First Bees Now Bats

I have to say that when the news broke last year about honeybees not returning to their hives and just dying off  it was startling,but people assumed their was some type of disease they were contracting. Now with the news of bats dying off on the East Coast you can only imagine that this is worse than some random virus. What do bees and bats have in common? Well,they are both winged,flying creatures but they both stay alive and functioning based solely on their navigational abilities. They have some kind of well  tuned magnet in their brains that is affected by electro magnetic energies so maybe that means that EM frequencies are being disrupted by something?  It is either the Earth and Sun changing on their own or it is from man made,modern technologies like cell phone towers,radar systems and probably experimental military projects or maybe a combination of  both.

  If that is the case then bees and bats are the most susceptible to these changes/disturbances and others to follow would be different species of birds and of course the ocean dwellers like whales, sharks and different sea creatures. We recently saw two somewhat rare shark attacks on the West Coast. We have been having bizarre earthquake patterns with the 600 + EQ’s off the Oregon coast . I’m sure the magnetic energies have been a bit off because of that and with the harmonics being heard maybe sea life ie-sharks have been disoriented and more aggresive as a result ? I guess we will have to wait and see what happens….

 

 

By TINA KELLEY
Published: March 25, 2008
Al Hicks was standing outside an old mine in the Adirondacks, the largest bat hibernaculum, or winter resting place, in New York State.

It was broad daylight in the middle of winter, and bats flew out of the mine about one a minute. Some had fallen to the ground where they flailed around on the snow like tiny wind-broken umbrellas, using the thumbs at the top joint of their wings to gain their balance.

All would be dead by nightfall. Mr. Hicks, a mammal specialist with the state’s Environmental Conservation Department, said: “Bats don’t fly in the daytime, and bats don’t fly in the winter. Every bat you see out here is a ‘dead bat flying,’ so to speak.”

They have plenty of company. In what is one of the worst calamities to hit bat populations in the United States, on average 90 percent of the hibernating bats in four caves and mines in New York have died since last winter.

Wildlife biologists fear a significant die-off in about 15 caves and mines in New York, as well as at sites in Massachusetts and Vermont. Whatever is killing the bats leaves them unusually thin and, in some cases, dotted with a white fungus. Bat experts fear that what they call White Nose Syndrome may spell doom for several species that keep insect pests under control.

Researchers have yet to determine whether the bats are being killed by a virus, bacteria, toxin, environmental hazard, metabolic disorder or fungus. Some have been found with pneumonia, but that and the fungus are believed to be secondary symptoms.

“This is probably one of the strangest and most puzzling problems we have had with bats,” said Paul Cryan, a bat ecologist with the United States Geological Survey. “It’s really startling that we’ve not come up with a smoking gun yet.”

Merlin Tuttle, the president of Bat Conservation International, an education and research group in Austin, Tex., said: “So far as we can tell at this point, this may be the most serious threat to North American bats we’ve experienced in recorded history. “It definitely warrants immediate and careful attention.”

This month, Mr. Hicks took a team from the Environmental Conservation Department into the hibernaculum that has sheltered 200,000 bats in past years, mostly little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) and federally endangered Indiana bats (Myotis sodalis), with the world’s second largest concentration of small-footed bats (Myotis leibii).

He asked that the mine location not be published, for fear that visitors could spread the syndrome or harm the bats or themselves.

Other visitors do not need directions. The day before, Mr. Hicks saw eight hawks circling the parking lot of another mine, waiting to kill and eat the bats that flew out.

In a dank galley of the mine, Mr. Hicks asked everyone to count how many out of 100 bats had white noses. About half the bats in one galley did. They would be dead by April, he said.

Mr. Hicks, who was the first person to begin studying the deaths, said more than 10 laboratories were trying to solve the mystery.

In January 2007, a cave explorer reported an unusual number of bats flying near the entrance of a cavern near Albany. In March and April, thousands of dead bats were found in three other mines and caves. In one case, half the dead or living bats had the fungus.

One cave had 15,584 bats in 2005, 6,735 in 2007 and an estimated 1,500 this winter. Another went from 1,329 bats in 2006 to 38 this winter. Some biologists fear that 250,000 bats could die this year.

Since September, when hibernation began, dead or dying bats have been found at 15 sites in New York. Most of them had been visited by people who had been at the original four sites last winter, leading researchers to suspect that humans could transmit the problem.

Details on the problem in neighboring states are sketchier. “In the Berkshires in Massachusetts, we are getting reports of dying/dead bats in areas where we do not have known bat hibernacula, so we may have more sites than we will ever be able to identify,” said Susi von Oettingen, an endangered species biologist with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

In Vermont, Scott Darling, a wildlife biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Department, said: “The last tally that I have is approximately 20 sites in New York, 4 in Vermont and 2 in Massachusetts. We only have estimates of the numbers of bats in the affected sites — more or less 500,000. It is impossible for us to count the dead bats, as many have flown away from the caves and died — we have over 90 reports from citizens across Vermont — as well as many are still dying.”

People are not believed to be susceptible to the affliction. But New Jersey, New York and Vermont have advised everyone to stay out of all caverns that might have bats. Visitors to affected caves and mines are asked to decontaminate all clothing, boots, ropes and other gear, as well as the car trunks that transport them.

One affected mine is the winter home to a third of the Indiana bats between Virginia and Maine. These pink-nosed bats, two inches long and weighing a quarter-ounce, are particularly social and cluster together as tightly as 300 a square foot.

“It’s ironic, until last year most of my time was spent trying to delist it,” or take it off the endangered species list, Mr. Hicks said, after the state’s Indiana bat population grew, to 52,000 from 1,500 in the 1960s.

“It’s very scary and a little overwhelming from a biologist’s perspective,” Ms. von Oettingen said. “If we can’t contain it, we’re going to see extinctions of listed species, and some of species that are not even listed.”

Neighbors of mines and caves in the region have notified state wildlife officials of many affected sites when they have noticed bats dead in the snow, latched onto houses or even flying in a recent snowstorm.

Biologists are concerned that if the bats are being killed by something contagious either in the caves or elsewhere, it could spread rapidly, because bats can migrate hundreds of miles in any direction to their summer homes, known as maternity roosts. At those sites, females usually give birth to one pup a year, an added challenge for dropping populations.

Nursing females can eat up to half their weight in insects a day, Mr. Hicks said.

