Floods in southern Mozambique have displaced up to 70 000 people and cut power exports to energy-hungry neighbour South Africa in half, officials said on Thursday.

The south and centre of the country have been placed on red alert after experiencing the heaviest rainfall since devastating floods killed some 800 people in 2000.

In some places current water levels are higher than they were during that disaster.

As the Limpopo River raged through the southern town of Chokwe, people slept in the open, many by the roadside, local media reported. The record flood levels submerged houses in some places, emergency officials said.

"We are sending seven days of food for 70 000 people," the country's international humanitarian head Lola Castro told AFP.

Report says thousands of lives could have been saved and damage to ecosystems avoided if early warnings heeded.

Europe has failed to learn the lessons from many environmental and health disasters like Chernobyl, leaded petrol and DDT insecticides, and is now ignoring warnings about bee deaths, GM food and nanotechnology, according to an 800-page report by the European Environment Agency.

Thousands of lives could have been saved and extensive damage to ecosystems avoided if the "precautionary principle" had been applied on the basis of early warnings, say the authors of the 2013 Late Lessons from Early warnings report published on Wednesday.

They accuse industry of working to corrupt or undermine regulation by spinning and manipulating research and applying pressure on governments for financial benefit. "[It has] deliberately recruited reputable scientists, media experts and politicians to call on if their products were linked to possible hazards. Manufacturing doubt, disregarding scientific evidence of risks and claiming over-regulation appear to be a deliberate strategy for some industry groups and think tanks to undermine precautionary decision-making."

The peer-reviewed study, which is aimed to improve understanding of scientific information, looks at 18 areas including radiation from mobile phones, birth control pills in the aquatic environment, and invasive species. It found that governments often introduced laws much too late to prevent deaths and massive financial costs, but were highly likely to ignore scientific warnings and resist any regulation. The authors found more than 80 cases where no regulation was introduced when it later turned out that the risk from a technology or chemical was real, or still unproven.

More counterpunch to Obama's recent speech.

Rocket scientists -vs- James Hansen, "in God we trust, all others bring data"

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ - A group of 20 ex-NASA scientists have concluded that the science used to support the man-made climate change hypothesis is not settled and no convincing physical evidence exists to support catastrophic climate change forecasts.

Beginning in February 2012, the group of scientists calling themselves The Right Climate Stuff (TRCS) team received presentations by scientists representing all sides of the climate change debate and embarked on an in-depth review of a number of climate studies.

If you have not read this yet, now is the time. Given what president Obama recently said about skeptics in his inauguration address, I thought this 2010 article would be worth revisiting.

In Germany, there's a revolution going on. That revolution is that they are backing away from the global warming issue, and taking on much more pragmatic outlook on it an many things "green". For example, they are going big on coal power. Below is one excerpt from the series, describing the David and Goliath story of Steve McIntyre. Links to all eight articles of the series follow. I suggest sharing this far and wide, because it tells the skeptic story quite well. - Anthony

Need proof that human activities can influence the environment? Consider this Facebook update from the National Weather Service office in Pittsburgh Tuesday evening:

Check out the band of snow being generated by the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Plant near Shippingport. Up to an inch of snow has fallen as a result of the steam billowing from the stacks.

A formal investigation was launched Tuesday to determine the cause of death of about 280 sea turtles in the Gulf of Dulce, on the southern Pacific coast, a situation that was denounced by environmentalists, the Costa Rican Environment Ministry said. "The initial aim is to collect information and verify if it was ... caused by human action," the ministry said.

The alert over the finding of the dead turtles was given by the environmental organization Widecast, which had received a report from residents of the Osa peninsula. The reports of the environmentalists say that along with the turtles, other sea creatures had turned up dead along the coast, including sailfish and marlin.

Although authorities have not yet been able to determine the turles' cause of death, some hypotheses point to fishing in the area using lines that may be several kilometers (miles) long.

An unusual event playing out high in the atmosphere above the Arctic Circle is setting the stage for what could be weeks upon weeks of frigid cold across wide swaths of the U.S., having already helped to bring cold and snowy weather to parts of Europe.This phenomenon, known as a "sudden stratospheric warming event," started on Jan. 6, but is something that is just beginning to have an effect on weather patterns across North America and Europe.

While the physics behind sudden stratospheric warming events are complicated, their implications are not: such events are often harbingers of colder weather in North America and Eurasia. The ongoing event favors colder and possibly stormier weather for as long as four to eight weeks after the event, meaning that after a mild start to the winter, the rest of this month and February could bring the coldest weather of the winter season to parts of the U.S., along with a heightened chance of snow.

A dolphin tangled in fishing line sought help from a diver in the waters of Hawaii. The amazing encounter on January 11 was captured on video and the diver, Keller Laros, spent the better part of eight minutes tending to the needy mammal who readily accepted the help. Mr Laros was leading a group of snorkelers for a manta ray dive experience off the Big Island's Kona International Airport when the dolphin squealed out. The diver explained, 'The way he came right up and pushed himself into me there was no question this dolphin was there for help.'

UPDATE: See the first ever CONUS Tavg value for the year from the NCDC State of the Art Climate Reference Network here and compare its value for July 2012. There's another surprise.

Glaring inconsistencies found between State of the Climate (SOTC) reports sent to the press and public and the "official" climate database record for the United States. Using NCDC's own data, July 2012 can no longer be claimed to be the "hottest month on record".

UPDATE: Click here for a WSJ story on the record.

First, I should point out that I didn't go looking for this problem, it was a serendipitous discovery that came from me looking up the month-to-month average temperature for the CONtiguous United States (CONUS) for another project which you'll see a report on in a couple of days. What started as an oddity noted for a single month now seems clearly to be systemic over a two-year period. On the eve of what will likely be a pronouncement from NCDC on 2012 being the "hottest year ever", and since what I found is systemic and very influential to the press and to the public, I thought I should make my findings widely known now. Everything I've found should be replicable independently using the links and examples I provide. I'm writing the article as a timeline of discovery.

At issue is the difference between temperature data claims in the NCDC State of the Climate reports issued monthly and at year-end and the official NCDC climate database made available to the public. Please read on for my full investigation.

You can see the most current SOTC for the USA here.

Farmers have spoken out about worrying levels of lamb and calf losses on their farms.

It follows reports from scannersthat they are seeing unusually high numbers of barren animals, failed pregnancies and dead foetuses on some farms this season.

An Oxfordshire beef producer scanned 80 suckler cows two weeks ago and was shocked to discover that 43 were in calf and 37 were empty.

"We're a closed herd and we have never had this problem before," he said. "It was painful doing the PDs (pregnancy diagnostic tests) - it felt like having your teeth pulled out with no anaesthetic."

The farmer is not putting the losses down to poor nutrition as, despite this year's bad weather, there has been plenty of grass.