Category Archives: Earth Stuff

News of Earth Changes, climate shifts, weather anomalies, volcanoes, etc

The Spectacular ‘Shroom

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All Natural, Mushroom-Based Pesticides Could Revolutionize Farming

Mushroom-based pesticides kill insects attempting to feast on crops without leaching harmful toxins into the environment.

Truth Theory
Mushroom-Based Pesticides

  

(TT) — The massive decline of insect populations in recent years is an environmental crisis that is often overlooked, and by all indications, it seems that pesticides are largely to blame for this problem. However, researchers are currently developing alternatives that can hopefully protect crops for farmers without causing widespread harm to insect populations.

Biopesticides are derived from natural materials like plants, bacteria, and certain minerals. These substances are not harmful to the environment and also pose less of a risk to insects. Some Biopesticides are not even harmful, but just work to repel certain insects from the area, while others only target specific insects in a limited range.

One of the most interesting recent developments in the field of biopesticides is the use of fungi.

Fungus-based pesticides would still kill the insects that attempt to feast on the crops, but this will not be a toxin that gets into the environment, which reduces the widespread exposure to plant, animal and insect life.

Two fungus-based pesticides were developed and patented by the famous mycologist Paul Stamets. One of the products is specifically targeted toward fire ants, carpenter ants, and termites, while his other offering can affect roughly 200,000 insect species.

One of the fungi-based biopesticides, called MycoPesticide, will begin to sprout inside of the insect once it is eaten and will then feed on the creature until it dies, often with mushroom sprouts popping out of its head. It is also not harmful to bees, which has been a growing concern in relation to pesticides.

Fungi seen growing out of an affected insect. Photo Credit: Brian Lovett/University of Maryland Entomology

However, the cost is still a major obstacle for advocates of fungi-based pesticides, as they can be up to 20 times more expensive than chemical pesticides.

Paul Underhill, co-owner of the organic Terra Firma Farm in Winters, California says that the fungi methods are also a bit more difficult to work with.

“Some, like those with fungi, can require special storage, such as refrigeration. [And] the cost to the farmer can easily be 20 times what a conventional pesticide might be,” Underhill told NPR.

Photo Credit: Dr. Yuxian Xia and Nemat O. Keyhani, Chongqing University

The short term financial cost for biopesticides might be higher right now, but hopefully, those prices will start to fall as the development of this technology progresses. It is also important to consider the long term financial and environmental consequences that may not be immediately obvious in the short term.

There are also plant-based pesticides that are currently in development, which could also provide an alternative to conventional chemicals. One example is PureCrop1, a plant-based pesticide company that is partly owned by NBA star John Salley.

According to the PureCrop1, the organic pesticide is made with plant-based materials from grains, and seed crops. Their products do not contain petroleum distillates or synthetics including artificial foaming and thickening agents, builders, reagents, dyes or fragrances.

New solutions can’t come soon enough. According to a new study published this month in the scientific journal PLOS One, America’s agricultural landscape has grown 48 times more toxic to insects in the past 25 years. As Truth Theory reported last month, even fireflies are facing possible extinction all over the world.

By John Vibes | TruthTheory.com | Republished with permission

from:    https://themindunleashed.com/2019/08/all-natural-mushroom-based-pesticides.html

Situation: Critical – The Burning of the Rainforest

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The Amazon Rainforest is on Fire and Hardly Anyone’s Talking About It

The hashtag #PrayForAmazonia went viral on Tuesday as social media users attempted to draw the world’s attention to the Amazon rainforest, which has been devastated for weeks by fires so intense they can be seen from space.

According to Euro News, it is unclear whether the fires were caused by agricultural activity or deforestation. Both have accelerated rapidly under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who made opening the Amazon to corporate exploitation a key plank of his election campaign.

Twitter users on Tuesday slammed the media for paying too little attention to the Amazon blazes, particularly given the essential role the rainforest plays in absorbing planet-warming carbon dioxide—a capacity that earned it the nickname “lungs of the world.”

“The Amazon has been burning for three weeks, and I’m just now finding out because of the lack of media coverage,” wrote one observer. “This is one of the most important ecosystems on Earth.”

Satellite data collected by the Brazilian government’s National Space Research Institute (INPE) published in June showed that deforestation has risen dramatically under Bolsonaro, who dismissed the research as “a lie” and fired INPE director Ricardo Galvão for defending the data.

As The Guardian reported, the INPE findings showed the Amazon “lost 739sq km during the 31 days [of May], equivalent to two football pitches every minute.”

As Newsweek reported Tuesday,

One large fire, which started in late July, burnt around 1,000 hectares of an environmental reserve in the Brazilian state of Rondônia—located on the border with Bolivia. This blaze, along with others in the region, created dense plumes of smoke that spread far across the state, endangering the health of people living in the area and the lives of animals.

