal can help.” The latest quakes occurred near Elgin, South Carolina, according to data from the United States Geological Survey. The town is located about 20 miles northeast of Columbia, the state’s capital.

https://endtimeheadlines.org

Aftershock in Afghanistan as Quake Toll Rises to 1,150 Dead

Ebrahim Nooroozi – June 24, 2022

GAYAN, Afghanistan (AP) — An aftershock took more lives Friday and threatened to pile even more misery on an area of eastern Afghanistan reeling from a powerful earthquake that state media said killed 1,150 people this week.

Wednesday’s magnitude 6 quake struck a remote, mountainous region already grappling with staggering poverty at a time when the country as a whole is spiraling deeper into economic crisis after many countries pulled back critical financing and development aid in the wake of the Taliban’s takeover.

That aid had been keeping the country afloat, and its withdrawal left millions unable to afford food and further strained already struggling medical facilities. Nearly half the population of 38 million cannot meet their basic food needs, while some civil servants, like doctors, nurses, and teachers, weren’t paid for months because the Taliban government is unable to access frozen foreign reserves. Salary delays continue throughout the public sector.

Afghanistan’s international isolation is also complicating relief efforts since fewer aid organizations have a presence in the country, and many governments are wary of putting money in the Taliban’s hands.

Aid groups lament that means they have to pay local staff with bags of cash delivered by hand.

Aid organizations like the local Red Crescent and U.N. agencies like the World Food Program have sent food, tents, sleeping mats, and other essentials to families in Paktika province, the epicenter of the earthquake, and neighboring Khost province.

Still, residents appeared to be largely on their own to deal with the aftermath as their new Taliban-led government and the international aid community struggled to bring in help. The shoddy mountain roads leading to the affected areas were made worse by damage and rain.

Thousands of stone and mud-brick homes crumbled in the quake, which struck at night, often trapping whole families in the rubble. Many of those who survived spent the first night outside in a cold rain. Since then, villagers have been burying their dead and digging through the rubble by hand in search of survivors.

The Taliban director of the state-run Bakhtar News Agency said Friday the death toll from the first quake had risen to 1,150 people. Abdul Wahid Rayan said at least 1,600 people were injured.

https://www1.cbn.com

A mega-tsunami in the Pacific north-west? It could be worse than predicted, new study says

Strange Sounds – June 9, 2022

Scientists have discovered the size of the ‘outer wedge’ of a faultline can magnify a rupture’s impact. That’s a worrying news for the people living along the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a fault running from Vancouver Island to northern California…

Scientists have long predicted a giant 9.0-magnitude earthquake that reverberates out from the Pacific north-west’s Cascadia fault and quickly triggers colossal waves barreling to shore.

But what if these predictions were missing an important piece of information – one that, in certain scenarios, could tell an even more extreme story?

A new study, published last month in the peer-reviewed journal Earth-Science Reviews, points toward such a missing piece. Researchers revealed a previously unknown relationship between the severity of a tsunami triggered by an earthquake and something known as “the outer wedge”, the area between the main earthquake fault and the seafloor.

Sylvain Barbot, a co-author of the study, described the outer wedge as the “garbage bag of subduction zones”, the place where two tectonic plates crash into each other and can produce an earthquake, because it’s where sediment piles up.

The researchers’ findings suggest that the wider it is, the larger the maximum size of the tsunami will be.

The connection adds a new element to consider when making tsunami predictions, one that the authors suggest could mean heightened worst-case scenario predictions for some faults, including Cascadia.

https://strangesounds.org

Dying children reflect brutal toll of Somalia drought

Mustafa HAJI ABDINUR – June 9, 2022

Arbay Mahad Qasim has already lost two children to a vicious drought, and now the Somali villager fears she could lose a third as her malnourished toddler Ifrah awaits treatment in a Mogadishu hospital.

Barely out of her teens, Qasim is among dozens of weary parents crowding Banadir Maternity & Children Hospital, which has become ground zero for the starvation crisis sweeping across Somalia as a record drought grips the Horn of Africa.

Entire villages have been forced to uproot their lives and flee their homes after poor rainfall destroyed crops and killed livestock.

When the rains failed for a fourth consecutive season last month, UN aid agencies and meteorologists warned that a famine was looming in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia.

But for many Somalis like Qasim, who has been surviving on government handouts for the past few months, catastrophe has already struck.

