All clicked. Still raw and overcast here after the storm but rain has stopped.
@sumac,
Hi all, Friday the 13th is a good day now - it wasn't so good for the Teutonic Knights in past times. The King of France didn't want to pay his debts, so, killed off the people he owed money to. Hope Wall St. doesn't get any ideas.........
All cleaked......
Teeny, no storm yet but weathers very cold. Snow for Tahoe tonight, and a 30% chance of rain for the foothills. Today had all the gutters cleaned of pine needles, cleaned the porch eaves, and garden debri taken to the dumps. Gardens look spiffy till the next storm.
Hurrah! Removing wallpaper is my next project. Have paint and lino picked out and hope to have the kitchen remodle done by spring.
Have a good rest of the day all ~
http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
Noreaster is pulling out and I may see sun later in the day. All clicked here in NC.
@sumac,
Slightly reddish sky and rain this morning.
I think we're going to get some weather.
NASA finds significant water on moon
By Associated Press | November 14, 2009
LOS ANGELES - It turns out there’s lots of water on the moon, at least near the lunar south pole.
The discovery announced yesterday was made from an analysis of data from a spacecraft the National Aeronautics and Space Administration intentionally crashed into the moon last month.
“Indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn’t find just a little bit; we found a significant amount,’’ said Anthony Colaprete, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
The lunar impact kicked up at least 25 gallons of water, and that’s only what scientists can see, Colaprete said.
Having an abundance of water on the moon would make it easier to set up a base camp by providing drinking water and an ingredient for rocket fuel.
The latest finding is further evidence that the moon is not a dry, barren place and could reinvigorate scientific interest.
“This is not your father’s moon,’’ said Greg Delory of the University of California, Berkeley, who was not part of the research. “Rather than a dead and unchanging world, it could in fact be a very dynamic and interesting one.’’
He said the next focus should be to figure out where the water comes from and how much of it there is.
NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite last month slammed into one of moon’s permanently shadowed craters near the south pole to study whether ice was buried underneath.
The mission actually involved two moonshots. First, an empty rocket hull slammed into the Cabeus crater. A shepherding spacecraft recorded the drama live before it also crashed into the same spot four minutes later.
Though scientists were overjoyed with the plethora of data beamed back to Earth, the mission was a public relations dud. Space enthusiasts who stayed up all night to watch the spectacle did not see the promised debris plume in the initial images.
Swarm of some 300,000 starlings dancing and twirling.
http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/93176?fp=1
@ehBeth,
Sunny and cool -
The Corridor has more Highway Patrol cars and radar guns than vehicles today. Felt like i was escaping with a convoy...and not one mile over the speed limit. good god
http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
@Stradee,
Ge-ticken, knipsen, knistern, schnappen, klinken, ticken, knipsin, knistern, knacken, klappen, - - - einschlagen. Und, alles die Hacken zusammenschlagen...............
ehBeth, I really ripped the language didn't I?................Grin
Good day Wildclickers!!!!!!!!
@teenyboone,
...and I'm all clicked for Sunday. Foggy, with a chance of rain! Beaches eroded here, flooding in Cape May County and Sea Bright in my county! When will this crazy weather end? The sun did shine for a brief moment yesterday. Oh well, Happy Sunday!
@teenyboone,
Good earthturn, Teeny and all wildclickers
http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
@Stradee,
Right back atcha, Stradee. Great clicks all.
That pic of our big blue ball in space is kind of scary if you think about it. The crust is all that separates us from a ball of fire not unlike the sun. The crust is only about 25 miles thick. That's much much thinner than the shell of an egg in relation to it's size.
I suppose pulling the bed covers over my head will help.
All clicked.
@danon5,
clicked
flicked
ticked
picked
clickety clickety click !
Sending happy thoughts to all of the WildClickers - posting and lurking.
@danon5,
Yep...the universe's a vast place.
Earth is just a minute particle in comparison - the system growing each day.
Amazing, huh.
@teenyboone,
Clicked early for Monday too! I'm wrapping gifts for my "secret pals" in one of my 4 veterans service organizations, I belong to. Christmas comes in November, because we won't meet again until February! I'm already putting down red table runners for the 3 trees I decorate. I love Christmas because it gives me an excuse to be a child again. Happy clicking, y'all!
Jellyfish swarm northward in warming world
By MICHAEL CASEY, AP Environmental Writer Michael Casey, Ap Environmental Writer Mon Nov 16, 11:58 am ET
KOKONOGI, Japan " A blood-orange blob the size of a small refrigerator emerged from the dark waters, its venomous tentacles trapped in a fishing net. Within minutes, hundreds more were being hauled up, a pulsating mass crowding out the catch of mackerel and sea bass.
The fishermen leaned into the nets, grunting and grumbling as they tossed the translucent jellyfish back into the bay, giants weighing up to 200 kilograms (450 pounds), marine invaders that are putting the men's livelihoods at risk.
The venom of the Nomura, the world's largest jellyfish, a creature up to 2 meters (6 feet) in diameter, can ruin a whole day's catch by tainting or killing fish stung when ensnared with them in the maze of nets here in northwest Japan's Wakasa Bay.
"Some fishermen have just stopped fishing," said Taiichiro Hamano, 67. "When you pull in the nets and see jellyfish, you get depressed."
This year's jellyfish swarm is one of the worst he has seen, Hamano said. Once considered a rarity occurring every 40 years, they are now an almost annual occurrence along several thousand kilometers (miles) of Japanese coast, and far beyond Japan.