 

Two weeks ago, the state of Amazonas in the northwest of the country declared a state of emergency in response to an increase in the number of fires there… Various fires have also been burning in the state of Mato Grosso, according to satellite imagery.

The fires have become so intense that smoke from the blaze darkened the afternoon sky on Monday in São Paulo, Brazil’s most populous city.

“The Amazon rainforest has been on fire for weeks, and it’s so bad it’s literally blotting out the sun miles away,” tweeted Robert Maguire, research director at U.S. government watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington.

The advocacy group Amazon Watch on Tuesday called the Bolsonaro regime’s attacks on the world’s largest rainforest “an international tragedy.”

“What can we do?” the group tweeted. “1. Support the courageous resistance of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon. 2. Make clear to the agribusiness and financiers involved in the destruction that we won’t buy their products.”

By Jake Johnson | CommonDreams.org | Creative Commons

from:    https://www.wakingtimes.com/2019/08/22/the-amazon-rainforest-is-on-fire-and-hardly-anyones-talking-about-it/

On Serpent Mound

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The Serpent Mound
26 April, 2014 – 23:01 aprilholloway

The Great Serpent Mound of Ohio, the Largest Earthen Effigy in the World

The Great Serpent Mound is a 1,300-foot long and 3-foot high prehistoric effigy mound located on a plateau of a crater along Ohio Brush Creek in Adams County, Ohio, and is the largest surviving prehistoric effigy mound in the world. Resembling an uncoiling serpent, the mound is steeped in mystery and controversy. Despite over a century of research, there is no conclusive evidence about what it represents, when it was built, and what its true purpose was, though various astronomical alignments suggest it may have functioned as a type of calendar.

The Serpent Mound conforms to the curve of the land on which it rests, with its head approaching a cliff above a stream.  It winds back and forth for more than eight hundred feet and has seven distinct coils, ending in a triple-coiled tail. The serpent head has an open mouth extending around the east end of a 120-foot-long hollow oval feature, which is generally viewed as an egg, although other interpretations suggest it is the sun, the body of a frog, or merely the remnant of a platform. To the west of the effigy, is a triangular mound measuring approximately 32 feet at its base and long axis.  The Serpent Mound is believed to have been laid out all at once, with a layer of clay and ash, and reinforced with stones.

An illustration of the Serpent Mound

An illustration of the Serpent Mound. Image source .

Thousands of years ago, Native American peoples populated the Ohioan landscape with mounds and massive earthworks. Initial research attributed the effigy to the Adena culture, which flourished from 1000 BC to 100 AD.  The Adena culture are well-known for building burial and effigy mounds, many of which are located near the Great Serpent Mound.  However, radiocarbon dating on pieces of charcoal found within the Serpent Mound established that people worked on the mound around 1070 AD.  Thus, the mound may have been built by the Fort Ancient peoples, who lived in the Ohio Valley from 1000 CE to 1550 CE.  Nevertheless, the testing is not conclusive as it only reveals that 1000-year-old charcoal was found within the mound. This could have ended up there long after the effigy was originally built.

Interpretations of the Serpent Mound

The most predominant theory is that the Serpent Mound represents a giant snake, which is slowly uncoiling itself and about to seize a huge egg within its extended jaws. However many theories abound suggesting various interpretations. For instance, some think it may represent an eclipse, or the phases of the moon. Others have speculated that it represents the myth of the horned serpent found in many Native American cultures. In 1909, local German Baptist minister Landon West proposed another unusual theory: the serpent was writhing in its death throes as punishment for tempting Adam and Eve in what West believed was the original Garden of Eden.

There are serious suggestions that the serpent is intimately connected with the heavens. Several writers have suggested that the serpent is a model of the constellation we call the Little Dipper, its tail coiled about the North Star.

Various alignments of the serpent correspond to astronomical features, such as alignments of the sun and moon. In 1987 Clark and Marjorie Hardman published their finding that the oval-to-head area of the serpent is aligned to the summer solstice sunset, suggesting that one of the effigy’s purposes was to mark the turning of the year so that planting and gathering and hunting could be planned.

William F. Romain has suggested an array of six lunar alignments corresponding to the curves in the effigy’s body. If the Serpent Mound were designed to sight both solar and lunar arrays, it would be reflect the consolidation of astronomical knowledge into a single symbol.

Generations of researchers agree with the theory that the Serpent Mound holds astronomical significance, but the intent of those who built the serpent, and how it was used still remains a mystery.

