Check Out NASA Images of Devastating Pakistan Floods

*** These aerial view flood images of the entire country of Pakistan are mind-boggling in their scope of how the monsoon flooding is affecting the lives of millions.





From Denny: The monsoon rains this summer have caused so much flooding that 20 percent of Pakistan's population is adversely affected. The figures are that up to 13 million are affected and about six million are so devastated they are homeless.

Over a billion dollars in aid has been rushed to Pakistan from the world community. America has already given $90 million in aid and has soldiers on the ground delivering aid from the air along with the Pakistani military. An additional amount, up to $150 million in aid, has been increased by President Obama this week.

Tens of thousands of villages in Pakistan are affected by this late July flooding of the monsoon season. It has resulted in thousands of deaths because of unsafe drinking water and the diseases that follow large natural disasters.

Pakistan's floods were brought about by 16 inches of rain that caused the Indus and Kabul rivers to overflow. The overflow has been rushing downstream for weeks, displacing millions of people.




This image is from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft. It was taken over the city of Sukkur, Pakistan, this week along the Indus River. The Indus River is Pakistan's longest river. It snakes vertically from north to south. This river also provides the world's largest canal-based irrigation system.

*** Photo by NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team





Enter an unusually large monsoon season into the north. Those floods would move downstream along the Indus and Kabul rivers, rushing toward the only outlet at the Arabian Sea.

The first image here was taken more than a year ago on 31 July 2009, depicting the normal state of the Indus River. The second image is from the Landsat-5 satellite and shows the huge flood waters from this past week.

*** Photo by NASA images courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC.





This aerial view is from a U.S. Navy MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter. It depicts extensive flooding in Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province this week. This squadron of helicopters in involved in humanitarian flood relief efforts: Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 15.

*** Photo by U.S. Marine Corps photo by Capt. Paul Duncan





This photo is what is called a false color image and comes from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument aboard NASA's Terra spacecraft. The areas of farmland and vegetation affected by the flooding are shown in red.

The top image was taken over a year ago, on 8 August 2009. Here the Indus River is flowing through the Sindh Province of Pakistan. Normally, when not a flood season, this river is only about one kilometer wide. The second image was taken on 11 August 2010 and depicts how the river has swollen to an astonishing 23 kilometers wise, even more in some spots.

*** Photo by NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team






The top image is from Landsat-5 satellite, taken over a year ago on 9 August 2009. The second image, taken in mid-August 2010, we can clearly see how the flood waters from northern Pakistan traveled downstream to flood out thousands of acres, down to the city of Khewali in southern Pakistan.

*** Photo by Robert Simmon, based on Landsat 5 data from the USGS Global Visualization Viewer.





With all the news footage we see every day on our TV news, it's hard to remember that the rain began falling in Pakistan on 28 July 2010. That's when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft flew over Pakistan for this image. Those thunderstorm clouds ended up dropping more than 16 inches of rain over the region on July 28 and 29. Two days of rain triggered the massive flooding of the Indus and Kabul rivers.

So what's that blue vertical line across this photo? It represents the path of CloudSat at the time the MODIS image was recorded. It was CloudSat that captured the 3D vertical structure of a large thunderstorm cell in the northern section of the country to reveal the heavy precipitation. CloudSat also measured the height of the clouds to be about 15 kilometers.

What's the faint red line represent on the photo? It represents the topography of the area being photographed. The ground echo and CloudSat's signal were severely affected and diminished by the heavy rains and thick clouds. On this image the red line practically disappears until the satellite moves out of the thickest part of the storm and heaviest rains.

*** Photo by NASA/JPL/The Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA), Colorado State University



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Giant Asteroid Threatens Earth In 170 Years

*** Crank up the planet asteroid defense system because Earth is expecting an asteroid impact soon - by astronomical time.




An artist's impression of what an asteroid impact with Earth might look like - photo from Newscom

Hollywood Asteroid Destruction Movies

From Denny: And you wonder where Hollywood gets these scary ideas for their movies. There's a new study out suggesting Earth might get hit by a giant asteroid in 2182. So, folks, that gives us about 170 years and a number of generations to get our proverbial act together to figure out how to destroy it, derail it off a collision course or evacuate the planet. Of course, that's if it hits at all. I do wish these guys would make up their minds. Is the human race scheduled for extinction or isn't it?

Scientists, being the annoying beings they know how to be, they are alarmists while they are also double speaking us about how unlikely it is that this giant asteroid will slam into Earth. Don't you just want to chick slap these guys into another time zone for the way they jack up your emotions and then deflate them like some helium balloon?

The official glamorous name of this giant asteroid

What's this giant asteroid's name? It's a terribly exotic one: 1999 RQ36 and it sounds like something off a Formerly Known As Prince music album. So now fading rock stars are naming killer asteroids?

The odds of impact

Well, the Vulcan Spock look alikes in the science world have declared this giant asteroid only has a one in a 1,000 chance of truly smashing into Earth. Thanks, guys, I feel so reassured now. The co-author of the study, María Eugenia Sansaturio of the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain, says half of the risk calculated corresponds to what are potential impacts in the glorious year of 2182. Listen, folks, we still have to live past 2012...

Sansaturio and the study team said they employed mathematical models to determine the risk of this asteroid impacting Earth as far in the future as 2200. What they discovered from the model is there were two opportunities for this possible collision in 2182.

More about their research is detailed in the science journal Icarus.

How big is this asteroid?

Just how large is this giant asteroid? It measures about 1,837 feet across which is about 560 meters. The National Academy of Sciences says in a recent report that a space rock of this dimension could cause widespread devastation at the impact site. "Ya think?"