Researchers from institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center, Boston University, the New York State Health Department and even Disney’s Animal World are addressing the problem. Some are considering trying to feed underweight wild bats to help them survive the remaining weeks before spring. Some are putting temperature sensors on bats to monitor how often they wake up, and others are making thermal images of hibernating bats.

Other researchers want to know whether recently introduced pesticides, including those released to stop West Nile virus, may be contributing to the problem, either through a toxin or by greatly reducing the bat’s food source.

Dr. Thomas H. Kunz, a biology professor at Boston University, said the body composition of the bats would also be studied, partly to determine the ratio of white to brown fat. Of particular interest is the brown fat between the shoulder blades, known to assist the bats in warming up when they begin to leave deep hibernation in April.

“It appears the white nose bats do not have enough fat, either brown or white, to arouse,” Dr. Kunz said. “They’re dying in situ and do not have the ability to arouse from their deep torpor.”

His researchers’ cameras have shown that bats in the caves that do wake up when disturbed take hours longer to do so, as was the case in the Adirondack mine. He also notes that if females become too emaciated, they will not have the hormonal reactions necessary to ovulate and reproduce.

In searching for a cause of the syndrome, researchers are hampered by the lack of baseline knowledge about habits like how much bats should weigh in the fall, where they hibernate and even how many bats live in the region.

“We’re going to learn an awful lot about bats in a comprehensive way that very few animal species have been looked at,” said Dr. Elizabeth Buckles, an assistant professor at Cornell who coordinates bat research efforts. “That’s good. But it’s unfortunate it has to be under these circumstances.”

The die-offs are big enough that they may have economic effects. A study of Brazilian free-tailed bats in southwestern Texas found that their presence saved cotton farmers a sixth to an eighth of the cash value of their crops by consuming insect pests.

“Logic dictates when you are potentially losing as many as a half a million bats in this region, there are going to be ramifications for insect abundance in the coming summer,” Mr. Darling, the Vermont wildlife biologist, said.

As Mr. Hicks traveled deeper in the cave, the concentrations of bats hanging from the ceiling increased. They hung like fruit, generally so still that they appeared dead. In some tightly packed groups, just individual noses or elbows peeked through. A few bats had a wing around their nearest cavemates. Their white bellies mostly faced downhill. When they awoke, they made high squeaks, like someone sucking a tooth.

The mine floors were not covered with carcasses, Mr. Hicks said, because raccoons come in and feed on them. Raccoon scat dotted the rocks along the trail left by their footprints.

In the six hours in the cave taking samples, nose counts and photographs, Mr. Hicks said that for him trying for the perfect picture was a form of therapy. “It’s just that I know I’m never going to see these guys again,” he said. “We’re the last to see this concentration of bats in our lifetime.”
 

 

 

 

 

 

Honeybees Vanishing

The honeybees are being called the canary in the coal mine….

 

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

 Published: February 27, 2007VISALIA, Calif., Feb. 23 — David Bradshaw has endured countless stings during his life as a beekeeper, but he got the shock of his career when he opened his boxes last month and found half of his 100 million bees missing.
In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation’s most profitable.“I have never seen anything like it,” Mr. Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. “Box after box after box are just empty. There’s nobody home.”

The sudden mysterious losses are highlighting the critical link that honeybees play in the long chain that gets fruit and vegetables to supermarkets and dinner tables across the country.

Beekeepers have fought regional bee crises before, but this is the first national affliction.

Now, in a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie, bees are flying off in search of pollen and nectar and simply never returning to their colonies. And nobody knows why. Researchers say the bees are presumably dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or simply disoriented and eventually falling victim to the cold.

As researchers scramble to find answers to the syndrome they have decided to call “colony collapse disorder,” growers are becoming openly nervous about the capability of the commercial bee industry to meet the growing demand for bees to pollinate dozens of crops, from almonds to avocados to kiwis.

Along with recent stresses on the bees themselves, as well as on an industry increasingly under consolidation, some fear this disorder may force a breaking point for even large beekeepers.

A  Cornell University study has estimated that honeybees annually pollinate more than $14 billion worth of seeds and crops in the United States, mostly fruits, vegetables and nuts. “Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee to pollinate that food,” said Zac Browning, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation.

The bee losses are ranging from 30 to 60 percent on the West Coast, with some beekeepers on the East Coast and in Texas reporting losses of more than 70 percent; beekeepers consider a loss of up to 20 percent in the offseason to be normal.

Beekeepers are the nomads of the agriculture world, working in obscurity in their white protective suits and frequently trekking around the country with their insects packed into 18-wheelers, looking for pollination work.

Once the domain of hobbyists with a handful of backyard hives, beekeeping has become increasingly commercial and consolidated. Over the last two decades, the number of beehives, now estimated by the Agriculture Department to be 2.4 million, has dropped by a quarter and the number of beekeepers by half.

Pressure has been building on the bee industry. The costs to maintain hives, also known as colonies, are rising along with the strain on bees of being bred to pollinate rather than just make honey. And beekeepers are losing out to suburban sprawl in their quest for spots where bees can forage for nectar to stay healthy and strong during the pollination season.

“There are less beekeepers, less bees, yet more crops to pollinate,” Mr. Browning said. “While this sounds sweet for the bee business, with so much added loss and expense due to disease, pests and higher equipment costs, profitability is actually falling.”

Some 15 worried beekeepers convened in Florida this month to brainstorm with researchers how to cope with the extensive bee losses. Investigators are exploring a range of theories, including viruses, a fungus and poor bee nutrition.

They are also studying a group of pesticides that were banned in some European countries to see if they are somehow affecting bees’ innate ability to find their way back home.

It could just be that the bees are stressed out. Bees are being raised to survive a shorter offseason, to be ready to pollinate once the almond bloom begins in February. That has most likely lowered their immunity to viruses.

Mites have also damaged bee colonies, and the insecticides used to try to kill mites are harming the ability of queen bees to spawn as many worker bees. The queens are living half as long as they did just a few years ago.
Ann Johansson for The New York Times
Rosa Patiño scraping dried honey from hives that once housed bees in Terra Bella, Calif.

Researchers are also concerned that the willingness of beekeepers to truck their colonies from coast to coast could be adding to bees’ stress, helping to spread viruses and mites and otherwise accelerating whatever is afflicting them.

Dennis van Engelsdorp, a bee specialist with the state of Pennsylvania who is part of the team studying the bee colony collapses, said the “strong immune suppression” investigators have observed “could be the AIDSof the bee industry,” making bees more susceptible to other diseases that eventually kill them off.