Many scholars believe the Serpent Mound was used in religious ceremonies. When settlers first discovered the mound, there was a fire-scorched stone monument in the egg-shaped head, which has led some to suggest it was used as an altar of some sort – possibly sacrificial, based on the ceremonial knives unearthed among the blackened stones and a number of headless skeletons discovered in gravesites nearby.

Whatever its true purpose, the Serpent Mound attests to the ingenuity of its creators. As the Ancient Ohio Trail website so aptly states: “The genius of its designers remains apparent: this blend of beauty, familiarity, abstraction, power, precision, and mystery, make Ohio’s Serpent Mound one of the great, iconic images for all of human antiquity.”

Featured image: The Serpent Mound. Photo source .

By April Holloway

from:     https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/great-serpent-mound-ohio-largest-earthen-effigy-world-001594

NOTE:    Check out Graham Hancock’s take on Serpent Mound in his new book AMERICA BEFORE

Crops and Weather

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Total Catastrophe For U.S. Corn Production: Only 30% Of U.S. Corn Fields Have Been Planted – 5 Year Average Is 66%

May 16, 2019

By Michael Snyder

2019 is turning out to be a nightmare that never ends for the agriculture industry.  Thanks to endless rain and unprecedented flooding, fields all over the middle part of the country are absolutely soaked right now, and this has prevented many farmers from getting their crops in the ground.  I knew that this was a problem, but when I heard that only 30 percent of U.S. corn fields had been planted as of Sunday, I had a really hard time believing it.  But it turns out that number is 100 percent accurate.  And at this point corn farmers are up against a wall because crop insurance final planting dates have either already passed or are coming up very quickly.  In addition, for every day after May 15th that corn is not in the ground, farmers lose approximately 2 percent of their yield.  Unfortunately, more rain is on the way, and it looks like thousands of corn farmers will not be able to plant corn at all this year.  It is no exaggeration to say that what we are facing is a true national catastrophe.

According to the Department of Agriculture, over the past five years an average of 66 percent of all corn fields were already planted by now…

U.S. farmers seeded 30% of the U.S. 2019 corn crop by Sunday, the government said, lagging the five-year average of 66%. The soybean crop was 9% planted, behind the five-year average of 29%.

Soybean farmers have more time to recover, but they are facing a unique problem of their own which we will talk about later in the article.

But first, let’s take a look at the corn planting numbers from some of our most important corn producing states.  I think that you will agree that these numbers are almost too crazy to believe…

Iowa: 48 percent planted – 5 year average 76 percent

Minnesota: 21 percent planted – 5 year average 65 percent

North Dakota: 11 percent planted – 5 year average 43 percent

South Dakota: 4 percent planted – 5 year average 54 percent

Yes, you read those numbers correctly.

Can you imagine what this is going to do to food prices?

Many farmers are extremely eager to plant crops, but the wet conditions have made it impossible.  The following comes from ABC 7 Chicago…

McNeill grows corn and soybeans on more than 500 acres in Grayslake. But much of his farmland is underwater right now, and all of it is too wet to plant. Rain is a farmer’s friend in the summer but in the spring too much rain keeps farmers from planting.

The unusually wet spring has affected farmers throughout the Midwest, but Illinois has been especially hard hit. Experts say with the soil so wet, heavy and cold, it takes the air out and washes nutrients away, making it difficult if not impossible for seeds to take root.

Right now, soil moisture levels in the state of Illinois “are in the 90th to 99th percentile statewide”.  In other words, the entire state is completely and utterly drenched.

As a result, very few Illinois farmers have been able to get corn or soybeans in the ground at this point…

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s crop progress reports, about 11% of Illinois corn has been planted and about 4% of soybeans. Last year at this time, 88% of corn and 56% of soybeans were in the ground.

I would use the word “catastrophe” to describe what Illinois farmers are facing, but the truth is that what they are going through is far beyond that.

Normally, if corn farmers have a problem getting corn in the ground then they just switch to soybeans instead.  But thanks to the trade war, soybean exports have plummeted dramatically, and the price of soybeans is the lowest that it has been in a decade.

As a result there is very little profit, if any, in growing soybeans this year…

Farmers in many parts of the corn belt have suffered from a wet and cooler spring, which has prevented them from planting corn. Typically when it becomes too late to plant corn, farmers will instead plant soybeans, which can grow later into the fall before harvest is required. Yet now, planting soybeans with the overabundance already in bins and scant hope for sales to one of the biggest buyers in China, could raise the risk of a financial disaster.

And if the wet conditions persist, many soybean farms are not going to be able to plant crops at all this year.

