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Despite horrific earthquake in Haiti, Doomsday clock moving backwards.


Despite the heartbreaking scenes of devastation in Haiti, the Doomsday Clock's hands are being moved one minute backwards.
"Thursday it was moved from 5 minutes to midnight to 6 minutes to midnight."


Link to ABC news story

The weather gets worse. Doom!

"Temperatures as low as -22C (-8F) have left 122 dead in Poland this winter and the main river, the Vistula, has frozen over, causing fears of flooding.

In the UK, thousands of schools are closed and travellers have been hit by major delays after heavy snowfall affected large parts of the country.

In the Swiss Alps avalanches have killed at least seven people.

Western France has issued a weather alert for 14 regions hit by heavy snow.

Extreme or severe weather warnings are still in place across the UK, which is in the grip of its longest cold snap for almost 30 years.

UK travel chaos

Its hospitals have implemented major incident plans to deal with the extreme weather.

On Tuesday up to 20cm (8in) of snow fell in parts of Scotland and northern England, causing travel chaos for millions of people.

Another 40cm (16in) has been forecast in some areas as the snowfalls spread from north to south.

Gatwick airport was closed on Wednesday morning, while Heathrow, Birmingham, Luton and Southampton were open but suffering delays and cancellations.

Forecasters at the UK's Met Office said the bitterly cold weather was forecast to continue for the next couple of weeks, with further snowfall expected at times."
LINK to BBC

Arctic chill covers most of the northern hemisphere. Doomed? Yes.

"
Arctic air and record snow falls gripped the northern hemisphere yesterday, inflicting hardship and havoc from China, across Russia to Western Europe and over the US plains.

There were few precedents for the global sweep of extreme cold and ice that killed dozens in India, paralysed life in Beijing and threatened the Florida orange crop. Chicagoans sheltered from a potentially killer freeze, Paris endured sunny Siberian cold, Italy dug itself out of snowdrifts and Poland counted at least 13 deaths in record low temperatures of about minus 25C (-13F).

The heaviest snow yesterday hit northeastern Asia, which is suffering its worst winter weather for 60 years. More than 25 centimetres (10in) of snow covered Seoul, the South Korean capital — the heaviest fall since records began in 1937.

In China, Beijing and the nearby port city of Tianjin had the deepest snow since 1951, with falls of up to 8in and temperatures of minus 10C. In the far north of China, the temperature fell to minus 32C. More than two million Beijing and Tianjin pupils were sent home and 1,200 flights were delayed or cancelled at Beijing’s international airport."
LINK to Times Online

Oil spill in China. 2010, still DOOMED.

"A large oil spill in northwest China has heavily polluted a tributary of the Yellow River, and threatens to reach one of the country’s longest and most important sources of water.

China’s state-run news media said late Saturday that a “large amount” of diesel oil had leaked out of a pipeline last Thursday in Shaanxi Province.

The government has not explained why the report of the spill was not released until late Saturday. But Xinhua, the official state news agency, said the leak was caused by construction work and that a crew of 700 people was struggling to contain the damage from what Shaanxi officials said was about 150,000 liters, or about 40,000 gallons, of diesel oil."

Link to NYT