Pennsylvania... ALERT!... Rainwater Samples Indicate Radioactive Iodine-131 at 3,300% Above 'Safe' Level!

Governor Tom Corbett emphasized that 'the drinking water is safe and there is no cause for health concerns'... (This man apparently has no clue where drinking water comes from! He's not worried  about radioactive contamination... EPA took care of that... they simply raised the 'safe level' for radioactive Iodine-131 exposure! See related article... ~ SadInAmerica)

Governor Corbett Says Public Water Supply Testing Finds No Risk to Public From Radioactivity Found in Rainwater, Pennsylvania Office of the Governor, March 28, 2011:

[Emphasis Added]

… The [Iodine-131] numbers reported in the rainwater samples in Pennsylvania range from 40-100 picocuries per liter (pCi/L). Although these are levels above the background levels historically reported in these areas, they are still about 25 times below the level that would be of concern. The federal drinking water standard for Iodine-131 is three pCi/L. …

On Friday, rainwater samples were taken in Harrisburg, where levels were 41 pCi/L and at nuclear power plants at TMI and Limerick, where levels were 90 to 100 pCi/L.

Corbett emphasized that the drinking water is safe and there is no cause for health concerns. …

“Rainwater is not typically directly consumed,” Corbett said. “However, people might get alarmed by making what would be an inappropriate connection from rainwater to drinking water. By testing the drinking water, we can assure people that the water is safe.” …

Read the release HERE.

See also: EPA: Radioactive Iodine-131 levels in PA & MA rainwater “exceed maximum contaminant level permitted in drinking water”

Read more:

March 29, 2011 - EnergyNews

See related article

EPA Plans to Reduce Cleanup of Nuclear Fallout

The NEW EPA 'SAFE' Limits!

A nearly 1000-fold increase for exposure to strontium-90; A 3000 to 100,000-fold hike for exposure to iodine-131; and An almost 25,000 rise for exposure to radioactive nickel-63.Submitted by SadInAmerica on Thu, 03/31/2011 - 3:22pm.

View the original article here

Pennsylvania... ALERT!... Rainwater Samples Indicate Radioactive Iodine-131 at 3,300% Above 'Safe' Level!

Governor Tom Corbett emphasized that 'the drinking water is safe and there is no cause for health concerns'... (This man apparently has no clue where drinking water comes from! He's not worried  about radioactive contamination... EPA took care of that... they simply raised the 'safe level' for radioactive Iodine-131 exposure! See related article... ~ SadInAmerica)

Governor Corbett Says Public Water Supply Testing Finds No Risk to Public From Radioactivity Found in Rainwater, Pennsylvania Office of the Governor, March 28, 2011:

[Emphasis Added]

… The [Iodine-131] numbers reported in the rainwater samples in Pennsylvania range from 40-100 picocuries per liter (pCi/L). Although these are levels above the background levels historically reported in these areas, they are still about 25 times below the level that would be of concern. The federal drinking water standard for Iodine-131 is three pCi/L. …

On Friday, rainwater samples were taken in Harrisburg, where levels were 41 pCi/L and at nuclear power plants at TMI and Limerick, where levels were 90 to 100 pCi/L.

Corbett emphasized that the drinking water is safe and there is no cause for health concerns. …

“Rainwater is not typically directly consumed,” Corbett said. “However, people might get alarmed by making what would be an inappropriate connection from rainwater to drinking water. By testing the drinking water, we can assure people that the water is safe.” …

Read the release HERE.

See also: EPA: Radioactive Iodine-131 levels in PA & MA rainwater “exceed maximum contaminant level permitted in drinking water”

Read more:

March 29, 2011 - EnergyNews

See related article

EPA Plans to Reduce Cleanup of Nuclear Fallout

The NEW EPA 'SAFE' Limits!

A nearly 1000-fold increase for exposure to strontium-90; A 3000 to 100,000-fold hike for exposure to iodine-131; and An almost 25,000 rise for exposure to radioactive nickel-63.Submitted by SadInAmerica on Thu, 03/31/2011 - 3:22pm.

