http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/29468/

Global Warming Could be Causing a Kitten Boom, Experts Say

Tuesday, July 22, 2008 :: infoZine Staff

By Alyse Knorr – Global warming and kittens. While it may seem hard to see the connection between the two – a climate phenomenon that melts glaciers and acidifies oceans, and cuddly, 4-ounce balls of fur – experts say there could be one.

Washington, D.C. – Scripps Howard Foundation Wire – infoZine

LOL!

And if you blaze long into the abyss, the abyss will blaze back into you.

If it means the government forces TV bosses to stop making ‘Reality’ TV shows, then surely this is a good thing?

Many miles inside the Arctic Circle, scientists have found elusive vents of scalding liquid rising out of the seafloor at temperatures that are more than twice the boiling point of water.

The cluster of five hydrothermal vents, also called black smokers, were discovered farther north than any others previously identified. The vents, one of which towers four stories high, are located on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Greenland and Norway, more than 120 miles farther north than other known vents.

Remotely operated vehicles photographed the scene as part of an expedition led by Rolf Pedersen, a geologist at the University of Bergen in Norway.

Black smokers have been found in many deep-sea locations, including on the Juan de Fuca Ridge off Washington and British Columbia. Despite the lack of sunlight to power life in the abyss, the vents often support unique communities of creatures that live off their warmth and chemicals. Some scientists think the vents would have been great locales for the origin of life on Earth.

Dissolved sulfide minerals that solidify when vent water hits the icy cold of the deep sea have, over the years, accumulated around the newfound vent field in what is one of the most massive such deposits ever found on the seafloor, said expedition member Marvin Lilley, a University of Washington oceanographer.

The vents are created where the seafloor spreads apart. The farther north one goes along the ridge, the slower the spreading is.

“We hadn’t expected a lot of active venting on ultra-slow spreading ridges,” Lilley said.

The active chimneys in the new field are mostly black and covered with white mats of bacteria feasting on the minerals emitted by the vents. Older chimneys are mottled red as a result of iron oxidization. All are the result of seawater seeping into the seafloor, coming near fiery magma and picking up heat and minerals until the water vents back into the ocean.

The whole deposit is about 825 feet in diameter at its base and about 300 feet across on the top and might turn out to be the largest such deposit seen on the seafloor, Lilley said.

“Given the massive sulfide deposit, the vent field must surely have been active for many thousands of years,” he said.

The field has been named Loki’s Castle partly because the small chimneys at the site looked like a fantasy castle to the scientists. The Loki part refers to a Norwegian god renowned for trickery.

This article in the Guardian has a link to a video of the ad – cool music, dodgy science.

Yes, and if you tend to walk barefoot through coal mines it will leave a black mark on your sole.

Beer on the other hand has social value that by far offsets it’s emissions (Including gastric CO2).

We need quantitive analysis on the wasted energy required in being smug.

The comments are a riot.

On the down side repeating this tripe helps support it….. Naaaa it was worth it!

Have you notice how we went from Emissions Trading to Carbon Trading to Carbon Pollution to Pollution here in the merry old land of Oz?

You can see the ajenda unfolding right before your eyes…

This year’s crop of one of China’s favorite fruits, the lychee, is likely to drop by as much as a quarter due to the severe winter weather earlier in the year. Agriculture officials from around south China, the main lychee growing center, heard the news at a conference on lychee and longan production and marketing.

The conference in Qinzhou city, in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, heard that only the province of Fujian was expected to see an increased harvest of the juicy tropical and subtropical fruit, up by 7,400 tons from last year to 118,000 tons. However, Guangdong Province is expected to harvest 700,000 tons, a drop of 260,000 tons from last year; Guangxi 390,000 tons, down by 106,000 tons: while Hainan is expecting 50,000 tons, down by 30,000 tons.

The drastic fall in output was blamed on unfavorable conditions, cold temperatures, prolonged precipitation and less sunlight, in January and February, which adversely affected flowering of lychee trees.

Source: xinhuanet.com

Publication date: 6/16/2008

http://www.freshplaza.com/news_detail.asp?id=23676