Continental USA Snowfall Records 12/20/09-12/27/09
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And that's not all, for the week ending Dec 13th, there were 815 new snowfall records set. December 2009 is shaping up to be quite the snowmaker. Here's a map showing continental USA records:
© Nigel BennettPolice block off access to the M62 motorway after the fatal crash which claimed the lives of three men
The men killed in the crash, who are believed to be from the Preston area, died after their Mitsubishi left the westbound carriageway of the M62 near Huddersfield in snowy conditions and collided with the nearside barrier.
Britain's deep freeze also claimed the lives of two climbers in an avalanche on Ben Nevis. It was one of three to hit Scotland within a matter of hours. The second, in Torridon, Wester Ross, claimed the life of a 53-year-old climber from Derbyshire. He had been found alive but died later from internal injuries in hospital.
The deaths came as forecasters warned temperatures are set to drop below freezing on New Year's Eve with sleet, snow and rain almost certain to plunge the country into chaos once again.
Beyond the old margarine commercial's warning that "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature," we're now learning that it's also dangerous to fool with her.
She doesn't take kindly to puny old mankind's absurd attempts to manage the climate through laws and treaties.
A case in point is Mother Nature's icy blast on the heels of the Denmark conference on global warming, a gigantic hoax now known as "climate change," because it starting getting colder around what the superior class calls the fin de siecle - a Frenchified way of saying the turn of the century.
As the delegates met and dined well and drank well - thanks to the generosity of their country's national treasuries - while hearkening to the wisdom of former Vice President Al Gore, in the words of the old song, "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. The weather outside [was] frightful."
She doesn't take kindly to puny old mankind's absurd attempts to manage the climate through laws and treaties.
A case in point is Mother Nature's icy blast on the heels of the Denmark conference on global warming, a gigantic hoax now known as "climate change," because it starting getting colder around what the superior class calls the fin de siecle - a Frenchified way of saying the turn of the century.
As the delegates met and dined well and drank well - thanks to the generosity of their country's national treasuries - while hearkening to the wisdom of former Vice President Al Gore, in the words of the old song, "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. The weather outside [was] frightful."
© Unknown
Dr Pachauri's main day job is, of course, Director-General of The Energy Research Institute (TERI) - which he has held since April 2001, having become its Director and head in 1981 when it was the Tata Energy Research Institute.
Intriguingly, for such an upstanding public servant though, he is also a strategic advisor to the private equity investment firm Pegasus Capital Advisors LP, which he became in February of this year. However, this is by no means Dr Pachauri's only foray into the world of finance. In December 2007, be became a member of the Senior Advisory Board of Siderian ventures based in San Francisco.
© USGSA spaghetti map for Brutus' movements
David Mech, a wolf researcher from the U.S. Geological Survey has studied the wolves of Canada's Ellesmere Island for 24 years. This is the first year he's attached a collar to any of them. The project was announced earlier this month.
"We made a huge technological jump from notebook and pens to satellite collars because we wanted to find out what these arctic wolves do in winter in areas when it is dark 24 hours a day and temperatures can fall to -70 degrees Fahrenheit," Mech said in a release Monday.
Ninety-pound Brutus leads a pack of at least 12 adults and six to 12 pups. Recent satellite readings tracked him about 25 miles north of where his pups had been living to a winter feeding ground rich with musk oxen and arctic hares.
In December 2009, Scientific American, once a respected popular-science journal and now a pulp science-fiction picture comic, viciously attacked US Senator James Inhofe because he had proclaimed 2009 to be the Year of the Skeptic. By skepticism, he meant "standing up and exposing the science, the costs and the hysteria behind global warming alarmism".
Venomously, Science Fiction American's editorial comment continued: "Within the community of scientists and others concerned about anthropogenic climate change, those whom Inhofe calls skeptics are more commonly termed contrarians, naysayers and denialists." Yah-Boo! This name-calling marks the depth of unscientific desperation to which the proponents of the "global warming" nonsense have now sunk.
