The Inuits are local people that live in the Arctic regions of Canada,
the United States and Greenland. They are excellent weather forecasters
and so were their ancestors. Presently they are warning NASA that the
cause of change in weather, earthquakes etc, are not due to global
warming as the world thinks. They also report that
They state that the earth has shifted or "wobbled". "Their sky has changed!"
The elders declare that the sun rises at a different position now, not
where it used to previously. They also have longer daylight to hunt now,
the sun is much higher than earlier, and it gets warmer much quickly.
Other elders across the north also confirmed the same thing about the
sky changing when interviewed.
They also alleged that the position of sun, moon and stars have all
changed causing changes in the temperature. This has also affected the
wind and it is very difficult to predict the weather now and according
to them predicting weather is necessary on Arctic.
All the elders confirmed that the Earth has shifted, wobbled or tilted
toward the North. This information provided by the Inuit Elders has
caused a great concern in the NASA scientists.
A new NASA model is showing just how fast sea levels are rising around the world as a result of climate change.
At a news conference Wednesday (Aug. 26), NASA officials described a new computer visualization of sea level change incorporating data collected by satellites since 1992 — it reveals that sea levels are rising quickly but unevenly across the globe. The space agency will continue to investigate the global phenomenon, and new satellite missions in the coming years will increase researchers' knowledge of the topic, officials said.
"Sea level rise is one of the most visible signatures of our changing climate, and rising seas have profound impacts on our nation, our economy and all of humanity," Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C., said at the news conference. [Climate Change Impact: NASA's 21st Century Predictions (Video)]
Sea-level data since 1994, taken by the TOPEX and JASON missions, reveal complex changes in sea level that vary across the globe — but the overall trend is a strong increase. NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
"By combining space-borne direct measurements of sea level with a host of other measurements from satellites and sensors in the oceans themselves, NASA scientists are not only tracking changes in ocean heights but are also determining the reasons for those changes," Freilich added.
As Earth heats up, sea levels are rising because of three main factors: the expansion of seawater as it warms, melting ice sheets in places like Greenland and Antarctica, and melting glaciers across the world. Each of these factors seems to be contributing relatively equally to sea level rise right now, and NASA is deploying tools to better understand and model all three.
NASA's data reveals that, although the picture is complex, sea levels overall are rising faster than they were 50 years ago — more quickly than expected — and that the speed will likely increase in the future, primarily because of melting ice sheets.
UCLA's Laurence Smith deployed this autonomous drifter in a meltwater river on the surface of the Greenland ice sheet in July 2015 as part of an effort to understand the causes of sea level rise around the globe. NASA / Jefferson Beck
To study sea levels, NASA has used satellite altimetry, which measures the time a radar burst takes to hit Earth's surface and return to orbiting spacecraft such as TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason 1 and then Jason 2. The measurement is extremely precise: Freilich mentioned that such a tool mounted on a jetliner flying at 40,000 feet (12,200 meters) would be able to detect the bump caused by a dime lying flat on the ground. NASA's ICESat satellite also keeps tabs on ice-sheet height with pulses of laser light.
The model also incorporates data from GRACE, twin satellites that are very sensitive to changes in Earth's mass distribution. The distance between the two spacecraft varies as ice and water move around on the planet, Steve Nerem, who leads NASA's Sea Level Change Team at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said at the news conference — and the GRACE duo can measure those changes to within the diameter of a red blood cell. [8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World] Related: Oceans Could Rise Faster Than Projected, Top Climate Scientist Say
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted in 2013 that sea level would rise by 1 to 3 feet (0.3 to 1 m) by the end of the century. But the uncertainties are significant, officials said, and the actual increase could wind up being much larger. The picture NASA is developing will help predict exactly what shape those changes will take.
"Let there be no doubt: This is relevant science, and it will result in understanding that yields direct societal benefit," Freilich said. "The effects and impacts of changing sea level are being felt now, in our country and throughout the world." This is a condensed version of a report from Space.com. Read the full report.
April 2015– SOLAR STORM –
Perhaps, as a tech-savvy citizen, you are worried about the financial
cost of data breaches, or our increased vulnerability to terrorist
hackers, or the erosion of our digital civil liberties. Don’t be.
Instead, worry about the complete collapse of our power grid. NASA is
warning that there’s a 12 percent chance an extreme solar storm will hit
Earth in the next decade, sending out massive shock waves that would
knock out grids across the world. The economic impact of this doomsday
scenario could exceed $2 trillion — or 20 times the cost of Hurricane
Katrina, according to the National Academy of Sciences. NASA first made
this warning in 2009, when a study it funded detailed what might happen
to our high-tech society in the event of a super solar flare —
essentially the equivalent of bad space weather. An extreme geomagnetic
storm would follow, melting copper windings of transformers at the heart
of many power distribution centers.
But few listened. And there was very
little news coverage. Then in 2012, NASA’s prediction almost came true,
with Earth experiencing a close shave by a solar storm that tore into
our orbit. The storm hit a solar observatory that was equipped to
measure the impact, providing precious data that confirmed NASA’s
previous warnings of the severe consequences these storms pose. But
again, few noticed. Recently, commemorating the two-year anniversary of
the near-miss, NASA put out a press release with even more research,
noting there’s a 12 percent chance that such a catastrophic solar storm
will actually hit Earth in the next decade, with ramifications to modern
society lasting for years. And again, no one noticed. It turns out
scientists are really bad at PR. To be fair to them, society’s
appreciation for science is abysmal anyway.