Growers have tried before to do without bees. In past decades, they have used everything from giant blowers to helicopters to mortar shells to try to spread pollen across the plants. More recently researchers have been trying to develop “self-compatible” almond trees that will require fewer bees. One company is even trying to commercialize the blue orchard bee, which is virtually stingless and works at colder temperatures than the honeybee.

Beekeepers have endured two major mite infestations since the 1980s, which felled many hobbyist beekeepers, and three cases of unexplained disappearing disorders as far back as 1894. But those episodes were confined to small areas, Mr. van Engelsdorp said.

Today the industry is in a weaker position to deal with new stresses. A flood of imported honey from China and Argentina has depressed honey prices and put more pressure on beekeepers to take to the road in search of pollination contracts. Beekeepers are trucking tens of billions of bees around the country every year.

California’s almond crop, by far the biggest in the world, now draws more than half of the country’s bee colonies in February. The crop has been both a boon to commercial beekeeping and a burden, as pressure mounts for the industry to fill growing demand. Now spread over 580,000 acres stretched across 300 miles of California’s Central Valley, the crop is expected to grow to 680,000 acres by 2010.

Beekeepers now earn many times more renting their bees out to pollinate crops than in producing honey. Two years ago a lack of bees for the California almond crop caused bee rental prices to jump, drawing beekeepers from the East Coast.

This year the price for a bee colony is about $135, up from $55 in 2004, said Joe Traynor, a bee broker in Bakersfield, Calif.

A typical bee colony ranges from 15,000 to 30,000 bees. But beekeepers’ costs are also on the rise. In the past decade, fuel, equipment and even bee boxes have doubled and tripled in price.

The cost to control mites has also risen, along with the price of queen bees, which cost about $15 each, up from $10 three years ago.

To give bees energy while they are pollinating, beekeepers now feed them protein supplements and a liquid mix of sucrose and corn syrup carried in tanker-sized trucks costing $12,000 per load. Over all, Mr. Bradshaw figures, in recent years he has spent $145 a hive annually to keep his bees alive, for a profit of about $11 a hive, not including labor expenses. The last three years his net income has averaged $30,000 a year from his 4,200 bee colonies, he said.

“A couple of farmers have asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’ ” Mr. Bradshaw said. “I ask myself the same thing. But it is a job I like. It is a lifestyle. I work with my dad every day. And now my son is starting to work with us.”

Almonds fetch the highest prices for bees, but if there aren’t enough bees to go around, some growers may be forced to seek alternatives to bees or change their variety of trees.

“It would be nice to know that we have a dependable source of honey bees,” said Martin Hein, an almond grower based in Visalia. “But at this point I don’t know that we have that for the amount of acres we have got.”

To cope with the losses, beekeepers have been scouring elsewhere for bees to fulfill their contracts with growers. Lance Sundberg, a beekeeper from Columbus, Mont., said he spent $150,000 in the last two weeks buying 1,000 packages of bees — amounting to 14 million bees — from Australia.

He is hoping the Aussie bees will help offset the loss of one-third of the 7,600 hives he manages in six states. “The fear is that when we mix the bees the die-offs will continue to occur,” Mr. Sundberg said.

Migratory beekeeping is a lonely life that many compare to truck driving. Mr. Sundberg spends more than half the year driving 20 truckloads of bees around the country. In Terra Bella, an hour south of Visalia, Jack Brumley grimaced from inside his equipment shed as he watched Rosa Patiño use a flat tool to scrape dried honey from dozens of beehive frames that once held bees. Some 2,000 empty boxes — which once held one-third of his total hives — were stacked to the roof.

Beekeepers must often plead with landowners to allow bees to be placed on their land to forage for nectar. One large citrus grower has pushed for California to institute a “no-fly zone” for bees of at least two miles to prevent them from pollinating a seedless form of Mandarin orange.

But the quality of forage might make a difference. Last week Mr. Bradshaw used a forklift to remove some of his bee colonies from a spot across a riverbed from orange groves. Only three of the 64 colonies there have died or disappeared.

“It will probably take me two to three more years to get back up,” he said. “Unless I spend gobs of money I don’t have.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Food Vs. Biofuel

This article appeared in BusinessWeek in 2007. It’s a great read and definitely hits on the question of what’s more important, fuel or human life? Is this really our solution for the future? Use staple foods to starve out the world’s poorest population so we can drive cars? Ruin what’s left of our environment to have environmentally conscious fuel? These are strange times indeed…..FEBRUARY 5, 2007

FOOD  vs. FUEL
As energy demands devour crops once meant for sustenance, the economics of agriculture are being rewritten.
Greg Boerboom raises 37,000 pigs a year on his farm in Marshall, Minn. Those hogs eat a lot of corn—10 bushels each from weaning to sale. In past years he has bought feed for about $2 a bushel. But since late summer, average corn prices have leapt to nearly $4 a bushel. To reduce feed costs, he sells his pigs before they reach the normal 275 pounds, and keeps them warmer so they don’t devour more food fighting off the cold. Still, Boerboom hopes just to break even. “It’s been a pretty tight squeeze on pork producers,” he says. “The next eight months will be really tough.”

The spike in the price of corn that’s hurting Boerboom and other pork producers isn’t caused by any big dip in the overall supply. In the U.S., last year’s harvest was 10.5 billion bushels, the third-largest crop ever. But instead of going into the maws of pigs or cattle or people, an increasing slice of that supply is being transformed into fuel for cars. The roughly 5 billion gallons of ethanol made in 2006 by 112 U.S. plants consumed nearly one-fifth of the corn crop. If all the scores of factories under construction or planned go into operation, fuel will gobble up no less than half of the entire corn harvest by 2008.

