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Mag 6.2 - 96km ENE of Miyako, Japan. 2012-10-01 22:21:45 UTC 39.853°N 143.047°E depth=9.7km (6.0mi)

Ospreys to stay grounded for now Pentagon chief bans test flights until Japan OKs aircraft's safety WASHINGTON — The United States will suspend all flight operations by MV-22 Ospreys in Japan until Tokyo confirms the tilt-rotor aircraft's safety, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said.

A new study by 22 biologists and ecologists has found that environmental changes on our planet are reaching a point of no return that leads to mass extinctions and harms human welfare. The situation, said one scientist, “scares the hell out of me.” That would be James H. Brown, one of the authors of alarming paper published by Nature, talking to New York Times Green blogger Justin Gillis. Brown is not one of your everyday cranks predicting raptures and the end of days. He is a macroecologist at the University of New Mexico. And as The Atlantic's James Fallows, who...

Beware of bubbles of false hope. Right now there is a lot of talk about how the U.S. economy is improving, but it is all a lie. The mainstream media can be very seductive. When you sit down to watch television your brain tends to go into a very relaxed mode. In such a state, it becomes easy to slip thoughts and ideas past your defenses. Sometimes when I am watching television I realize what the media is trying to do and yet I can still feel it happening to me. In this day and age, it is absolutely...

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Oops! I mean the sea is rising! The sea is rising! Such is the premise, chock full of laughable hysteria mixed in with premonitions of massive governmental spending based on a theory yet to be proven, in this Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel front page story by David Fleshler. As Chicken Little Fleshler describes, the plan to combat an unproven problem isn't just any plan, it's a BATTLE plan:

(Reuters) - Global temperature rise could exceed "safe" levels of two degrees Celsius in some parts of the world in many of our lifetimes if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, two research papers published in the journal Nature warned. "Certain levels of climate change are very likely within the lifetimes of many people living now ... unless emissions of greenhouse gases are substantially reduced in the coming decades," said a study on Sunday by academics at the English universities of Reading and Oxford, the UK's Met Office Hadley Center and the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand."Large parts of...

Despite hysterical headlines of an “historic” storm: Irene is a Category 1 Hurricane By: Liz Berry Saturday August 27, 2011 7:44 am cross post from IfLizWereQueen The Truth of Irene’s Strength? –not nearly that of her related headlines for the past two days from the US media. Here is the latest report from the National Hurricane Center as of 6:03 AM Central Time and the hurricane still has not made landfall on the US shores. *Note: A Category 1 is the lowest category on the Saffir-Simpson scale before a storm is classified as a tropical storm. I guess they’ll have...

President Obama continues to push the notion that he wants a "balanced approach" to budget cuts, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the only spending cuts he is willing to contemplate are cuts in defense spending. The vast entitlement system that now eats the majority of tax dollars is, by contrast, not only on his list of programs to be sustained, but expanded. Mr. Obama seems determined to protect the welfare state. He lacks the courage and the candor to admit to the unsustainablity of an entitlement system which has pushed the nation to the brink of insolvency as...

(Reuters) - Polar bear cubs forced to swim long distances with their mothers as their icy Arctic habitat melts appear to have a higher mortality rate than cubs that didn't have to swim as far, a new study reports. Polar bears hunt, feed and give birth on ice or on land, and are not naturally aquatic creatures. Previous reports have noted individual animals swimming hundreds of miles (kilometers) to reach ice platforms or land, but this is one of the first to show these swims pose a greater risk to polar bear young.

Well, you can save your money and forget about buying that Prius. Because apparently cats, not cars, cause “climate change.” That’s the latest according to some research studies. The problem is reportedly due to a cat “epidemic” in the U.S., where the entire feline population has tripled in the last four decades to some 600 million furry critters. The studies report that “global warming” prompts cats to breed like, well, rabbits, and once there’s an “overpopulation,” our furry feline friends start killing off eco-saving birds en masse. Sounds like a lose, lose. Right? MotherJones reports:

Comet ELENIN is coming, and some conspiracy theorists believe it will brng much gloom, is THIS what NASA's head guy warned us about 3 weeks ago??