Sadly, global weather patterns are continuing to go haywire, and much more rain is coming to the middle of the country starting on Friday…

Any hopes of getting corn and soybean planting back on track in the U.S. may be washed away starting Friday as a pair of storms threaten to deliver a “one-two punch” of soaking rain and tornadoes across the Great Plains and Midwest through next week.

As much as 3 to 5 inches (8 to 13 centimeters) of rain will soak soils from South Dakota and Minnesota south to Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, according to the U.S. Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

We have never had a year quite like this before, and U.S. food production is going to be substantially below expectations.  I very much encourage everyone to get prepared for much higher food prices and a tremendous amount of uncertainty in the months ahead.

Even though I have been regularly documenting the nightmarish agricultural conditions in the middle of the country, the numbers in this article are much worse than I thought they would be at this point in 2019.

This is truly a major national crisis, and it is just getting started.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

from:    https://www.activistpost.com/2019/05/total-catastrophe-for-u-s-corn-production-only-30-of-u-s-corn-fields-have-been-planted-5-year-average-is-66.html

Hopi Gods, Myths, & Prophecies

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Ancient Hopi: The Hollow Earth, Flying shields and Ant-like Gods exist

by Ancient Code
Not only did the ancient Hopi believe their Gods inhabited the inner parts of the Earth, they depicted mysterious Ant-like beings and flying shields thousands of years ago. Interestingly, their legends also speak of a great flood which is a clear parallel to ancient Sumerian legends of the Great Flood.

Ancient Ant-like beings Hopi

‘Hopituh Shi-nu-mu’ is the name that one of the Native American tribes is called and means “peaceful people.” The history of the ancient Hopi goes back thousands of years and makes them one of the oldest cultures in the world.

Unlike other mythologies of different cultures which speak of gods that descended from the heavens, in the ancient legends of the Hopi, a different story is told, speaking of mighty gods who reside in the center of the Earth.

But who were they? In a similar way, nearly all pre-Columbian cultures just like the Hopi believe that one day, not too far away, the gods who have shaped human culture will come back to Earth.

They have always lived according to the teachings that were given to them by Masauwu, the Master of the Fourth World, where ethical concepts are deeply rooted in their culture.

However, contrary to many other mythologies that are widespread around the globe, the Hopi believe that their gods do not live in the infinite spaces of the cosmos, but live in the heart of the Earth, conveying the idea of a hollow earth existing right below our feet.

The ancient Hopi speak of their deities as ‘ant men.’ In fact, some of the petroglyphs found near Mishongnovi, Arizona, created by the ancient Hopi depict the enigmatic beings with antennas’ offering an idea of how these strange ant-men looked like.

Ant-like biengs ancient Hopi

According to the mythology of the Hopi, at the beginning of time, Taoiwa, the Creator, created Sotuknang, his nephew, giving him the task of creating nine universes or worlds: one for Taiowa, one for him and the other seven for the overabundance of life. In a cyclical conception of time, in a similar way to Aztec mythology, these worlds would continue cyclically.

The mythology tells that story that the first three worlds, Tokpela, Tokpa, and Kuskurza have already been inhabited and subsequently destroyed due to corruption and wickedness of men. The Hopi speak that the end of each cycle is marked by the return of the gods, and announced by the appearance of the Blue Kachina Star the sign of the ‘Day of Purification,” in which the old world is destroyed, and a new one begins.

Each time one of the worlds is destroyed, the Hopi, the faithful are saved and taken by the gods to the underground cities to escape the destruction of the planet.

In each cyclic destruction, and always according to the mythology of the Hopi, the ‘men-ant’ are crucial for human survival.

The so-called ‘First World’ (Tokpela) was apparently destroyed by the fire of global proportions, perhaps a kind of massive volcanism, or the impact of an asteroid or even a large coronal mass ejection from the Sun of catastrophic proportions.

The ‘Second World’ (Tokpa), however, was destroyed by the cold. Most likely due to a pole shift that caused a massive ice age that destroyed life on the planet.

Interestingly, in the course of these two global cataclysms, the members of the Hopi tribe were guided during the day by a cloud of strange shape and a moving star overnight, leading to the presence of the so-called ‘Ant-Man’ which the Hopi call Anu Sinom. This creature escorted the Hopi to underground caves where they found shelter and sustenance.

Interestingly, in the ancient Sumerian language, Anum or Anu was the god of the. He is the creator of creation.

In the Hopi legend, the mysterious creature that resembled a humanoid-ant is described as a generous and hardworking creature, willing to provide food to the Hopi, and to teach them methods of food preservation so they could survive.

Hopi-Petroglyphs

As you can see, like many cultures around the globe, the ancient Hopi believed in the existence of subterranean chambers, cities which are eerily similar to other theories of the Hollow Earth. The Ancient Hopi also mention the mysterious ant-men gods who helped the ancient Hopi progress through time. However, the ancient Hopi also speak of the patuwvotas or ancient ‘flying shields.’

