Far from being the final word on climate change, last week's United Nations report suggesting near certainty that human activity is causing a rise in Earth's temperatures is actually further proof that the conventional wisdom is dead wrong and the Earth is cooling right on schedule, according to one of the leading scientists who is skeptical of the climate-change premise.

Last week, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, reported it was 95 percent certain that climate change was the result of human activity, specifically the burning of fossil fuels that emit "greenhouse gases."

"That's the result that they get when you premeditate your science," said Dr. Tim Ball, former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg. "When you set out to establish a certain scientific outcome and you program your computers to do that, you shouldn't be surprised if that's the result you get.

The problem is what they're getting out of their computers is not fitting with what's actually happening. Of course, that's been the problem with the IPCC all along."

Ball told WND the deception of the IPCC and its allies can be seen in how the reports are released, with the policy statement drawing headlines while the scientific information comes later and is largely ignored.

"(The summary for policymakers) is a document written to scare to public and scare the politicians into providing more funding for their own research and their own political agenda," he said. "The actual science report, which it supposedly is based on isn't going to be released right away. They've always done it his way because the summary for policymakers completely disagrees with what the science report is saying. They know that the media and the public are not going to read the science report. And they also know that if any of them get into it, they won't understand it anyway."

Lightning strikes killed 32 people, including nine children, during storms at the weekend in India.

It is not rare for lightning to strike someone when it is monsoon season, but that the sheer number of the death toll is extremely rare.

The strikes killed people in the eastern Indian states of Bihar and Jharkhand.

'About 24 people including seven children were killed Saturday and Sunday by bolts of lightning across Bihar,' State Disaster Management Minister Renu Kumari Kushwaha said.

In neighbouring Jharkhand, eight people including two children died, Puran Mahto, an official in the state's Dhanbad district said.

Torrential rains accompanied by strong winds uprooted trees, damaged houses and brought down power cables across the region on Sunday night.

"The blizzard in the US was, be it only shortly, on the Dutch television news," says reader Argiris Diamantis.

"However, in spite of the fact that many people of Turkish origin are living here, heavy snowfall in Turkey is not considered to be a news item in the Netherlands.

"In Keremali Akyaz Plateau district about 10 most elderly stranded citizens were rescued after heavy snowfall there mounted up to 70 cm (27 inches)."

According to information received from the region, they were caught unprepared.

http://medyabar.com/haber/61716/yaylada-mahsur-kalanlar-kurtarildi.aspx

Thanks to Argiris Diamantis in the Netherlands for this link

Event Time
2013-10-06 16:38:08 UTC
2013-10-07 01:38:08 UTC+09:00 at epicenter

Location
12.280°N 141.693°E depth=104.0km (64.6mi)

Nearby Cities
306km (190mi) NNE of Fais, Micronesia
360km (224mi) WSW of Tamuning-Tumon-Harmon Village, Guam
361km (224mi) WSW of Mangilao Village, Guam
367km (228mi) WSW of Dededo Village, Guam
357km (222mi) WSW of Hagatna, Guam

Technical Survey

Sturgis , South Dakota - The cost to what is being called one of the worst blizzards in South Dakota's history will reach into the multi-millions. In Sturgis and other Black Hills communities, collapsed roofs, extended power outages, damage from felled trees, the cost of around the clock emergency response divisions and the equipment needed; and the extra crews that are being brought in - will be the norm in the foreseeable future.

But in the vast expanse of the foothills and prairies north, east, and west of the Black Hills, a huge economic impact is beginning to emerge. Lost livestock, drifting with 60 mile per hour wind gusts and blinding snow, were driven with the storm, trailing over buried fence lines. Those that made it through the blizzard, are still lost or stranded. And reports of hundreds of head of livestock that didn't make it, are beginning to come in.

According to Meade County Dispatch, owners are attempting to locate lost livestock. Being hampered by poor road conditions and unable to reach livestock once located, is slowing not only that process but an accurate count of how much producers have lost.

Experts predicted a very busy hurricane season, but scientists say there has been a 'mysterious lack of activity' this year.

The unusually weak Atlantic storms can be partially blamed on factors such as the especially dry air, lack of El Nino, and colder than normal waters, but as a whole it has scientists scratching their heads.

It also has many wondering what factors they need to start considering in order to improve seasonal predictions in the future.
The weak year also appears to be a trend, according to at least on scientist.

