When future generations look back on the global-warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which the official temperature records - on which the entire panic ultimately rested - were systematically "adjusted" to show the Earth as having warmed much more than the actual data justified.

Two weeks ago, under the headline "How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming", I wrote about Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming.

This was only the latest of many examples of a practice long recognised by expert observers around the world - one that raises an ever larger question mark over the entire official surface-temperature record.

Spokane - Rainfall described as milky-colored, dusty or dirty fell across parts of Washington, Oregon and Idaho, with its origin is unclear.

The National Weather Service received reports of the dirty rain from more than 15 cities from Hermiston, Ore., to Rathdrum, Idaho, on Friday. The weather service's Spokane office collected water samples that will be sent to a lab for testing.

The light gray dirt in the rainfall coated vehicles and windows across the region as a rainstorm that originated in the Pacific moved in.

A so-called "atmospheric river of rain" began falling on Northern California on Friday, bringing worries about flash floods, high winds and mudslides but offering little relief to a state that has been left parched by several years of drought.

The storm, also known as a "Pineapple Express" because it develops from a ribbon of moist air moving across the Pacific Ocean, was forecast to dump as much as 10 inches (25 cm) of rain in coastal mountains.

National Weather Service meteorologist Austin Cross said more than three inches (7.5 cm) of rain had been already recorded in the hills of western Sonoma County by early Friday afternoon.

Fire crews responded to flooding in Siskiyou County, near the Oregon border, placing sandbags to protect homes and minor mudslides were reported in Washington state. Flash flood advisories were also issued for Sonoma, Napa and Marin counties in Northern California.

High winds caused more than 80 flights be canceled and hundreds more delayed at San Francisco International Airport, knocked down trees and caused scattered power outages.

According to Pacific Gas and Electric, more than 114,000 homes and businesses lost power, although the majority of them had been restored by late-afternoon.

Hundreds of dead birds were found in an El Reno parking lot.

El Reno citizen Janince Wodrings told Passoth she like to watch the birds fly around near the Walmart on Country Club Drive just off I-40.

"Have you ever seen a school of fish? They will swirl and swoop, well that's the way the starlings look," Woodring said.

In the evening, they cover every tree and telephone wire. Most fly away during the day. That is when it is obvious that something is wrong. Friday morning, there were hundreds of dead grackle and starlings.

Thousands of starfish have been stranded on the beaches of South Padre Island after what investigators are calling a "perfect storm" for starfish.

It's thought that high winds and strong currents coincided exactly to wash up the creatures that had been close to shore feeding.

It's only the third time a case like this has ever been reported, the last being in 2009.

At first it was thought they were victims of the polar vortex, which swept the country during January but then investigators realised it was something else

A mother and her two daughters were taken to the hospital after being attacked by their own pit bull Thursday evening in McKinney.

The dog turned on the family just before 6 p.m. inside their home in the 3000 block of Kingsbury Drive, according to a McKinney police spokesperson.

One of the girls was attacked, but managed to escape the home with her sister.

One neighbor said she heard screams and saw the younger of the two girls bleeding in front of the home, with serious injuries to her lower legs.

Another neighbor was helping to apply pressure to her wounds.

The dog was still attacking the mother inside the home when officers arrived. Police said at least one officer shot and killed the dog to prevent further harm.

Three people were killed and another injured Friday after they were attacked by an elephant in West Bengal's Jalpaiguri district, a forest official said.

The incident happened when the tusker strayed into the Kathambari village under the under the Apalchand range of Baikunthapur forest division.

"The elephant had strayed into the village and attacked people killing three of them and injuring another. While one person was killed on the spot, two others succumbed to their injuries in a hospital," Divisional Forest Officer (Baikunthapur) P.R. Pradhan told IANS.

The victims have been identified as Rabin Orao, Surajit Katham and Benoy De Sarkar.

Forest officials later managed to push the animal back into the jungle.

Locals staged a demonstration outside the forest official office seeking compensation for the dead.

Source: Indo-Asian News Service

Spanish emergency services have rescued at least 220 people trapped by snow on roads in northern Spain.

Hundreds of cars were stuck for up to 17 hours overnight on roads between Cantabria and the province of Palencia.

Local media report temperatures of -15C (5F) and up 40cm (1.3ft) of snow.

Around 100 British expats and tourists were among those trapped. Spanish police rescued several stranded in their vehicles shortly after arrival in Santander by ferry from Portsmouth.

Many had come to Spain hoping for a warm-weather holiday, but ended up having to spend the night in the sports hall of a local school and the dining room of a hotel.

The country is in the middle of a cold spell that is expected to worsen over the next three days, with cold weather alerts issued for 20 provinces.

Heavy snow fell across northern and central Italy on Thursday, causing travel problems and some schools to close, while the south was hit by floods and landslides.

Snowfall blanketing parts of Italy hampered travel plans, causing trains in north-west Piedmont and Liguria to be cancelled. So far 35 trains have been affected, including those on the Genoa and Turin lines, Tgcom24 reported.

The cold snap has, however, been good news for skiers, with up to 60cm of snow falling in the mountainous Cuneo province by the French border. Schools in the area have been closed for the rest of the week, MeteoWeb said.

New data show strikingly regular patterns, from weeks to eons

From The Earth Institute at Columbia University:

Vast ranges of volcanoes hidden under the oceans are presumed by scientists to be the gentle giants of the planet, oozing lava at slow, steady rates along mid-ocean ridges. But a new study shows that they flare up on strikingly regular cycles, ranging from two weeks to 100,000 years - and, that they erupt almost exclusively during the first six months of each year. The pulses - apparently tied to short- and long-term changes in earth's orbit, and to sea levels - may help trigger natural climate swings. Scientists have already speculated that volcanic cycles on land emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide might influence climate; but up to now there was no evidence from submarine volcanoes. The findings suggest that models of earth's natural climate dynamics, and by extension human-influenced climate change, may have to be adjusted. The study appears this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.


"People have ignored seafloor volcanoes on the idea that their influence is small - but that's because they are assumed to be in a steady state, which they're not," said the study's author, marine geophysicist Maya Tolstoy of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "They respond to both very large forces, and to very small ones, and that tells us that we need to look at them much more closely." A related study by a separate team this week in the journal Science bolsters Tolstoy's case by showing similar long-term patterns of submarine volcanism in an Antarctic region Tolstoy did not study.

Volcanically active mid-ocean ridges crisscross earth's seafloors like stitching on a baseball, stretching some 37,000 miles. They are the growing edges of giant tectonic plates; as lavas push out, they form new areas of seafloor, which comprise some 80 percent of the planet's crust. Conventional wisdom holds that they erupt at a fairly constant rate - but Tolstoy finds that the ridges are actually now in a languid phase. Even at that, they produce maybe eight times more lava annually than land volcanoes. Due to the chemistry of their magmas, the carbon dioxide they are thought to emit is currently about the same as, or perhaps a little less than, from land volcanoes - about 88 million metric tons a year. But were the undersea chains to stir even a little bit more, their CO2 output would shoot up, says Tolstoy.