Two of her children died of hunger in the last 18 months.

When two-year-old Ifrah’s tiny body began to swell, showing symptoms of severe malnutrition, Qasim wasted no time, spending a day traveling to Mogadishu from her village in the southwest in a desperate bid to save her youngest child’s life.

https://www.spacedaily.com

Countries hoarding food supplies as prices spike, hunger crisis looms

Laurel Duggan – May 25, 2022

Countries are imposing export restrictions on food in light of shortage concerns sparked by the war in Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Export restrictions were quickly imposed after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine to increase domestic supply and slow the rise of prices, but the trend could exacerbate rising global food prices and shortages, according to the WSJ. Ukraine and Russia are both major exporters of grains and vegetable oils.

Restrictions on food or fertilizer exports were put in place in 26 countries in 2022, according to the WSJ. Economists told the outlet these restrictions would temporarily ease the pain of food shortages in the countries that use them, but are a temporary measure that contributes to higher food prices globally.

India, the world’s second-largest wheat producer, banned wheat exports May 13 as domestic prices jumped while Indonesia, which produces 60% of the world’s palm oil, blocked exports of the substance in late April before lifting the ban in late May. Ghana barred maize, rice and soybean exports; Argentina banned beef exports; and Iran and Egypt blocked the export of numerous foods, according to the WSJ.

“It’s one of these classic things where there’s really a short-term sugar high for the government … And then you end up with the same scarcity problem you had before,” said Simon Evenett, professor of international trade and economic development at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, according to the WSJ.

Food prices rose nearly 30% over the past year, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, with the trend accelerating following the invasion of Ukraine. President Joe Biden expressed concern about the food shortages March 24.

“With regard to food shortages, yes, we did talk about food shortages,” Biden said. “And it’s gonna be real.”

https://www.wnd.com

Blackouts This Summer: 1 Billion At Risk

Mac Slavo – May 25, 2022

The ruling classes of the globe are continuing to warn that the power grids all across the globe will be stretched thin this coming summer. There will not be electricity worldwide to meet the soaring demand for more energy, which is threatening more than one billion people with rolling blackouts.

Power grids are already being stretched thin by fuel shortages, droughts and heatwaves, commodity disruptions, soaring prices due to the war in Ukraine, and the failed green energy transition where grid operators retired too many fossil fuel generation plants. Combine this all together, and a perfect storm of blackouts threatens much of the Northern Hemisphere, according to a report by ZeroHedge.

This power crisis, which is going to be affecting much of the world’s top economies, could be less than a month away when summer begins on June 21. Regions that concerned Bloomberg are Asia, Europe, and the US, where there’s not enough power to go around when cooling demand is set to surge as households crank up their air conditions to escape the sweltering heat.

The warnings of blackouts continue as people begin to get ready for their summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Henning Gloystein, an analyst at Eurasia Group, warns if major blackouts spread across the world this summer, “that could trigger some form of humanitarian crisis in terms of food and energy shortages on a scale not seen in decades.”

Since we have already been experiencing food shortages, it is hard to say what we could experience next.

https://www.shtfplan.com

Huge 7.3 magnitude earthquake strikes near remote Australian island

Ricky Scaparo – May 19, 2022

A 7.3 magnitude earthquake has been recorded near a remote Australian island. The Bureau of Meteorology reported the quake near Macquarie Island in the southwest Pacific Ocean at 8.49 pm on Thursday.

According to the Daily Mail, The earthquake was at a depth of 29.3km. BOM and the Australian territory located south of New Zealand on was briefly on tsunami warning but this was lifted by 10pm.

The quake was also recorded by the US Geological Survey. Located 1,600km southeast of Tasmania, Macquarie Island is home is to the Australian Antarctic Division station, which is occupied all year round. It has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997 and is a refuge for large colonies of penguins and seals.

The island is particularly active in terms of seismic activity, sitting on the boundary between the Australian Plate and the Pacific plate. The Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre initially put Australia on tsunami alert. According to the International Tsunami Information Centre, a “tsunami warning is issued when a tsunami with the potential to generate widespread inundation is imminent, expected, or occurring.

Warnings alert the public that dangerous coastal flooding accompanied by powerful currents is possible and may continue for several hours after initial arrival”. They later released an update confirming there was no risk of a tsunami.

https://endtimeheadlines.org