According to Frank Waters, author of Mystic Mexico: The advent of the Sixth World of Consciousness (1975) it is in the ‘third world’ where the ancient Hopi introduce the concept of the Patuwvotas, or “flying shields’.

In the third cycle, it is said that humanity built a very advanced civilization, and developed the concept of “flying shields,” a sort of vehicle that can quickly travel to different places in the world and devastate entire cities on Earth. The Third World was destroyed by Sotuknang, the nephew of the Creator, with a great flood.

Also, in this case, there is a clear parallel with the Sumerian tradition in which we talk about the great flood that destroyed all previous civilization on the planet. This story is told in the Epic of Gilgamesh, a text which was then taken to biblical tradition in the history of the Flood and Noah’s Ark.

According to the traditions of the Hopi, the survivors of the flood are scattered in different parts of the world, under the guidance of Masauwu, the Spirit of Death and the Master of the Fourth World. A fascinating petroglyph of the Hopi is that where Masauwu is represented piloting a wingless boat that has the shape of a dome. The similarity between the “flying shields” and what we today consider as airplanes or flying saucers, is mind boggling.

It seems evident that the flying shields or ‘ships without wings’ are something ancient cultures around the globe witnessed in the distant past. The ancient Hopi used the term to refer to something that was capable of flying through the skies and transporting people.

from:   https://www.ancient-code.com/ancient-hopi-the-hollow-earth-flying-shields-and-ant-like-gods-exist/

Treaties Must Be HONORED

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Keystone XL Pipeline Must Comply with Treaties and Tribal La

by Native American Rights Fund / Currents / 25 Apr 2019

Published April 25, 2019

BOULDER, Colo.    On April 23, 2019, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and Fort Belknap Indian Community, represented by the Native American Rights Fund, filed an amended complaint against TransCanada and President Trump over the handling of the Keystone XL pipeline. In addition to extensive violations of law outlined in the original complaint, the new complaint raises the following issues:

Maps released by TransCanada show the pipeline corridor and access roads crossing Rosebud territory, some of which is held in trust, as well as Rosebud’s Mni Wiconi Water system. The 1868 Treaty of Ft. Laramie and other federal laws requires Rosebud consent to cross Rosebud territory. Rosebud has land use, environmental, and utilities codes that apply, and TransCanada must comply with Rosebud law on Rosebud land.

TransCanada agreed to abide by tribal law. Fort Belknap has a Cultural Property Act that applies to the pipeline. TransCanada failed to comply with Rosebud and Fort Belknap law.

New climate change information requires a new environmental impact analysis. Recent governmental reports contain new data about climate change, which necessitates new analysis.

The federal government violated the 1851 Treaty of Ft Laramie and 1855 Lame Bull Treaty, in which the US committed to protect against future harm to the tribes’ natural resources. The US did not adequately review the pipeline’s proposed route and whether it crosses tribal territory.

The federal government must examine potential impacts on the safety and welfare of Native people—especially women and children. An influx of itinerant workers, like those required for pipeline man-camps, correlates with increased sexual assaults, domestic violence, and sexual trafficking. The federal government has a treaty obligation to protect tribal citizens likely to suffer increased rates of violence and abuse.

#HonorTheTreaties

Read more about the ongoing fight to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline.

from:    https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/keystone-xl-pipeline-must-comply-with-treaties-and-tribal-la/

2018 Disaster Stats

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2018 natural disasters statistics: volcanic activity resulted in more deaths than previous 18 years combined

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Image credit: CRED

There were 281 climate-related and geophysical events recorded in the EM-DAT (International Disaster Database) in 2018. These caused deaths of 10 733 people and affected 61 million people across the world. There were a number of major disasters in certain regions, however, there were no mega-disasters which inflate yearly averages, such as the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) who manages EM-DAT said. Earthquakes and tsunamis accounted for the majority of the 10 373 lives lost.

Notable features of the year were intense seismic activity in Indonesia, a string of disasters in Japan, floods in India, and a very eventful year in volcanic activity (which resulted in more deaths than have occurred in the previous 18 years combined) and wildfires. These events continued to occupy headlines, CRED said.

An ongoing trend of lower death tolls from previous years continued into 2018, potentially demonstrating the efficacy of improved standards of living and disaster management. However, it is critical to avoid complacency towards major gaps in data collection and reporting and resilience, particularly for climate-related disasters, which are forecasted to increase in both frequency and intensity.

