The ABC is reporting an incredible sight in the skies over east Victoria, in the Gippsland area. It looks like a UFO, but it's entirely natural.

No, it's not chemtrails. Instead, it's a type of cloud called a Fallstreak Hole. You may recognize that it glimmers in a way that's similar to the contrails of jets. That's because a similar phenomenon causes it. That rainbow look is the result of water crystals in the clouds freezing and refracting the light. Those frozen crystals have also made one patch of the cloud slightly heavier, pulling it downward from the rest of the cloud layer, and giving it that odd, punch-out look.

I mentioned contrails earlier because they are also caused by frozen water droplets hanging in the air, gleaming in the sunlight. But contrails happen when warm air is released with jet exhaust and collides with supercooled water in the stratosphere. This causes the water to freeze instantly, and thus you can see a long trail of frozen vapor where a plane just flew overhead.

We are being beaten by a one two punch. From one side we have the sun diminishing its radiance and on the other volcanoes have gone berserk these past few years. And we have 'official' smoke signals going up from the ICC global warming crowd that it is not warming after all with no sorry and no admission of being wrong or lying. (Be sure to read the special note at the end about the new official ICC statements, a new volcano blowing its stack since yesterday, and a spiritual note to global warming liars.)

Until recently, it has been the hard science of astrophysics that has been warning us that the sun has entered a phase of low activity, which will drive cooler weather here on earth. The head of the Space Research section of the Russian Academy of Science, Professor Khabibullo Abdussamatov, in 2006 issued a press release, warning that the world should prepare for imminent global cooling. He predicted that the global cooling would start in 2012 - 2015, and would likely peak around 2055.

"On the basis of our [solar emission] research, we developed a scenario of a global cooling of the Earth's climate by the middle of this century and the beginning of a regular 200-year-long cycle of the climate's global warming at the start of the 22nd century," said Abdussamatov. He and his colleagues had concluded that a period of global cooling similar to one seen in the late 17th century - when canals froze in the Netherlands and people had to leave their dwellings in Greenland - could start in 2012-2015 and reach its peak in 2055-2060.

The Russians did not calculate into their predictions these record breaking volcanic emissions into the atmosphere. Alone the sun was throwing us into cooling. Volcanic cooling is being added to the formula before our very eyes and only the blind at this point cannot see what is coming.

A 16 metre long Minke whale has washed up on Retamar beach near Almeria city today.

It's a common sort of whale in the Med, but this fully grown specimen caused much alarm when it was spotted at about 12:30 today just offshore, and calls were placed to the emergency services.

Specialists from the sealife charity Equimar turned up and confirmed the animal was dead. Specimens were taken from the animal for later analysis, but a preliminary check by the specialists indicated that the animal had lost its dorsal fin, probably by being hit by a fishing boat, and probably died shortly afterwards as it would be unable to hunt.

A ten year-old fifth grader is dead after he and another student were attacked on their way to school in Anhui by three wild dogs, reports Sina News Video.

They were heading to school at 7am on October 29 in Guzhen County when the dogs, described as "evil" and quite large, attacked. The other child, a nine year old, sustained an injury to his arm but was able to escape.

When help arrived, the dogs were still surrounding the boy's body. Police brought more than 60 guns to the scene and killed all the dogs on site.

© i24newsWaterspout in Tel Aviv, November 3, 2014

Israel Meteorological Service to i24news: Waterspout is just as beautiful as a tornado but much less harmful.

The Israeli fall offered Monday morning a beautiful natural phenomenon - a waterspout.

A waterspout is an columnar vortex (usually appearing as a funnel-shaped cloud) that occurs over a body of water, usually above the sea, Amit Savir of the training department in Israel Meteorological Service told i24news.

The phenomenon is usually accompanied by lightning and thunderstorm, Savir added.

Unlike the infamous tornedo, which causes great damage in its wake due to wind speeds of more than 300 miles per hour, diameter of more than two miles (3.2 km) across, and which stays on the ground for dozens of miles (more than 100 km), "the waterspout is very local, it stays above the water and rarely hits land. If the waterspout does hit land, the damage could be minor," Savir explained.

It was the earliest and heaviest snow in several places since records have been kept dating as far back as 1880.
100 Year Snow Records broken across the South Eastern US on October 31st and November 01st. It was the earliest and heaviest snow in several places since records have been kept dating as far back as 1880.

Reduced sunspot count shows Solar hibernation is occurring along with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) showing a cooling Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation (AMO) Atlantic Ocean temperature is predicted to fall by 2020, which screams of cooling events to take place globally.

Hurricane Vance continues to strengthen over the eastern Pacific Ocean, about 500 miles southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico. It became a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale Sunday evening with winds of 105 mph.

Vance earlier became a Category 1 hurricane Sunday morning, making it the 14th hurricane of 2014 within the Eastern Pacific basin. (Genevieve, which started in the Eastern Pacific, became a hurricane in the Central Pacific basin -- if one counts Genevieve, there have been 15 hurricanes with Eastern Pacific origins this year.)

Hurricane Vance is tracking to the northwest, remaining well off the Mexican Pacific coast.

However, Vance is expected to take a northeast turn toward the southwest Mexican coast during the week, as a mid-level ridge near the southern Baja California peninsula shifts eastward and a trough approaches.

A fanged creature not seen in Afghanistan for more than 60 years has been spotted by a research team in the northeast part of the country.

The Kashmir musk deer was last seen in Afghanistan in 1948. But a team headed up by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) reports in the October 22 issue of the journal Oryx that it made five sightings in a range of land that included alpine meadows and steep, rocky outcrops.

The sightings featured a solitary male that was spotted three different times in the same area, as well as one female with a juvenile deer and one solitary female. The area where they were seen was scattered with dense bushes of juniper and rhododendron.

Unfortunately, the extremely skittish deer, already difficult to spot, did not remain in place long enough to be photographed, the team said.

Bird populations across Europe have experienced sharp declines over the past 30 years, with the majority of losses from the most common species, say the University of Exeter, the RSPB and the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS) in a new study. However, numbers of some less common birds have risen.

The study, published today in the journal Ecology Letters, reveals a decrease of 421 million individual birds over 30 years. Around 90 percent of these losses were from the 36 most common and widespread species, including house sparrows, skylarks, grey partridges and starlings, highlighting the need for greater efforts to halt the continent-wide declines of our most familiar countryside birds.

Richard Inger from the University of Exeter said: "It is very worrying that the most common species of bird are declining rapidly because it is this group of birds that people benefit from the most."

"It is becoming increasingly clear that interaction with the natural world and wildlife is central to human wellbeing and significant loss of common birds could be quite detrimental to human society."

"IPCC Chairman Dr. Rajendra Pachauri was right to advocate "a global agreement to finally reverse course on climate change" when he spoke to delegates tasked with approving the IPCC Synthesis Report, released on Sunday," said Tom Harris, executive director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC). "The new direction governments should follow must be one in which the known needs of people suffering today are given priority over problems that might someday be faced by those yet to be born."

"Yet, exactly the opposite is happening," continued Harris. "Of the roughly one billion U.S. dollars spent every day across the world on climate finance, only 6% of it is devoted to helping people adapt to climate change in the present. The rest is wasted trying to stop improbable future climatic events. That is immoral."

ICSC chief science advisor, Professor Bob Carter, former Head of the Department of Earth Sciences at James Cook University in Australia and author of Taxing Air explained, "Science has yet to provide unambiguous evidence that problematic, or even measurable, human-caused global warming is occurring. The hypothesis of dangerous man-made climate change is based solely on computerized models that have repeatedly failed in practice in the real world."