Corn is caught in a tug-of-war between ethanol plants and food, one of the first signs of a coming agricultural transformation and a global economic shift. Ever since our ancestors in the Fertile Crescent first figured out how to grow grains, crops have been used mainly to feed people and livestock. But now that’s changing in response to the high price of oil, the cost in lives and dollars of ensuring a supply of petroleum imports, and limits on climate-warming emissions of fossil fuels. Farms are energy’s great green hope. “Economics, national security, and greenhouse gases have created a perfect storm of interest,” says John Pierce, vice-president for bio-based technology at DuPont, (

DD ) which is making fuel and chemicals from plants.Indeed, a massive expansion of biofuels is the one policy that has support from Democrats and Republicans and from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. In his Jan. 23 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush called for 35 billion gallons of renewable fuels per year within 10 years, enough to replace 15% of gasoline burned in American cars and trucks. Congress is considering measures that would require 60 billion gallons by 2030. And the fervor for greener fuels isn’t just a U.S. phenomenon. Europe is requiring that 5.75% of diesel fuel come from plants by 2010, while Japan and others line up contracts to buy biofuels to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

NEW LANDSCAPE 
The consequences, while still uncertain, are impossible to ignore. According to the most optimistic estimates, which involve a switch to still-unproven energy crops, replacing U.S. consumption of gasoline with biofuels would take at least 50 million more acres of American cropland. Some put the figure far higher. Meeting Bush’s mandate with corn ethanol alone isn’t even feasible, because it would mean an additional 80 million acres of corn. Eliminating gasoline entirely could require more than double today’s 430 million acres of cropland, by some calculations. Bioenergy threatens to eclipse food, livestock feed, and all other uses “as the major driver of American agriculture,” testified Iowa farmer John Sellers at a recent Senate Agriculture Committee hearing.

Already, the growing demand for biofuels is bringing major expansions. Last fall, Singapore was enveloped in choking haze from forest fires set to clear land to plant oil palms. The palms will supply 90 biodiesel plants under construction in Malaysia and Indonesia. Biofuels are “a key engine of growth,” says Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. If the bioenergy boom continues, Agriculture Dept. chief economist Keith Collins foresees boosts in sugar cane and other crops everywhere from Thailand and Australia to Brazil and Central America. “It starts to change the landscape of agriculture,” he says.

Whether this is good or bad is a matter of intense debate. At one extreme is Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute. He warns of a coming “epic competition between 800 million people with automobiles and the 2 billion poorest people,” and predicts that shortages and higher food prices will lead to starvation and urban riots. “I don’t think the world is ready for this,” he says. Dow Chemical Co. (

DOW ), which is turning soybeans into foam for furniture and car seats, worries about rising demand. “There’s only so much biologically based stuff around,” says William F. Banholzer, corporate vice-president and chief technology officer. With chemical companies competing with fuel and food over the supply of certain crops, “it’s not a very rosy picture,” he says. Nor is the conversion of ecologically valuable forests to oil palm in Malaysia or sugar cane in Brazil. “Why are we burning our forests to plant something that we have been told will be clean, environmentally friendly fuel?” asks S.M. Idris, chairman of environmental group Sahabat Alam Malaysia (Friends of the Earth). “This is technology gone mad.”In addition, biofuels are expected to bring a rare permanent change in farm economics. “People had grown accustomed to $2-per-bushel corn. That’s not going to happen anymore,” says Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Assn. Higher corn prices are already rippling though the economy, lifting prices for soybeans and other crops, and products like tortillas. Next could be meat, poultry, and even soft drinks. Chicken producers estimate that the industry’s feed costs are already up $1.5 billion per year. “Ultimately, these increases will be passed on to consumers, and we could have a fairly dramatic inflation scenario for food costs,” says William Lapp, president of consultant Advanced Economic Solutions.

Is all this really so bad? Pessimists, in fact, are a minority in debates about food vs. fuel. Lapp notes that food is now at its cheapest level, historically. “It’ll be easier to pass on the food increases because we’re spending a smaller portion of our disposable income on food than in the 1970s,” he says. And some experts even argue that a boost in food prices could be beneficial to Americans’ health. A doubling of corn prices makes corn syrup more expensive, lifting the price of a bottle of soda by 6 cents, calculates David Morris, vice-president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis. That might lead people to consume less. “If Americans reduce our input of sugar, we could make 2 billion more gal. of ethanol and help overcome our obesity problem,” he says.

And while grocery bills could rise modestly, higher agricultural commodity prices are a boon in many ways. Corn farmers are having a rare period of prosperity, and the federal government is getting a break. In 2006, Uncle Sam gave corn farmers $8.8 billion in subsidies. Thanks to high corn prices, subsidies are expected to drop to $2.1 billion in 2007. “All the price-dependent spending is getting wiped out,” explains the USDA’s Collins.

Higher incomes for farmers also mean healthier rural economies and more jobs in the U.S. and around the world. Contrary to Lester Brown’s grim scenarios, “[biofuel] could be a lifesaver for Third World countries,” argues Morris. “It can help keep farmers on the land without providing huge public subsidies.” Plus, crop-based fuels could shift the global balance of power, as countries grow enough of their own fuel to cut back on imports from OPEC and other oil producers.

In the most optimistic scenarios, the world will move smoothly to biofuels through increased farm acreage, higher yields, and new crops and technologies. “Don’t underestimate the ability of U.S. and global agriculture to respond to higher prices,” says Collins. Farmers already plan to seed 10 million more acres of corn this spring. Some even worry about overshooting demand. “There’s an old saying that goes, Farmers will see a hole in supply and put a pile on top of it,’” jokes Illinois farmer Steve Pitstick, who’s shifting most of his soybean field to corn.

Corn is just the first step. It’s a lousy raw material for fuel because producing 10 gallons of ethanol consumes the energy equivalent of about 7 gallons of gasoline, and greenhouse gas reductions are minuscule. That’s why the key will be changing to more environmentally friendly sources, such as agricultural waste, trees, or new crops. Pine groves in the South could supply 4 billion gal. of ethanol a year and revitalize declining rural communities, says Georgia Tech’s Roger P. Webb. Stanford University biologist Chris Somerville calculates that, with the right plants, 3.5% of the earth’s surface could supply all of humanity’s energy needs, compared with 13% now used for agriculture. One of the best candidates: perennial prairie grasses. Their deep roots store carbon captured from the air, improve soils, and require little water. Companies are now trying to breed the most productive varieties. Only 49 million acres could supply 139 billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2030, figures venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. “Farmers will be better off, the world will be less dangerously dependent on the Mideast, and we will take a giant step in greenhouse gas reductions,” he argues. “There is little downside.”

Of course, a lot could go wrong along the way. Methods to turn the cellulose from prairie grass into fuel may be hard to scale up. A host of unintended consequences could appear. And if the price of oil drops significantly, the whole biofuels bandwagon could come to a shuddering halt.

But a new world seems inevitable. “We have to be prepared for dramatic change in agriculture,” says Nebraska pork farmer Joy Philippi. “There will be a tremendous shift.”
 