Globally, Indonesia recorded nearly half the total deaths from disasters in 2018, while India recorded nearly half the total number of individuals affected. The following data are events recorded in EM-DAT.  As estimations become more accurate over time, figures will be adjusted, particularly for economic losses.

The original file posted by CRED can be found at the following link.

Earthquakes and tsunamis (20 events) 

Earthquakes and tsunamis have been the deadliest disaster in the 21st century and this trend continued in 2018. The concentration of the damage was in South-East Asia and Melanesia, specifically in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea respectively.

In the early months of the year, a string of earthquakes in Papua New Guinea left 181 dead, and affected over half a million people, many of whom lived in remote highlands which were difficult to reach by aid and rescue operations.

In Indonesia, the island of Lombok suffered multiple earthquakes, the deadliest being on August 5th, which killed 564 people. On September 28th, an earthquake triggered mudflows and a tsunami on the island of Sulawesi killing 3 400 people, making it the deadliest disaster of 2018.

Storms (84 events)

Every year, storms impact millions of people, and create billions of dollars (USD) in damage; 2018 was the same.

Two major storms struck the United States, while in Asia, China, India, Japan, and the Philippines faced extensive damage from multiple storms.

It is anticipated that storms, particularly due to hurricanes Florence (14 billion USD) and Michael (16 billion USD) and typhoon Jebi (12.5 billion USD), will be the costliest type of disaster of 2018.

EM-DAT is awaiting final data on the economic damage from these events.

Floods (108 events)

Overall, floods have affected more people than any other type of natural hazard in the 21st century, including 2018. Overall, there was a respite from floods in 2018, with Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Vietnam, which often face relentless floods reporting fewer events this year. However, major floods were reported in other countries.

In Somalia, which is already suffering from an ongoing conflict, over 700 000 people were affected by flooding, while in Nigeria, flooding cost 300 lives and impacted nearly four million people.

In Japan, heavy rains triggered the deadliest floods since 1982, killing 230 people.

The August flooding of India’s Kerala state was by far the largest flood event of the year, with 504 dead, and two-thirds of the state’s residents affected (over 23 million people).

Currently, CRED is undertaking an epidemiological study in this region to investigate the impacts of the flooding on gender and disease.

Volcanic activity (7 events)

Volcanic activity rarely makes headlines, and has had minimal impacts since the turn of the century; however, in 2018 this natural hazard resulted in more deaths than have occurred in the previous 18 years combined.

In June, the Volcán de Fuego Eruption in Guatemala killed over 400 people and affected over 1.7 million, while late in December, the eruption of Anak Krakatau in Indonesia triggered a tsunami that killed over 400 people on the islands of Sumatra and Java.

Droughts and extreme temperatures (39 events)

The direct impact of climate change on human populations will increasingly be felt through catastrophic phenomena, such as drought and extreme temperatures. The human repercussions of these events, as experienced by the EM-DAT team, are typically poorly reported, especially from low-income countries.

This is partly due to methodological difficulties in registering deaths and the severe consequences caused by droughts and extreme temperatures.

In 2018, three million people were affected by an ongoing drought in Kenya, while Afghanistan suffered a major drought that impacted 2.2 million people, causing the internal displacement of thousands.

In Central America droughts affected over 2.5 million people in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, which coincided with international migration patterns. Across Europe, a hot and dry summer caused heatwaves and drought conditions that affected farmers and health systems in numerous countries.

Due to the privileged economic situation of many European countries, there are reduced impacts from persistent heat exposure and water shortages on the population.

With the growing impact of climate change, particularly in lower and lower-middle income countries, it is critical to improve the reporting on the human impact of droughts and extreme temperatures.

Wildfires (9 events)

Across the world, the trend of devastating wildfires continued from 2017 into 2018. In 2018, the Attica Fires in Greece, killed an estimated 126 people, making it the deadliest wildfire recorded in Europe within EM-DAT records, both this current and previous century.

In the United States, the California wildfire season was the deadliest and costliest on record, with Camp Fire killing 88 people, the highest wildfire death toll in the country since the 1920s, and causing an estimated 16.5 billion USD in damage, the costliest wildfire event on record.

For the statistics, go to the source:    https://watchers.news/2019/01/25/2018-natural-disasters-statistics-cred/

What’s In Your Air?

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NASA Satellite Imagery Reveals Shocking Proof Of Climate Engineering

January 16, 2019

Dane Wigington
geoengineeringwatch.org

In regard to difficult to accept and unpleasant truths, a picture is worth a thousand words. The photo images shown below were captured from NASA satellite sources, they are truly alarming. These images provide shocking and undeniable proof of the ongoing global climate engineering/geoengineering/solar radiation management assault on our planet and its life support systems. Highly toxic heavy metals and chemicals that are systematically sprayed into our atmosphere from jet aircraft as part of the geoengineering / solar radiation management (SRM) programs, are manipulated with extremely powerful radio frequency signals. These signals are transmitted from countless locations around the globe from various types of transmission platforms (ionosphere heater installations like HAARP, SBX radar, NEXRAD, etc.). The impact of the microwave transmissions on cloud formations is profound and highly visible (square cloud formations are created under some scenarios).

