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Showing posts with label Floods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Floods. Show all posts

Friday, 31 July 2015

Another great flood: time to build an ark?

Andrei Kislyakov
Sputnik


The world geological community is warning that today's seismic activity on our planet is nothing compared with what's to come.

Over the past three years, Pakistan, for example, has been hit by dozens of earthquakes. In March 2005, 80,000 people died under the rubble there. On October 30, the last time nature went on the rampage, there were hundreds of victims. Tens of thousands of people drowned during an overwhelming Asian tsunami at the end of 2004. China and Afghanistan have been rocked by quakes again more recently.

These natural disasters, which have swept our planet in recent years, indicate that the world has entered an era not only of a political, but also of climatic instability. Most scientists - biologists and environmentalists - tend to blame the human race for the catastrophic climate change on the Earth. No doubt, the greenhouse effect due to industrial activity plays a considerable role in global warming, but there are other reasons worth considering.
The Earth is rotating around its own axis slower. The International Earth Rotation Service has regularly added a second or two to the length of a 24-hour day in recent years.

This is the main reason, according to Igor Kopylov, professor at Moscow Energy Institute, why the planet - a gigantic electrical machine - has had its energy balance upset. He expressed this viewpoint in 2004. Kopylov is convinced that the Earth has entered the first phase of a global change. A weakening of the Earth's magnetic field was first registered early in the 20th century, and a consistent drop in the speed of rotation, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It has been established that when the Earth's rotation slows by one second a year, it releases a tremendous amount of heat, hundreds of times the volume of energy released by human industrial activity.

If we accept that all processes on Earth run according to cosmic cycles, which, in turn, depend on the Solar System's position in our Galaxy, then humankind may be facing another Great Flood.

The Solar System, including the Earth, travels through the Galaxy in spiraling elliptic paths. The cycle time for the larger spiral is 200-210 million years, and for the smaller one, which determines minor galactic cycles, 26,000 years. Correspondingly, half a cycle lasts 130 centuries. This period almost exactly coincides with the date of the last Flood, the occurrence of which was real. The myths and legends of many peoples including that of the Bible recorded the event.

The Flood has been dated rather precisely: at 11,100 BC. If we accept that the civilized society on Earth has been developing for 400,000 years, then this period saw 30 great floods, and we are witnessing the beginnings of the thirty-first flood.

The cosmic cycles are so gigantically long by human standards that they have little impact on the life of people, but the active initial phase of the galactic cycle is of vital importance for the development of civilization. In the view of Russian scientists, the Earth currently finds itself at precisely this point in the cycle.

The transitional process in the electrical machine "planet Earth" can be divided into three phases. During the first - lasting 300 to 500 years - a relatively quick change in the direction of cross current (according to the law of electric machines) will alter the Earth's magnetic field, with the Northern magnetic pole shifting to the eastern part of the Arctic Ocean. 



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Monday, 10 February 2014

UK floods: Thames reaches record water levels

BBC News

Thousands of homes along the River Thames are threatened with flooding as flood waters continue to rise.

Sixteen severe flood warnings are in place, including 14 in Berkshire and Surrey and two in Somerset.

The Environment Agency is warning of rising water in the Somerset Levels.

Its chairman Lord Smith, has hit back at critics, saying his staff knew "100 times" more about flooding than any politician.

"I have kept my counsel up to now, but when I hear someone criticising the expertise and the professionalism of my staff in the Environment Agency, who know 100 times more about flood risk management than any politician ever does, I'm afraid I'm not going to sit idly by, " he said.

"The Environment Agency is bound by the rules that are laid down by government."

He was speaking after Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said ministers had been given bad advice over river dredging.

Read more (video)

 

Saturday, 1 February 2014

Aerial drone footage of 'catastrophic' Somerset floods


The Telegraph

As flood-hit communities continue to battle against widespread flooding across the South West, photographer Lewis Whyld visited Somerset to record the extent of the damage.

Lewis, intended on using his self-built drone camera to capture aerial views of the floods, but found himself having to use the device for a much more urgent purpose, after he came across a submerged vehicle.

"It was my day off, so I travelled to Somerset to film the floods with my drone, as I thought it would be an interesting way to document the damage.

"I saw the car but couldn't get to it, so I used my drone camera to check there were no people trapped inside. Fortunately it was empty."

Lewis also spoke to residents in the town of Stoke St Gregory, in Somerset. 

Farmer Heather Venn called the floods "catastrophic" adding that many people had been left with "no facilities at all in their homes". 

"Over 90 per cent of our land is under water at the moment, we're not sure what will have happened to it when the water goes," Ms Venn said. 

"This year's floods are catastrophic in terms of the damage to properties and people's lives, lots of properties have gone under, it's pretty dire for people who have got water coming in." 

The Environment Agency has warned those living in parts of south-west England and the Midlands to take care as it issued nine severe flood warnings – meaning there is a danger to life – for the Cornwall and North Devon coasts and the River Severn, south of Gloucester. 

Lesser warnings remain in place for many parts of Britain, including the already blighted Somerset levels and west Wales, where 49 flood warnings and 15 alerts have so far been issued. 

The photographer who captured these aerial images was taking time off to prepare for an official CAA drone examination.
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