 

Global Food Riots Pt. 2

The following article was written in 2003. It was right on the money…” CHINA’S RISING GRAIN PRICES COULD SIGNAL GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS

 BEIJING (AFP) Nov 19, 2003
US environmentalist Lester Brown warned Wednesday that sudden food price hikes in China could be the sign of a coming world food crisis brought on by global warming and increasingly scarce water supplies among major grain producers.

“I view the price rises as an indication, as the warning tremors before the earthquake,” Brown, director of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, told an audience of Chinese environmental non-governmental organizations. “World grain harvests have fallen for four consecutive years and world grain stocks are at the lowest level in 30 years. If farmers can’t raise production by (late next year) we may see soaring grain and food prices worldwide.”

In the past few months, wheat prices in northeast China have shot up 32 percent, maize prices have doubled and rice prices are up by as much as 13 percent, official reports show. China faces a 40 million ton grain shortfall this year, following five years of smaller harvests. Brown said that the world will be facing a 96 million ton shortfall in grain this year following poor harvests in the United States and India in 2002, and a poor harvest in Europe due to scorching temperatures this year. Shortfalls worldwide have been made up through dwindling grain reserves. Brown, described by the Washington Post as “one of the world’s most influential thinkers,” was in China to unveil the translation of his new book “Plan B, Rescuing a Planet Under Stress.”

While grain producers revel in rising prices, Brown said the trends are unsustainable, especially as the world population approaches eight billion by mid-century and as the main grain producers — China, India and the United States — face increasing water shortages. As China’s population grows, and its people demand a more meat-based diet with rising living standards, China will increasingly have to look to world markets to satisfy grain needs for both food and feed for livestock, he said.

“When China turns to the world market for grain, it will need 30, 40, 50 million tons, more than anyone else in the world imports,” Brown said. “They will first come to US markets, which is going to make a fascinating geo-political situation.”

With a 100 billion dollar trade surplus with the United States in 2002,China has “enormous purchasing power” to buy US grain, which “could drive up prices by two times.” Already an increase in Chinese demand for American soybeans, plus last year’s bad soybean harvest, have seen prices jump from five dollars a bushel to eight dollars a bushel.

China is expected to announce substantial grain purchases from the US in the weeks ahead of a visit to Washington by Premier Wen Jiabao in December. Further exacerbating falling grain harvests will be the effects of global warming as increasing scientific evidence reveals that grain production falls when temperatures mount, Brown said. Studies by the International Rice Institute and the US-based Carnegie Institution have shown that grain production can fall 10 percent with a one degree Celsius (1.7 degree Fahrenheit) increase in temperature, as the increased heat stresses the plants.

The UN’s International Panel on Climate Control has come to the conclusion that global warming from greenhouse gases caused by the burning of fossil fuels will lead to temperature rises from two to five degrees Celsius this century.

“This is not encouraging for food security and we may very well be seeing that decisions made at ministries of energy will have a greater effect on food than decisions made at ministries of agriculture,” Brown said. “

” By Jerry Hirsch and Tiffany Hsu, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
April 24, 2008

The global run on food that has led to shortages and riots in Egypt, Haiti and other nations has made its way to U.S. shores.

Concerned about rising prices and limited supplies of staples such as rice and flour, customers across the country have been cleaning out the shelves at big-box retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s Sam’s Club and Costco Wholesale Corp. stores.

On Wednesday, Sam’s Club said customers would no longer be allowed to purchase more than four bags of jasmine, basmati or long-grain white rice on each visit.

Sam’s Club blamed the restriction on “supply and demand trends” and said it was working with suppliers “to ensure we are in stock.”

The policy involves only bags weighing 20 pounds or more and does not affect smaller packages sold at the store or its sister Wal-Mart outlets.

This week, Costco said it had seen sales of flour, rice and some cooking oils leap. Some Costco stores already have held customers to just two bags of rice a day, but the chain doesn’t plan to limit sales nationwide.

By midafternoon Wednesday, the Costco in Alhambra — which had not placed limits on purchases — said it had run out of rice.

Earlier in the day, Michael Yang, manager of Hawaiian barbecue restaurants in Pico Rivera and West Covina, had decided it was time to stock up. He bought 46 bags of medium-grain rice, 50 pounds each, at the Alhambra Costco and loaded them into his white van.

He paid $15.39 each, which he called a bargain compared with premium brands from Thailand that have recently nearly doubled in price to $40 for a 50-pound bag.

“The price of everything — oil, sugar — has been going up for months, and rice has been an issue for a few weeks already. Everyone else is doing the same thing I am because they use up their rice so fast,” Yang said in Mandarin.

Prices for many foods, including beer, bread, coffee, pizza and rice, are rising rapidly as the nation contends with its worst bout of food inflation since 1990. The cost of groceries is climbing at an annual rate of about 5% this year.

Retail experts said there was little evidence of “panic” hoarding by the public. It appears that restaurants and smaller retailers have been buying up most of the stock on the expectation that prices will continue to rise.

Still, shoppers’ actions have taken some stores by surprise.

“It is like a run on the bank. We don’t think there is a shortage, it is just increased shopping by customers who think there is,” said Richard Galanti, Costco’s chief financial officer. For now, the retailer is allowing managers of stores with short supplies to set their own rules.

Other retailers report adequate supplies.

“Ralphs has plenty of rice. No shortages at any of our stores,” said Terry O’Neil, spokesman for Ralphs Grocery Co.

When Heidi Diep visited the Costco in Alhambra last week seeking rice for her Chinese fast-food restaurant in Silver Lake, the store was out of stock. It had plenty of rice when Diep went back Wednesday, but, thanks to shoppers like Diep and Yang, ran out again.

“I picked up as much as I could,” Diep said as she hauled a dozen 50-pound bags of Super Lucky Elephant rice and 10 bags of 25-pound long grain into her van and her sister’s sedan.

The businesswoman said she was stockpiling the grain to avoid future price increases and a repeat of the week when it couldn’t be found.

Internationally, shortages of basic commodities — including rice, wheat and some oils — have led to protests and riots in recent months, prompting concern about food security in many poor countries.”

 

Global Food Riots pt 1

Global food riots turn deadly

By David R. Sands
April 10, 2008DESPERATE TIMES: Men accused of looting near the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince are put in a police vehicle in Haiti yesterday. The rise in global food prices has caused thievery and riots, as well as fatalities.

Anger over spiraling world food prices is becoming increasingly violent.