Scientists believe climate change " the warming of oceans " has allowed some of the almost 2,000 jellyfish species to expand their ranges, appear earlier in the year and increase overall numbers, much as warming has helped ticks, bark beetles and other pests to spread to new latitudes.
The gelatinous seaborne creatures are blamed for decimating fishing industries in the Bering and Black seas, forcing the shutdown of seaside power and desalination plants in Japan, the Middle East and Africa, and terrorizing beachgoers worldwide, the U.S. National Science Foundation says.
A 2008 foundation study cited research estimating that people are stung 500,000 times every year " sometimes multiple times " in Chesapeake Bay on the U.S. East Coast, and 20 to 40 die each year in the Philippines from jellyfish stings.
In 2007, a salmon farm in Northern Ireland lost its more than 100,000 fish to an attack by the mauve stinger, a jellyfish normally known for stinging bathers in warm Mediterranean waters. Scientists cite its migration to colder Irish seas as evidence of global warming.
Increasingly polluted waters " off China, for example " boost growth of the microscopic plankton that "jellies" feed upon, while overfishing has eliminated many of the jellyfish's predators and cut down on competitors for plankton feed.
"These increases in jellyfish should be a warning sign that our oceans are stressed and unhealthy," said Lucas Brotz, a University of British Columbia researcher.
Here on the rocky Echizen coast, amid floodlights and the roar of generators, fishermen at Kokonogi's bustling port made quick work of the day's catch " packaging glistening fish and squid in Styrofoam boxes for shipment to market.
In rain jackets and hip waders, they crowded around a visitor to tell how the jellyfish have upended a way of life in which men worked fishing trawlers on the high seas in their younger days and later eased toward retirement by joining one of the cooperatives operating nets set in the bay.
It was a good living, they said, until the jellyfish began inundating the bay in 2002, sometimes numbering 500 million, reducing fish catches by 30 percent and slashing prices by half over concerns about quality.
Two nets in Echizen burst last month during a typhoon because of the sheer weight of the jellyfish, and off the east coast jelly-filled nets capsized a 10-ton trawler as its crew tried to pull them up. The three fishermen were rescued.
"We have been getting rid of jellyfish. But no matter how hard we try, the jellyfish keep coming and coming," said Fumio Oma, whose crew is out of work after their net broke under the weight of thousands of jellyfish. "We need the government's help to get rid of the jellyfish."
The invasions cost the industry up to 30 billion yen ($332 million) a year, and tens of thousands of fishermen have sought government compensation, said scientist Shin-ichi Uye, Japan's leading expert on the problem.
Hearing fishermen's pleas, Uye, who had been studying zooplankton, became obsessed with the little-studied Nomura's jellyfish, scientifically known as Nemopilema nomurai, which at its biggest looks like a giant mushroom trailing dozens of noodle-like tentacles.
"No one knew their life cycle, where they came from, where they reproduced," said Uye, 59. "This jellyfish was like an alien."
He artificially bred Nomura's jellyfish in his Hiroshima University lab, learning about their life cycle, growth rates and feeding habits. He traveled by ferry between China to Japan this year to confirm they were riding currents to Japanese waters.
He concluded China's coastal waters offered a perfect breeding ground: Agricultural and sewage runoff are spurring plankton growth, and fish catches are declining. The waters of the Yellow Sea, meanwhile, have warmed as much as 1.7 degrees C (3 degrees F) over the past quarter-century.
"The jellyfish are becoming more and more dominant," said Uye, as he sliced off samples of dead jellyfish on the deck of an Echizen fishing boat. "Their growth rates are quite amazing."
The slight, bespectacled scientist is unafraid of controversy, having lobbied his government tirelessly to help the fishermen, and angered Chinese colleagues by arguing their government must help solve the problem, comparing it to the effects of acid rain that reaches Japan from China.
"The Chinese people say they will think about this after they get rich, but it might be too late by then," he said.
A U.S. marine scientist, Jennifer Purcell of Western Washington University, has found a correlation between warming and jellyfish on a much larger scale, in at least 11 locations, including the Mediterranean and North seas, and Chesapeake and Narragansett bays.
"It's hard to deny that there is an effect from warming," Purcell said. "There keeps coming up again and again examples of jellyfish populations being high when it's warmer." Some tropical species, on the other hand, appear to decline when water temperatures rise too high.
Even if populations explode, their numbers may be limited in the long term by other factors, including food and currents. In a paper last year, researchers concluded jellyfish numbers in the Bering Sea " which by 2000 were 40 times higher than in 1982 " declined even as temperatures have hit record highs.
"They were still well ahead of their historic averages for that region," said co-author Lorenzo Ciannelli of Oregon State University. "But clearly jellyfish populations are not merely a function of water temperature."
Addressing the surge in jellyfish blooms in most places will require long-term fixes, such as introducing fishing quotas and pollution controls, as well as capping greenhouse gas emissions to control global warming, experts said.
In the short term, governments are left with few options other than warning bathers or bailing out cash-strapped fishermen. In Japan, the government is helping finance the purchase of newly designed nets, a layered system that snares jellyfish with one kind of net, allowing fish through to be caught in another.
Some entrepreneurs, meanwhile, are trying to cash in. One Japanese company is selling giant jellyfish ice cream, and another plans a pickled plum dip with chunks of giant jellyfish. But, though a popular delicacy, jellyfish isn't likely to replace sushi or other fish dishes on Asian menus anytime soon, in view of its time-consuming processing, heavy sodium overload and unappealing image.