This giant asteroid has been tracked by scientists through as many as 290 observations and 13 radar surveys like a pack of FBI agents watching a house of prostitution. Yet there is still some uncertainty because of the small influence it gets from the gentle push of the so-called Yarkovsky effect.

The Yarkovsky Effect

What's the Yarkovsky effect? Glad you asked because I didn't know it either. Of course, it was named for a Russian engineer (I.O. Yarkovsky) who talked about this effect way back in 1900. He described how an asteroid gains momentum from thermal radiation that it emits from its night side. After several hundred years go by, this effect's influence on an asteroid's orbit could be monumental.

The erratic asteroid orbit makes it difficult to pin down odds

Back to the study team in Spain as they figured out that up until the year of 2060, Earth's chances of getting hit by this giant asteroid is minimal and downright remote. That's so comforting, guys. However, the odds start increasing by a magnitude of four by the year of 2080 because the the orbit of the asteroid brings it closer to hanging out near Earth.

Those scary odds of impact start dipping down as the asteroid moves away from Earth. Then those odds rise again in 2162 and 2182 as the asteroid's orbit swings back toward Earth. It's an erratic orbital dance and therefore difficult to know exactly the odds of impact. "The consequence of this complex dynamic is not just the likelihood of a comparatively large impact, but also that a realistic deflection procedure (path deviation) could only be made before the impact in 2080, and more easily, before 2060," Sansaturio said. "After 2080, it would be more difficult to deflect the asteroid." Read that as we are screwed on this planet if the mathematicians are correct.

"If this object had been discovered after 2080, the deflection would require a technology that is not currently available," Sansaturio said. "Therefore, this example suggests that impact monitoring, which up to date does not cover more than 80 or 100 years, may need to encompass more than one century. By expanding the time frame for potential impacts, researchers would potentially identify the most threatening space rocks with enough time to mount deflection campaigns that are both technologically and financially feasible," she said.

Tell your children's children what to expect or deal with asteroid now

And there you have it. Make sure to leave a journal for your descendants so they can be scared the hell out of their minds too. Meanwhile, I'm taking a trip to Area 51 to find me some aliens with asteroid busting technology. Being proactive is the way to go. Let's go blast some giant asteroid out of the sky!


Congress Proposes Commission to Study Asteroid Impact Threat

Fresh Spin on Solar Powered Asteroids

NASA Panel Calls for Asteroid Defense Office


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The Social Poets - news, politics
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Big Oil Nixs Competing Aviation BioFuel: NASAs Project OMEGA

*** Big Oil finds ways to eliminate the competition from taking over any segment of the fuel market in the world.






From Denny: OMEGA is an alternative energy program experiment costing $10 million. Turns out the NASA administrator of this project, Charles Bolden, also happens to own a large share of oil stock. So, the question of the day is: Does the influence of Big Oil extend to NASA?

What the OMEGA Project is all about

OMEGA = Offshore Membrane Enclosure for Growing Algae.

It's a two-fold project that is a win-win for the environment. The idea is to grow algae as an alternative energy product - as well as a waste water eater to return clean water to the ocean. The lead researcher is Jonathan Trent at the NASA Ames Research Center in California. The project has three goals in mind. They wanted to be able to produce bio fuels using few resources and in a confined area. They were keen on finding an inexpensive way to clean municipal wastewater. The third idea was to capture the greenhouse gas emissions of carbon dioxide that are produced in this process.

Basically, they go out into the ocean and lay down huge sheets of plastic bags filled with algae. The algae is fed waste water, and, true to their algae nature they clean the dirty water, removing what is foul by using the water, solar energy and carbon dioxide to accomplish their mission. The clean water gets leached back into the ocean through the huge plastic bags because the bags are only a one-way membrane for the clean water to exit.

Algae also creates bio fuel

Did you know that as the algae cleans the water it also produces fat soluble molecules called lipids? The algae produces sugars that it converts into the lipids. Those lipids can be harvested as an alternative energy bio fuel. NASA has been in the business of algae for a long time as it can be used as a fuel for life support systems in space. That was the reason for this experiment initially rather than as an alternative fuel source to supplant fossil fuel.

What about if the algae escapes its plastic bag confines? Could it invade the oceans with a new invasive species? Scientists say there is no worry about that since this is a fresh water algae. The minute the plastic bags were compromised and the salt water came rushing in the salt water would kill the algae.

So how long do these plastic bags last in the ocean? About three years is their estimate. Researchers suggest recycling the plastic bags as mulch or chopping them to build soil and retain moisture.

Economics and replacing fossil fuel

This whole idea is an economic model that is reasonably priced and easily accessible to even the more impoverished nations. What's more this OMEGA project made a bid last year to replace aviation fuel with this bio fuel! They think they can easily produce 21 billion gallons a year for aviation fuel. They figure they need to farm about 10 million acres of ocean to fill that order.

Downside of this project?

Scientists are still concerned about the plastic, wondering how well it can withstand pounding ocean waves, the sun and the cold temperatures. This whole process depends upon osmosis and researchers wonder if the plastic can become too brittle for the process to work easily all the time. They envision maybe franchising the process, having fishermen monitoring it constantly.

Conflict of interest with NASA administrator of this project owning oil stock

All this sounds like a great idea and quite usable to benefit the whole world. The problem is that this administrator of the project was also on the board of the Marathon Oil Company who basically told him to nix the project. They advised him that "this project was not worth the investment at this time" which he was quick to repeat to the media and in his reports about the viability of this project. Bolden owns about $500,000 to $1 million in Marathon Oil stock. Hmmmm.... just a bit of conflict of interest, don't you think?

Sound familiar with every other alternative fuel project for the past 30 years? Big Oil keeps on trashing the competition with callous disregard to the environment, the world economy and world health.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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