Deadly clashes over higher costs for staple foods have broken out in Egypt, Haiti and several African states, and an international food expert yesterday warned of more clashes with no short-term relief in sight.

“World food prices have risen 45 percent in the last nine months and there are serious shortages of rice, wheat and [corn],” Jacques Diouf, head of the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said at a major conference in New Delhi yesterday.

“There is a risk that this unrest will spread in countries where 50 to 60 percent of income goes to food,” he said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a personal appeal for calm in Haiti yesterday. U.N. peacekeepers were called to protect the residence of President Rene Preval from rioters protesting sharp increases in the prices of food and fuel. At least five people have been reported killed in disturbances since last week after the cost of rice doubled and gas prices rose a third time since February.

A supermarket, several gas station marts and a government rice warehouse were looted, the Associated Press reported.

Video:

Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif this week promised concessions to workers in the industrial city of Mahalla al-Kobra after two days of rioting over rising food prices left one protester dead.

The clashes were described as the most serious anti-government demonstrations since 1977 riots erupted over soaring bread prices.

The FAO has reported popular unrest over rising food prices in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique, Bolivia and Uzbekistan, among other countries.

The Philippines, the world’s biggest rice importer, moved to head off protests after global prices doubled in a year. Financial giant Credit Suisse yesterday reported that higher rice prices would cut the country’s gross domestic product this year by at least 1 percent.

The government of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo tightened controls of domestic rice sales and strengthened security at government storehouses to prevent hoarding. Anyone convicted of “stealing rice from the people” will be thrown in jail, she warned.

U.S. Ambassador Kristie Kenney yesterday said the Bush administration would offset any rice shortfall with cuts from other exporters.

World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick said earlier this month that nearly three dozen countries face social unrest because of surging food and fuel prices. For the countries most at risk, “there is no margin for survival,” he said.

Josette Sheeran, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, was in Washington last month making an urgent appeal for funds to compensate for rising prices.

“We’re asking for the world to really think through how we meet the emergency needs of the hungry,” Ms. Sheeran told The Washington Times.

Even the most repressive regimes are not immune to popular unrest. The spark for rioting against the military junta in Burma last year was a rise in food and fuel prices after the government abruptly removed subsidies.

International agricultural analysts have seen the crisis building for months, spurred by an unusual combination of forces that John Holmes, the chief U.N. humanitarian official, this week called a “perfect storm” of trends fueling demand, cutting supply and producing higher global grocery bills.

Among them: higher fuel prices that make transporting food more expensive and encourage farmers to shift from crop production to biofuels; rising food demand as China, India and other Asian countries grow wealthier; drought in major producers such as Australia; and speculation on major commodities markets that staple prices will stay high.

Mr. Holmes predicted at a conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, that the situation will spill into the political arena.

“The security implications [of the food crisis] should not be underestimated, as food riots are already being reported across the globe,” he said. “Current food prices are likely to increase sharply both the incidence and depth of food insecurity.”

Ms. Sheeran told The Times that her agency was $500 million short for the current fiscal year in meeting needs to relieve the global food and fuel crises.

“We don’t have the buffering space” to cover such sharp increases in the cost of basic staples, she said.

Analysts say the price increases are across the board, not focused on one crop or market as in past commodity patterns.

A survey released by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute found that the price of staple food has risen by 80 percent since 2005, including a 40 percent surge last year alone. The real price of rice is at a 19-year high and the price of wheat on world markets is at a 28-year high.

“The realities of demography, changing diets, energy prices and biofuels, and climate change suggest that high — and volatile — food prices will be with us for years to come,” said study author Joachim von Braun.

It is not just the poor who have taken to the streets over rising food prices.

Workers at the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in Jordan staged a one-day strike Monday to demand higher pay to cover rising food and gas prices. The action closed 177 schools for Palestinian refugees.

The U.N. staffers say they are prepared to walk off the job again next week if they do not get a pay raise.

Surging prices have led to food riots and protests around the globe.

EGYPT — Violent protests this week over soaring food prices left one dead and 15 injured.

HAITI — Five people were killed and about 20 injured in a week of protests, including an attack on U.N. peacekeepers.

CAMEROON — Violent food riots in February claimed 40 lives, and protests continue this month.

BURKINA FASO — A general strike is called this week over rising food prices, after protests earlier this year led to hundreds of arrests.

PHILIPPINES — The government beefs up security at rice warehouses to prevent theft and hoarding.

JORDAN — U.N. aid workers stage a one-day strike for more pay to cover food and fuel price increases.

BURMA — Cuts in fuel and food subsidies sparked massive anti-government protests last summer.

 

 

Sky Oddities

When I left off  I was talking about  the white orb looking planet people have been seeing near the sun. There are also some videos I’ve come across that are pretty scary. They have been called “Miracles Of The Sun” , ” The Dancing Sun” or “The Spinning Sun” . In these videos the sun appears to be jumping out of the sky towards the Earth, moving around and blinking in a seizure like state. This has been witnessed by thousands in these towns who happen to be Catholic. They are seen as Catholic miracles and they seem to thank the virgin Mary for it. Why Mary would want to make the sun spin and blink is beyond me.

  The first time this type of thing happened was in 1917  in Fatima,Portugal and the story lives on. There was an apparition of the Virgin Mary  that delivered prophecies and also a dancing of the sun. Most of the people who witnessed the sun believed they were about to die as the sun appeared to be hurling itself towards Earth.  These types of things started happening again in 1981 in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina and haven’t stopped. This village is also very Catholic.

 So I’m going to post 2 videos taken by locals in Medjugorje. What’s interesting is that you see an orb bouncing off the Sun like crazy. It looks similar to the “plasma ufos” or odd planet that people have been seeing near the sun recently. The sun starts behaving almost like a pulsar would. It blinks and flashes and in the background you can almost hear a low humming and zapping,but I could be mistaken about that. If it is emitting a strange noise then that is also another characteristic of a pulsar. Of course our own sun is not a pulsar since a pulsar is a neutron star that is leftover from a supernova but during this strange phenomena it is kind of mimicking some of it’s abilities as if it’s being zapped by high levels of electromagnetic energy. Anyway,here are two videos from taken in 2007 :

 

Another interesting video  was taken of the  sun at Ta Pao mountain in I think either Vietnam or Thailand (sorry,it didn’t specify). Even though the person filming was moving the camera a lot,probably from shaking due to witnessing such a thing,you can still see the sun appear to jump out of the sky. This is also a heavily Catholic area and it has been called a miracle of the Virgin Mary. Here it is :

 So the question remains what is causing this and why does it only seem to be happening in small Catholic villages?