WHO SAYS YOU CAN'T PREDICT EARTHQUAKES ACCURATELY? Geologist: Alarming magnetic field changes signal major quake for West Coast

Lufthansa, KLM Cancel Flights to Tokyo's Narita Airport Panicked passengers hoping to flee Japan waited for hours at the country's largest international airport today as concerns about radioactive fallout heightened. The international and domestic terminals at Narita International Airport were crammed with passengers leaving the capital Germany's Lufthansa airline became the first major carrier to cancel flights to irst major carrier to cancel flights to Narita International Airport, which services Tokyo, and will reroute all flights through Nagoya and Osaka, some 300 miles south of the capitol. Dutch carrier KLM followed. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said, "There is no...

Radiation Fears Lead to Potassium Iodide Hysteria Potassium Iodide Runs Low as Americans Seek It Out ..... The earthquake and tsunami in Japan has caused a slight meltdown in on of Japan's nuclear power plants and maybe some other potential meltdowns. Radiation levels in the area have increased, mostly affecting workers or those right near the plant. Radiation level increases in other parts of Japan are minimal most are blowing off to sea, which has sparked public hysteria on the West Coast of the United States. The public is terrified because they believe that the radiation levels will come to...

Even the nuclear crisis enveloping Japan isn’t enough to wake up an indifferent Obama Administration. The massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan on Friday also created a crisis at the country’s nuclear power plants. Damage at the sites was extensive, and repair work was impeded by at least one massive explosion. Radioactive gas leaks have been reported, with radiation 1,000 times higher than normal levels. In response, the Japanese government has imposed a massive, military-led evacuation, clearing people away from at least two of the plants. Despite the tragedy unfolding in Japan, the United States remains unprepared. The country...

(Reuters) - The United States should "put the brakes on" new nuclear power plants until fully understanding what happened to the earthquake-crippled nuclear reactors in Japan, the chairman of the U.S. Senate's homeland security panel said on Sunday.

On March 19, the moon will swing around Earth more closely than it has in the past 18 years, lighting up the night sky from just 221,567 miles (356,577 kilometers) away. On top of that, it will be full. And one astrologer believes it could inflict massive damage on the planet. Richard Nolle, a noted astrologer who runs the website astropro.com, has famously termed the upcoming full moon at lunar perigee (the closest approach during its orbit) an "extreme supermoon." When the moon goes super-extreme, Nolle says, chaos will ensue: Huge storms, earthquakes, volcanoes and other natural disasters can be...

Tim Geithner has message for the 112th Congress: The sky really is falling. President Obama’s blunt Treasury secretary has dispatched a doomsday missive to congressional leaders, detailing the very bad things that will happen to the country – a default and global economic cataclysm – if the GOP fails to increase the debt limit to $14.29 trillion this spring. Geithner, responding to a request by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), outlined a handful of painful short-term stopgaps to increase the “headroom” needed to fund day-to-day operations and fulfill the country’s fiscal obligations

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A worst-case scenario devised by US researchers shows that the American southwest could experience a 60-year stretch of heat and drought unseen since the 12th century. Researchers at the University of Arizona examined studies of temperature changes and droughts in the region over the past 1,200 years and used them to project future climate models in the hope that water resource managers could use the information to plan ahead. An examination of the past, through human-kept records but also via rings in the cores of trees that can show periods of wetness or drought, showed that dry...

<p>A robot met its end near Coors Field tonight when the Denver Police Department Bomb Squad detonated the "suspicious object," bringing to an end the hours-long standoff between police and the approximately eight-inch tall figurine.</p> <p>Denver Police Spokesman Matt Murray said that a citizen called police at 3:27 p.m. to report the presence of the plastic white toy robot cemented to the base of a pillar supporting a footbridge near the intersection of 20th and Wazee streets. Police closed 20th Street between Blake Street and Chestnut Place, but did let a few people past the police tape to retreive cars parked in nearby lots. Nobody was allowed within about 100 yards of the robot.</p>