Unscientific American pompously continued: "Not everyone who questions climate change science fits that description, of course - some people are genuinely unaware of the facts or honestly disagree about their interpretation. What distinguishes the true naysayers is an unwavering dedication to denying the need for action on the problem, often with weak and long-disproved arguments about supposed weaknesses in the science behind global warming."
Venomously, Science Fiction American's editorial comment continued: "Within the community of scientists and others concerned about anthropogenic climate change, those whom Inhofe calls skeptics are more commonly termed contrarians, naysayers and denialists." Yah-Boo! This name-calling marks the depth of unscientific desperation to which the proponents of the "global warming" nonsense have now sunk.
Unscientific American pompously continued: "Not everyone who questions climate change science fits that description, of course - some people are genuinely unaware of the facts or honestly disagree about their interpretation. What distinguishes the true naysayers is an unwavering dedication to denying the need for action on the problem, often with weak and long-disproved arguments about supposed weaknesses in the science behind global warming."
Best of the Web: The UK Meteorological Office: slightly less reliable than tea leaves or cock entrails
Nothing to see here, move along please
Dear, oh dear. The poor chap. I fear the time will soon come - if it hasn't already - when the phrase "I work for the Met Office" will command about as much respect as "I was in charge of the New Orleans levee defences in the run-up to Katrina" or "I'm head of security at Lagos International Airport." The UK Meteorological Office - established in 1854 - is supposed to be Britain's greatest authority on forecasting the weather. So how come these days its predictions are so risibly inaccurate you'd probably be better off consulting tea leaves or cock entrails?
© Unknown
According to the United State Geological Survery, the 5.9 magnitude quake struck at 11:48 a.m. in northwest Mexico, 13 miles away from Guadalupe Victoria.
A group of 15 people at the Imperial Sand Dunes outside Yuma said the quake felt like a big semi-truck passing by.
On Twitter, user duznn wrote, "That earthquake must have been a big one - we just felt it in Phoenix!"
User wmd404 wrote, "Here in downtown Phoenix we just felt the aftershock of another earthquake in Baja ... building swaying back and forth again."
According to the USGS, the first quake was followed by a 4.9 magnitude aftershock at 11:53 a.m.
There was also a 3.4 aftershock at 12:04 p.m. and 4.0 aftershock at 12:07 p.m.
The most advanced research centers have claimed that there is little time to avoid an irreversible catastrophe. James Hansen, from the NASA Goddard Institute, has said that a proportion of 350 parts of carbon dioxide by the million is still tolerable; however, the figure today is 390 and growing at a pace of 2 parts by million every year exceeding the levels of 600 thousand years ago...
Each one of the past two decades has been the warmest since the first records were taken while carbon dioxide increased 80 parts by million in the past 150 years.
The meltdown of ice in the Artic Sea and of the huge two-kilometer thick icecap covering Greenland; of the South American glaciers feeding its main fresh water sources and the enormous volume covering the Antarctic; of the remaining icecap on the Kilimanjaro, the ice on the Himalayan and the large frozen area of Siberia are visible. Outstanding scientists fear abrupt quantitative changes in these natural phenomena that bring about the change.
© Axel Schmidt/AFPA woman listens to Barack Obama's speech at the Copenhagen climate change conference on 18 December.
Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful "deal" so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen.
China's strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the west had failed the world's poor once again. And sure enough, the aid agencies, civil society movements and environmental groups all took the bait. The failure was "the inevitable result of rich countries refusing adequately and fairly to shoulder their overwhelming responsibility", said Christian Aid. "Rich countries have bullied developing nations," fumed Friends of the Earth International.
All very predictable, but the complete opposite of the truth. Even George Monbiot, writing in yesterday's Guardian, made the mistake of singly blaming Obama. But I saw Obama fighting desperately to salvage a deal, and the Chinese delegate saying "no", over and over again. Monbiot even approvingly quoted the Sudanese delegate Lumumba Di-Aping, who denounced the Copenhagen accord as "a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries".