Myth of Planet X continues…

As I’ve been researching the myths surrounding mysterious “Planet X” and all the fascinating details of it’s crossing I have found numerous pictures and videos from people in different parts of the world. There are people who say it won’t be able to be seen by the naked eye until 2009 and that will only be located in countries in the southern hemisphere and then in 2010 by more countries and finally in 2011 by the U.S. However that doesn’t explain photographic images that have been circulated. I found the following images on another blog that had been recovered from Liveleak.com after being deleted by the powers that be. They were reposted stating this :

” The following images were quickly recovered before all traces of it were finally removed. A user on Liveleak posted this yesterday, and it was quickly removed for “violation of terms or copyright.”
These were his own images.

You be the Judge. “

Visual Proof Of Nibiru in the U.S.A

These Picture’s were taken in the last week of Feb 08 and Today 3/5/08, I assure you nothing is altered and The object is NOT the moon or a star, it is definitely a planet.

 

I then happened to find a flickr account that belongs to a school kid in I don’t even know what country,could be the US. It consists of pictures that contain the same object as the one in the above pics,except that they were taken in January. Here is the link http://www.flickr.com/photos/22838991@N07/. Is this thing really a planet? By this kid’s pictures you begin to see that it moves rapidly whenever the hell it feels like it.Three different pictures he took of it in a row and it moves to 3 different places around the Sun? It looks like a distant planet ,but acts like a ufo…that’s what I see anyway. Any thoughts?

   I was reading this conspiracy website and people were posting about planet X. It’s the only thread where you see debunkers are constantly active. There is a guy that posts day and night about this same topic but nothing else. He tells everyone that every pic they have is of a “lensflare”,even when they have seen it with their own eyes. Now,I know what a lensflare looks like and I don’t believe any of the pictures I’ve posted are lenflares. Venus looks like a similar white orb during it’s transit.

People who were posting pictures on this site were also unable to log on for periods of hours or days for no apparent reason,even though no one else was. I find this stuff bizarre expecially when it is contained in crazy conspiracy sites. Is it more of a threat than anything else on those types of websites? More sky oddities to come….

Right On Schedule

Uhhhhhhhh…….. Remember when all those psychics and “scientists” said the West Coast would sink or fall off or whatever and we all just laughed,remember that? Yeah,me too. If it happens I’m blaming Al Gore and Leonardo Dicaprio. I don’t know why,but it’s their fault. Below is a top AOL news story :

 

600  Earthquakes  Detected  Off  Oregon  Coast

 

By JEFF BARNARD,

AP

Posted: 2008-04-12 18:59:16

Filed Under: Science News

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (April 12) – Scientists listening to underwater microphones have detected an unusual swarm of earthquakes off central Oregon, something that often happens before a volcanic eruption — except there are no volcanoes in the area.

Scientists don’t know exactly what the earthquakes mean, but they could be the result of molten rock rumbling away from the recognized earthquake faults off Oregon, said Robert Dziak, a geophysicist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University.

There have been more than 600 quakes over the past 10 days in a basin 150 miles southwest of Newport. The biggest was magnitude 5.4, and two others were more than magnitude 5.0, OSU reported.

On the hydrophones, the quakes sound like low thunder and are unlike anything scientists have heard in 17 years of listening, Dziak said. Some of the quakes have also been detected by earthquake instruments on land.

The hydrophones are left over from a network the Navy used to listen for submarines during the Cold War. They routinely detect passing ships, earthquakes on the ocean bottom and whales calling to one another.

Scientists hope to send out an OSU research ship to take water samples, looking for evidence that sediment has been stirred up and chemicals that would indicate magma is moving up through the Juan de Fuca Plate, Dziak said.

The quakes have not followed the typical pattern of a major shock followed by a series of diminishing aftershocks, and few have been strong enough to be felt on shore.

The Earth’s crust is made up of plates that rest on molten rock, which are rubbing together. When the molten rock, or magma, erupts through the crust, it creates volcanoes.

That can happen in the middle of a plate. When the plates lurch against each other, they create earthquakes along the edges.

In this case, the Juan de Fuca Plate is a small piece of crust being crushed between the Pacific Plate and North America, Dziak said.

 

Planet X

I’ve been wanting to write about this for awhile now,but there are so many theories and so much speculation that it is overwhelming.The subject is Planet X. A number of  different scientists have said for years that there could possibly be another “planet” that belongs to our solar system that has a very unusual elliptical orbit. Some people say that it could be a brown dwarf which means that it is too cool to be a star but too massive to be a normal planet.It’s atmosphere emits a dull red glow and due to all the dust and debris around it looks like it has wings or devil horns. It would mean that our sun actually has a binary companion. It is said by scientists that 80 % of solar systems have binary stars.

The search had been on for this Planet X for quite awhile because of strange disturbances in the other planets of our solar system. In 1983 NASA announced to 6 dailies that they had found the elusive planet. They had been unable to detect it with normal telescopes so they started using infrared IRAS equipment which zones in on intense heat and bada-bing it popped up. Shortly after the big announement they were silenced and had to retract the statement. Ever since there has been a large scale cover up to avoid mass hysteria throughout the world or so the story goes….  

There is also much archaelogical,mythological,religious and cultural history that goes along with Planet X. The Egyptians blame it for the 10 plagues of Egypt during the Exodus.It is also blamed for the flood of Noah. It is known by different names like “The Winged Serpent” ,”The Red Dragon”, “The Destroyer”. Every time it comes around it brings punishment. It is now being blamed for global warming,even though it is being denied by NASA. We are experiencing entire solar system warming,including the Sun whose magnetic poles are changing and even scientists are predicting that 2012 will be the height of the solar storms,the worst in 400 years. It may bring major CME’s (coronal mass ejections) possibly knocking out the world’s power grid. However,I feel that would be the least of our problems. 

Here’s a thought: If the solar flares continually get worse and all of our crops start to burn up and not produce food,what will we do? Could wars be waged over remaining food and water supplies? Could it get that bad? Could the investors in the great Norwedgian Doomsday Seed-Vault be the ones to rely on for survival? It’s quite a monopoly they would have over all the starving countries. It reminds me of the third and fourth horseman of the apocalypse actually.  