View the original article here

Climate Craziness of the Week: IPCC’s Pachauri claims 17cm of sea level rise made the Tsunami worse, but let’s check

From this article in The Hindu: (h/t to WUWT reader Adam Gallon)

“In the 20th century, sea-level rise was recorded at an average of 17 centimetres. If the sea-level was significantly lower, clearly the same tsunami would have had a less devastating effect. Therefore, sea-level rise is a kind of multiplier of the kinds of threats and negative impacts that will take place anyway,”

It seems to me that clearly Dr. Pachauri can’t mentally manage the concept of scale. Here’s the NOAA wave height graphic that was flashed around the world on news media shortly after the Tsunami Warning was issued, while the tsunami was still traveling across the Pacific:

Source: NOAA Center for Tsunami Research and NOAA Scientific Visualization Lab

Note the inset I added, now here’s that inset area magnified with the color key added and the 17cm Pachauri mentions marked:

Hmmm, for the people of Japan in the hardest hit areas, I don’t think it would matter much. But let’s compare the numbers and find out.

We can describe it another way in the scale of familiar human experience. Wiki gives this 2006 value for the average height of the Japanese people, the left figure is male, the right is female:

Let’s look at some other things:

Bonsai trees reach an average height of two feet (61cm)

From Wiki, the height of the sea wall at the Fukushima reactor site:

“The plant was protected by a sea wall and designed to withstand a tsunami of 5.7 [570cm] meters…”

The actual height of the Tsunami wave there:

…but the tsunami had a height of about 14 meters [1400 cm] and topped this sea wall

OK let’s make some scale imagery to help visualize these values:

Now let’s insert the image above into the image which shows the height of the Tsunami as reported at the Fukushima reactor complex:

Click the above image to present it at the actual 1 pixel = 1 centimeter scale on your monitor.

That 17 centimeters that Dr. Pachauri speaks of makes all the difference, doesn’t it?

Note to other bloggers: feel free to use these graphics under “fair use” terms, but please provide a link back to this article at:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/23/climate-craziness-of-the-week-ipccs-pachauri-claims-17cm-of-sea-level-rise-made-the-tsunami-worse/

Bonsai trees reach an average height of two feet 

View the original article here

Antarctic ice models “not correct”, sea level rise “complicated”

There’s some surprising reaction to the press release we covered on WUWT recently.

Here’s some excerpts:

Knowing how the massive ice sheets atop  Antarctica and Greenland work is key to
predicting how global warming could raise sea  levels and flood coastal cities. But a new study  upends what scientists thought they knew. It  turns out it’s not just ancient snow that makes  up the ice sheets, but water deep under the  sheets also thaws and refreezes over time.

To put it in non-scientific terms, lead scientist  Robin Bell told msnbc.com, the study
redefines “how squishy” the base of ice sheets can be. “This matters to how fast ice will flow and how fast ice sheets will change.”

“It also means that ice sheet models are not correct,” she said, comparing it to “trying to
figure out how a car will drive but forgetting to  add the tires. The performance will be very
different if you are driving on the rims.”

Reporting in this week’s issue of the peer-reviewed journal Science, Bell and his team
described how ice-penetrating radar peeled  back two miles of ice a million years old in the
center of Antarctica.

…

This radar image shows part of the East Antarctic ice sheet (top), a bulge of refrozen ice (center), and the profile of a mountain range buried deep below (outlined in red).

Full story plus an interactive tool here

View the original article here

Kilauea Volcano Alert Level Orange

Hawaii - Kilauea Volcanic eruption - Alert Level Orange:
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hvo/activity/kilaueastatus.php

Volcanic Activity Summary: At 1:42 p.m. this afternoon, HVO instruments indicated the onset of rapid deflation at Pu'u 'O'o and increased tremor along Kilauea's middle east rift zone. At 2:00 p.m., Kilauea's summit began to deflate.

Between 2:16 and 2:21 p.m., the floor of the Pu'u 'O'o crater began to collapse, and within 10 minutes, incandescent ring fractures opened on the crater floor a few tens of meters away from the crater wall. As the floor continued to drop, lava appeared in the center of the crater floor, the NE spatter cone collapsed, and an obvious scarp developed on the west side of the crater floor, with lava cascading over the scarp toward the center of the crater.

YT Lava Casscade Kilauea

March 5, 2011 - Crater Floor Collapse at Pu'u 'O'o

View the original article here