In the series of NASA satellite images below, many variances of radio frequency cloud impacts can be observed. The degree to which the ongoing climate engineering/climate/intervention/weather warfare is disrupting Earth’s atmosphere and life support systems is already beyond catastrophic and rapidly escalating all over the globe.

Click to enlarge any of the images below

geoengineeringwatch-org-103

Off of east coast of Australia

geoengineeringwatch-org-104

West coast of Africa

geoengineeringwatch-org-106

California coast

geoengineeringwatch-org-115

Off of Africa’s west coast

geoengineeringwatch-org-119

Off of Africa’s west coast

geoengineeringwatch-org-116

Off of Africa’s west coast

geoengineeringwatch-org-105

South of Spain in the Alboran Sea

geoengineeringwatch-org-108

Off of Africa’s west coast

geoengineeringwatch-org-117

Off of Africa’s west coast

geoengineeringwatch-org-112

The northwest coast of Australia

geoengineeringwatch-org-109

Off of Africa’s west coast

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Off of Africa’s west coast

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Eastern Pacific ocean west of Baja California

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The Southern Ocean near Antarctica

Hurricane suppression/manipulation is one aspect/agenda of the climate engineers. 85% of the hurricanes that impact the US originate from Africa. Low pressure systems migrate toward the west, off of Africa’s coast. A great deal of climate engineering/intervention takes place in this region, thus a number of the satellite images shown in this post were captured there. In the attempt to mask the climate intervention activity, the cyclone suppression occurring off the coast of Africa is officially blamed on “dust”. Of course there is no acknowledgement of the ongoing climate engineering atrocities. The quote below is an excerpt from a FOX news article.

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Though some may feel that cyclone suppression is beneficial, such interference with Earth’s natural rhythms and systems has a long list of catastrophic downstream effects. Available data indicates that in other scenarios the climate engineers are actually augmenting and steering cyclones to serve their own agenda. “Hurricane Matthew” may be an example of weather warfare on an unimaginable scale. Is hurricane Matthew being heavily manipulated and steered by the climate engineers? The evidence continues to stack up. Below is a satellite photo clearly showing atmospheric “waves” surrounding hurricane Matthew. SpaceWeather.com has labeled these as “gravity waves”, but is that what these visible “waves” actually are? No. The satellite photos already shown in this post inarguably reveal heavy atmospheric manipulation from extremely powerful radio frequency/microwave transmissions and atmospheric aerosols. These transmissions leave a signature pattern on high level cloud formations that are saturated with electrically conductive heavy metal nanoparticles which are dispersed from jet aircraft as part of the ongoing climate engineering insanity.

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Does the photo above really show “gravity waves” surrounding hurricane Matthew? Or does it show the signature pattern of extremely powerful radio frequency/microwave transmissions interacting with aircraft dispersed atmospheric aerosols? The latter is the case, both of these elements / factors are a core part of climate and storm manipulation and steering. Photo: SpaceWeather.com

For those that want to examine the most complete climate engineering presentation from Geoengineering Watch, view the video below.

The global power structure long ago made the choice to subject our planet (and the entire web of life that it supports, including the human race) to an unimaginably massive and destructive climate intervention/weather warfare assault. This decision was made without the knowledge or consent of global populations. If we stand by and allow the decimation from the climate engineering insanity to continue, very soon Earth’s life support systems will be beyond any recovery. This is not speculation, but a mathematical certainty. Help us with the most critical battle to expose and halt the climate intervention/weather warfare assault, all of us are needed in this fight. Sharing credible data from a credible source is key, make your voice heard.
DW

May be freely reprinted, so long as the text is unaltered, all hyperlinks are left intact, and credit for the article is prominently given to geoengineeringwatch.org and the article’s author with a hyperlink back to the original story.

from:    https://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/category/geoengineering/atmospheric-spraying/

Singing Sunflowers

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Woman Records the ‘Voice of a Sunflower’ — and It Sounds Like Music From Another Dimension

Using some kind of microphone attached to her phone, a woman claims to have recorded the “voice” of sunflowers in her backyard.

A few online articles about this report that the woman posted it to Facebook and the video went viral, but it’s nowhere to be found, while republished versions of the video with nearly 100,000 views can in fact be found on Facebook. According to one article:

“With a microphone and her mobile phone, the woman records the vibration sound from the sunflowers which sounds like a high-pitched radio wave Impressed by the recording, she later shared the video on her Facebook and the video immediately became viral with hundreds of thousands of views so far.”