There is A LOT more to this story but there is also a lot of DISinformation mixed in,and purposefully so! But for now  I would like to present a 5 part series of videos by Marshall Masters. He is an ex-CNN Science producer and he is speaking out about the story of Planet X . It is a must see! Tell your friends! Do your own research! Here is part 1 : 

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

 

Red Rain

Back in 2001 in Kerala,India red rain fell from the sky. Scientists are still scratching their heads as to what it was. Since “blood rain” is pretty apocalyptic I figured I couldn’t not blog about it,so I’m going to post some  articles about it and the findings from tests that were done….Below are pictures of red rain collected by locals:

“The coloured rain of Kerala first fell on July 25th 2001, in the districts of Kottayam and Idukki in the southern part of the state. Some reports suggested that other colours of rain were also seen. Many more occurrences of the red rain were reported over the following ten days, and then with diminishing frequency until late September.According to locals, the first coloured rain was preceded by a sonic boom and flash of light, and followed by groves of trees shedding shrivelled grey “burnt” leaves. Shrivelled leaves and the disappearance and sudden formation of wells were also reported around the same time in the area.The colouration of the rain was due to red particles in suspension in the rain water, and the red rain was at times as strongly coloured as blood. It typically fell over small areas, no more than a few square kilometers in size, and was sometimes so localised that normal rain could be falling just a few metres away from the red rain. Red rainfalls typically lasted less than 20 minutes. ”

The following article was written by Dr. Godfrey Louis,Professor and Head Department of Physics,Cochin University of Science and Technology Kerala,India. :

RED RAIN OF KERALA

A red rain phenomenon occurred in Kerala, the place where I live, during July-September 2001. The characteristics of this phenomenon were very strange. Conventional explanations appeared totally inadequate to account for this phenomenon. I started an investigation with limited resources and I was greatly assisted by my research student A. Santhosh Kumar. We have been studying this red rain since 2001. Some of our research results are now published in the journal -Astrophysics and Space Science, an international peer reviewed journal of astronomy, astrophysics and space science.
According to these published results, the red particles, which caused the red rain of Kerala, are possibly of extraterrestrial origin. This conclusion is arrived by analysing the various aspects associated with this phenomenon, like the geographical and time distribution pattern of this phenomenon and the nature of the red particles. It appears that the phenomenon can be explained much easily if it is assumed that the origin of the red particles is from cometary fragments, which underwent atmospheric disintegration above Kerala. There are also some additional correlating evidences that prompt this line of thinking, like the sonic boom from the meteor airburst, which preceded the first red rain case. Having made a logical possibility like this it follows that the cometary body in question should contain huge quantity of these red particles, which amounts to an estimated quantity of more than 50,000 kg.What makes this finding most important is the biological cell like nature of these red particles. Under optical microscope they appear like biological cells and the Transmission Electron Microscopy further shows a clear cell structure. Their organic nature is indicated by the major presence of carbon and oxygen. But despite these biological indications the cells do not show the presence of DNA. The genetic molecule DNA is present in all living organisms found on Earth. So the absence of DNA argues against the biological nature of these red rain cells.But I wish to consider the possibility of alternate biomolecules in these cells whose origin is now suspected as extraterrestrial. This way the cells may represent an alternate form of life from space. If these are such biological cells then their production in huge quantity inside cometary bodies can be explained by the theory of cometary panspermia. If the above ideas are wrong then I wish to know a better explanation for the strange nature of the red rain phenomenon and also for the strange nature of the red cells. If these cells have a terrestrial origin then it follows that they exist in huge quantities in some part of Earth and it is sure to have been noticed by some microbiologists. But there appears no such identification so far.

We expect to publish the next set of results in a journal soon and we will also be conducting several collaborative studies to reveal the mystery of these cells.

New biology of red rain extremophiles prove cometary panspermiaAuthors: Godfrey Louis, A. Santhosh Kumar (Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, India)
(Submitted on 29 Dec 2003)

” Abstract: This paper reports the extraordinary biology of the microorganisms from the mysterious red rain of Kerala, India. These chemosynthetic organisms grow optimally at an extreme high temperature of 300 degrees C (almost 600 degrees F) in hydrothermal conditions and can metabolize inorganic and organic compounds including hydrocarbons. Stages found in their life cycle show reproduction by a special multiple fission process and the red cells found in the red rain are identified as the resting spores of these microbes. While these extreme hyperthermophiles contain proteins, our study shows the absence of DNA in these organisms, indicating a new primitive domain of life with alternate thermostable genetics. This new biology proves our earlier hypothesis that these microbes are of extraterrestrial origin and also supports our earlier argument that the mysterious red rain of Kerala is due to the cometary delivery of the red spores into the stratosphere above Kerala. “

 ” Meteor Brings Eerie Plague in India…or is it Even Stranger?
07-Aug-2001Changanachery, Kerala, Where Events Took Place
Shades of the biblical plagues and the 6th centory catastrophe reported on Unknowncountry last week, where mysterious yellow dust was reported falling from skies. A mysterious red rain recently fell in the Southern Indian State of Kerala,accompanied by collapsing wells and a plague of black insects.It was originally thought that the red rain might have been caused by dust kicked up by small earthquakes, although no quakes were measured. This could also explain the tiny black insects that rained from the sky at the same time.

But that leaves the mystery of the collapsing wells. Around 150 have collapsed in various ways across the state since the second week of June. Experts guess that the well collapses may be due to a sudden build-up of water pressure, that could also be caused by tectonic activity.

Now researchers have concluded that a meteor threw fine dust into the atmosphere, which came down as red rain. According to a preliminary hypothesis released by the Center for Earth Science Studies, a meteor exploded in the area at around 5:30 a.m. on July 25. The Director of the Center, Dr. M. Baba, says the hypothesis is based on physical analysis of the sediments found in the rain water obtained from the district and information from the residents.

The celestial body, passing at great speed, deposited the dust in the monsoon clouds, causing the red-colored downpour. According to available information, the rain was normal the previous day. But residents were jolted out of their sleep by “a very loud noise” in the early hours of July 25. A few of them also saw a flash of light. The red showers started three hours later.

The sound of thunder was unusual as thunderstorms do not accompany rains during this time of the year. The red rain arrived after a series of quake-related rumbles, collapsing wells, swirling well waters, cracking walls, sinking earth, floods, landslides and plagues of insects.

Scientific teams from leading institutions have been trying to explain the strange happenings with credible, but divergent, findings. The fear of the ground slipping away from under their feet, while the sky falls on their heads, has made the local people eager for reassuring words from the scientists.