But the truth is that this is an issue
every person on the planet should care about and not dismiss as
far-fetched. In fact, it’s happened twice before: in a milder form in
March 1986, when 6 million people in Quebec lost power for nine hours
because of a small solar storm. And in 1859, a series of powerful solar
storms hit Earth head-on, disabling our global telegraph system. The
problem is that now, our society is much more susceptible to bad space
weather because of our reliance on power grids that are increasingly
interconnected. It makes economic sense, but it also leaves us
vulnerable to cascading failures. There is no way to stop a solar storm,
but there could be a way to warn us one is coming: by having sun-
orbiting satellites on the lookout for flare-ups, giving us a chance to
shut down our global power grid until the storm passes. Maybe it’s
fitting that on Labor Day, we should call for the heroic workers at NASA
to get the respect they deserve — and the funding necessary — to do
just that. –GOP USA
CANYON OF FIRE’ OPENS ON THE SUN:A
filament of magnetism stretching halfway across the sun erupted during
the late hours of April 4th (22:00-23:00 UT). The eruption split the
sun’s atmosphere, hurling a CME into space and creating a “canyon of
fire,” shown in a movie recorded by the Solar Dynamics Observatory: The
glowing walls of the canyon trace the original channel where the
filament was suspended by magnetic forces above the sun’s surface. From
end to end, the structure stretches more than 300,000 km–a real Grand
Canyon.
Fragments of the exploding filament
formed the core of a CME that raced away from the sun at approximately
900 km/s (2 million mph): image. Most of the CME will miss Earth, but
not all. The cloud is expected to deliver a a glancing blow to our
planet’s magnetic field could on April 7th. High-latitude sky watchers
should be alert for auroras. –Space Weather
NASA Study Concludes When Civilization Will End, And It's Not Looking Good for Us
Image Credit: AP
Civilization was pretty great while it lasted, wasn't it? Too bad
it's not going to for much longer. According to a new study sponsored by
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, we only have a few decades left
before everything we know and hold dear collapses.
The report, written by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center along with a team of natural and social scientists, explains that modern civilization is doomed. And there's not just one particular group to blame, but the entire fundamental structure and nature of our society.
Analyzing five risk factors for societal collapse (population,
climate, water, agriculture and energy), the report says that the sudden
downfall of complicated societal structures can follow when these
factors converge to form two important criteria. Motesharrei's report
says that all societal collapses over the past 5,000 years have involved
both "the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the
ecological carrying capacity" and "the economic stratification of
society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or "Commoners") [poor]." This
"Elite" population restricts the flow of resources accessible to the
"Masses", accumulating a surplus for themselves that is high enough to
strain natural resources. Eventually this situation will inevitably
result in the destruction of society.
Elite power, the report suggests, will buffer "detrimental effects of
the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners,"
allowing the privileged to "continue 'business as usual' despite the
impending catastrophe."
Science will surely save us, the nay-sayers may yell. But technology, argues Motesharrei, has only damned us further:
Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it
also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale
of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in
consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource
use.
In other words, the benefits of technology are outweighed by how much
the gains reinforce the existing, over-burdened system — making
collapse even more likely.
The worst-case scenarios predicted by Motesharrei are pretty dire,
involving sudden collapse due to famine or a drawn-out breakdown of
society due to the over-consumption of natural resources. The best-case
scenario involves recognition of the looming catastrophe by Elites and a
more equitable restructuring of society, but who really believes that
is going to happen? Here's what the study recommends in a nutshell:
The two key
solutions are to reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer
distribution of resources, and to dramatically reduce resource
consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources and
reducing population growth.
These are great suggestions that will, unfortunately, almost
certainly never be put into action, considering just how far down the
wrong path our civilization has gone. As of last year, humans are using more resources than the Earth can replenish and the planet's distribution of resources among its terrestrial inhabitants is massively unequal. This is what happened to Rome and the Mayans, according to the report.
... historical collapses were allowed to occur by elites who appear
to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in
the Roman and Mayan cases).
And that's not even counting the spectre of global climate change, which could be a looming "instant planetary emergency." According to Canadian Wildlife Service biologist Neil Dawe:
Economic growth is the biggest destroyer of the ecology. Those people
who think you can have a growing economy and a healthy environment are
wrong. If we don't reduce our numbers, nature will do it for us ...
Everything is worse and we’re still doing the same things. Because
ecosystems are so resilient, they don’t exact immediate punishment on
the stupid.
In maybe the nicest way to say the end is nigh possible,
Motesharrei's report concludes that "closely reflecting the reality of
the world today ... we find that collapse is difficult to avoid." Writes Nafeez Ahmed at The Guardian:
"Although the study is largely theoretical, a number of other more empirically-focused studies — by KPMG and the UK Government Office of Science for
instance — have warned that the convergence of food, water and energy
crises could create a 'perfect storm' within about fifteen years. But
these 'business as usual' forecasts could be very conservative."
Well, at least zombies aren't real. http://www.policymic.com/articles/85541/nasa-study-concludes-when-civilization-will-end-and-it-s-not-looking-good-for-us
