Thousands of residents fled their homes and crammed into shelters in northeastern Australia as a cyclone described as the most powerful in the country's history and with a 650 km (400 mile) wide front barreled toward the coastline on Wednesday.
"We are facing a storm of catastrophic proportions," Queensland state premier Anna Bligh said after Cyclone Yasi was upgraded to a maximum-strength category five storm.
It is expected to hit the coast on Wednesday evening, packing winds in excess of 280 km (175 miles) per hour. The weather bureau predicted it would be the strongest ever to hit Australia, Sky TV reported...
The cyclone is 650 km off the coast of northeastern Australia and is expected to make landfall at 10 pm (1200 GMT) on the Queensland coast between Cairns and Innisfail. Its strength is on a par with Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005.
This is on the heels of a once in a century flood just weeks ago in Brisbane.
A new study has found that the water flowing into the Arctic from the North Atlantic is at its warmest level for more than 2,000 years.
This could endanger polar bears, which need the ice in order to survive.
Scientists at the University of Colorado in Boulder examined tiny plankton-like organisms on the seabed of the Fram strait, which is the main carrier of ocean heat to the Arctic.
They found that back then the temperature in the Arctic water was on average 3.4C (38F), but that has now gone up to 5.2C (41F).
Higher temperatures 'are presumably linked to the Arctic amplification of global warming', the study concluded, adding that global warming 'is most likely another key element in the transition to a future ice-free Arctic Ocean'.
Whatever. Science is bullshit. Republican congressmen proudly tell us so:
