A third lane for the M8 in Glasgow – at almost no cost!
via Scottish Sceptic
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For decades I’ve been driving the M8 and as it comes into Glasgow from the east at juction 17 (Great Western Road) at any busy time of day, there will be a queue of traffic in the two lanes marked … Continue reading →
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March 24, 2017 at 04:11AM
Effect of Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations on Early Human Societies
via Watts Up With That?
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Guest essay by Don Healy During the past 100,000 years, human societies have witnessed the vast change in climate that has occurred as we have transitioned from a glacial period that ended about 20,000 years ago, into the current interglacial period. During the early stages of this period, human lived as hunter/gatherers, relying on a […]
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March 24, 2017 at 03:36AM
Kaikoura: ‘Most complex quake ever studied’
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
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Damage on a farm caused by the Kekerengu fault [image credit: GNS Science]
One scientist said of the Papatea fault: “You can call it bonkers; it’s certainly a real puzzle.”
The big earthquake that struck New Zealand last year may have been the most complex ever, say scientists.
November’s Magnitude 7.8 event ruptured a near-200km-long swathe of territory, shifting parts of NZ’s South Island 5m closer to North Island, reports BBC News.
Whole blocks of ground were buckled and lifted upwards, in places by up to 8m. Subsequent investigations have found that at least 12 separate faults broke during the quake, including some that had not previously been mapped.
Writing up its findings in the journal Science, an international team says the Kaikoura event, as it has become known, should prompt a rethink about how earthquakes are expected to behave in high-risk regions such as New Zealand.
“What we saw was a scenario that would never have been included in our seismic hazard models,” said Dr Ian Hamling from the country’s geophysics research agency, GNS Science. At issue was the way the quake was able to rupture so far along its path, to produce such a big magnitude.
Starting in South Island’s North Canterbury region, the crustal failure moved eastwards and northwards along the coast to Marlborough Province, before then petering out offshore. In the process, the quake managed to straddle two major fault networks.
The behaviour challenged some long-accepted ideas. One of these is the notion that ruptures cannot jump large separations between individual fault segments.
Five km is considered something of a limit. But in the Kaikoura event, substantially larger step-overs were recorded. How this was possible is not fully explained, says Prof Tim Wright from Leeds University, UK.
“We think the main reason was some very large stress changes introduced early in the earthquake that then triggered the later segments to fail,” he told the Science In Action programme on the BBC World Service.
“There were also in this case some faults we didn’t know about, even though New Zealand has one of the best fault maps in the world; and so some of these big jumps were facilitated by motion on faults we didn’t know were there. But in many cases, there are genuine gaps of 15-20km.”
Continued here.
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March 24, 2017 at 03:15AM
Trump Approves Keystone Pipeline
via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com
The State Department announced Friday morning that its undersecretary for political affairs, Tom Shannon, issued the permit, two months after President Trump signed a memorandum to revive the project after Obama’s rejection.
“In making his determination that issuance of this permit would serve the national interest, the under secretary considered a range of factors, including but not limited to foreign policy; energy security; environmental, cultural, and economic impacts; and compliance with applicable law and policy,” State said.
The decision closes a significant chapter in the long-running saga over the controversial oil sands pipeline, which has been a flashpoint in the debate surrounding climate change and dependence on foreign oil.
Obama rejected the application in November 2015, arguing, in part, that it would harm the United States’ standing in the world as a leader in fighting climate change.
“Ultimately, if we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky,” he said at the time.
The approval fulfills a major campaign promise of Trump’s and a top priority that congressional Republicans and the oil industry have had for years.
via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com
March 24, 2017 at 03:14AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 