If this is real, the sound resembles some kind of angelic horn section, or a gentle trumpet.

Rigid skeptics might not be able to see the beauty in this, and it would be wise to question whether this is real or not, but plants using sounds to communicate is actually a well established scientific fact.

(Image credit: mesosyn)

A study out of the University of Western Australia titled “Tuned in: plant roots use sound to locate water,” published in the journal Oecologia proved that plants can acutely sense sound vibrations that emanate from running water, whether it’s in the soil or trickling through pipes, and sensing the sound helps plants move their roots closer to the source of water.

The study even went so far as to claim plants dislike certain sounds and will move their roots away from the source of some sounds. Apparently they communicate with “clicking” sounds.

Dr Monica Gagliano, a lead researcher in the study of UWA’s Centre of Evolutionary Biology at the School of Animal Biology noted that it makes sense plants would be capable of doing this, for the simple fact that they need water.

(Image credit: paulinemoss)

“We used the common garden pea plant (Pisum sativum) as the model for our study and put the plant into a container which had two tubes at the base, giving it a choice of two directions for the growth of its roots,” the researcher said.

“We then exposed the plant to a series of sounds, including white noise, running water and then a recording of running water under each tube, and observed its behaviour.”

They proved that based on nothing but the sound of running water, plants sent roots in the direction of it.

“It also was surprising and extraordinary to see that the plant could actually tell when the sound of running water was a recording and when it was real and that the plant did not like the recorded sound,” the lead researcher continued.

(Image credit: bioscriptionblog)

Does it seem ridiculous that a woman claims to have recorded the sound of a sunflower? Hopefully it doesn’t, because we need every excuse we can find to appreciate nature, and if that makes you cringe, maybe you should check what you hold dear in life.

from:    https://themindunleashed.com/2018/09/woman-records-the-voice-of-a-sunflower-sounds-like-music-from-another-dimension.html

Tornado Alley Moving East

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Tornadoes Are Spinning Up Farther East in U.S.

WASHINGTON — Over the past few decades, tornadoes have been shifting — decreasing in Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas but spinning up more in states along the Mississippi River and farther east, a new study shows. Scientists aren’t quite certain why.

Tornado activity is increasing most in Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa and parts of Ohio and Michigan, according to a study in Wednesday’s journal Climate and Atmospheric Science. There has been a slight decrease in the Great Plains, with the biggest drop in central and eastern Texas. Even with the decline, Texas still gets the most tornadoes of any state.

The shift could be deadly because the area with increasing tornado activity is bigger and home to more people, said study lead author Victor Gensini, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Northern Illinois University. Also more people live in vulnerable mobile homes and tornadoes are more likely to happen at night in those places, he said.

Even though Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma get many more tornadoes, the four deadliest states for tornadoes are Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“More folks are generally at risk because of that eastward shift,” Gensini said.

Because tornadoes sometimes go undercounted, especially in the past and in less populous areas, scientists don’t like to study trends by using counts of tornadoes. Gensini and tornado scientist Harold Brooks of the National Severe Storms Lab looked at “significant tornado parameters,” a measurement of the key ingredients of tornado conditions. It looks at differences between wind speed and direction at different altitudes, how unstable the air is and humidity. The more of those three ingredients, the more likely tornadoes will form.

The increases in this measurement mirrored slightly smaller increases found in number of twisters.

The study looked at changes since 1979. Everywhere east of the Mississippi, except the west coast of Florida, is seeing some increase in tornado activity. The biggest increase occurred in states bordering the Mississippi River.

Overall there is a slight increase in tornado activity, but it’s not too much and not nearly like what’s happening in the east, Gensini said.

Why is this happening?

“We don’t know,” Gensini said. “This is super consistent with climate change.”

As the Great Plains dry out, there’s less moisture to have the type of storms that spawn tornadoes, Gensini said. Tornadoes form along the “dry line” where there are more thunderstorms because there’s dry air to the west and moist air from the Gulf of Mexico to the east.

That dry line is moving east.

“This is what you would expect in a climate change scenario, we just have no way of confirming it at the moment,” Gensini said.

Gensini said unless there are specific detailed studies, he and others cannot say this is caused by global warming, just that it looks like what is expected.

Pennsylvania State University meteorology professor Paul Markowski, who wasn’t part of the research, praised the study as careful and well done.

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The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

SETH BORENSTEIN / The Associated Press

from:    https://www.truthdig.com/articles/tornadoes-are-spinning-up-farther-east-in-u-s/