'My research has highlighted the dramatic multi-year downturn in global hurricane activity beginning in 2007 which slightly recovered before dropping even further here in 2013,' writes Dr. Ryan Maue.

According to Maue, only four other years on record have had a lower total storm energy as of September 30: 1962, 1977, 1983, and 1994.

Though the number of storms has been near normal, they have been weaker or more short-lived than usual in the reports the Washington Post.

A big reason for this could be dry air.

For a couple of weeks, an unusual earthquake swarm is going on in Eastern Romania, close to Moldovia border. Galati is the province where the earthquakes are happening.

The Galati area experienced dozens of earthquakes up to a Magnitude of 3.8 (last one just before writing this article). The quakes have an extremely shallow depth, have a relatively high shaking intensity and are causing a lot of damage in the villages near the epicenter areas (the epicenters have to be situated in an area of many kms and not in one location).

Some people are not waiting for more earthquakes and left their houses due do the damage, fearing a collapse if further quakes would strike.

Galati is a region with relatively low seismic activity and earthquake swarms like the current events are only known from the newspapers in other regions / countries (ER could trace some unconfirmed reports that a number of earthquakes occurred in March 1894!).

Winds gusting to 55 meters per second (125 miles per hour) halted air traffic and caused power outages on Okinawa's Miyakojima island as Typhoon Fitow blew through on course for northern Taiwan and China's coast, with a second storm following close behind.

Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau hoisted a typhoon warning as Fitow neared the island's north coast today, while Chinese maritime authorities issued red alerts, the highest level, for storm tides and waves, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Fitow was heading west-northwest at about 20 kilometers per hour, some 220 miles (350 kilometers) north of Taipei at 1 p.m. Japan time, the Japan Meteorological Agency reported. Its central atmospheric pressure was 960 hectopascals with maximum sustained winds of 40 meters per second.

Typhoon Danas, with a central pressure of 970 hectopascals, was about 650 miles southwest of Okinawa's main island, moving west-northwest at 35 kilometers per hour, according to JMA. The storm is forecast to curve northward after passing over Okinawa tomorrow, brushing past the southwest coast of Kyushu and southern South Korea before turning northeast through the Sea of Japan.

Fitow caused blackouts of 6,800 homes in Miyakojima city, public broadcaster NHK reported. It also forced delays and cancellations of some flights to and from Okinawa, All Nippon Airways Co. and Japan Airlines Co. said on their websites today.

Fitow is forecast to make landfall between east China's Fujian and Zhejiang provinces tomorrow morning, Xinhua said. Storm tides are expected to rise as much as 2 meters above normal along the coast, Xinhua said.

About two million people in 27 provinces are still being affected by flooding, the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department reported on Sunday.

The death toll from the floods had risen to 31 as of Sunday morning, the department said.

Chanthaburi, Chon Buri and Khon Kaen provinces have recently been hit by flooding, but the situation had eased in Kanchanaburi, Prachuap Khiri Khan, Chumphon, Kalasin, Nakhon Ratchasima, Phayao, Mae Hong Son, Lampang and Mukdahan.

According to the department, the Pasak Jolasid dam was holding 1.04 billion cubic metres of water and was discharging 60.5 million cubic metres of water every three hours.

Water levels in the Chao Phraya river in the eastern part of Ayutthaya's Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya district had risen by five to eight centimetres.

In Ayutthaya's Tha Rua district, water levels continued to rise and 55 villages had been hit by floods.

In Ayutthaya's Nakhon Luang district, water levels in the Pasak river increased to 7.54 metres, about 0.76 metre higher than its banks.

Chicago - The upper Midwest was recovering on Saturday from an unusual autumn wallop from a fierce snowstorm that trapped dozens of people in vehicles in western South Dakota and a swarm of tornadoes that left at least 15 people injured in rural Nebraska and Iowa.

More than 80 motorists remained stranded in western South Dakota after a blizzard rolled out of the Rocky Mountains and dumped up to three feet of snow on parts of the Northern Plains.

"Our priority right now is to get those people to a warm location," said Alexa White, spokeswoman for the Rapid City-Pennington County Emergency Management Office in South Dakota. "Many of them are out of gas in their vehicles."

To the east, emergency responders combed through debris in Iowa and Nebraska after 18 reports of tornadoes touching down overnight, including some cutting a swath as wide as a mile.

Fifteen people were injured in Wayne, Nebraska, including one man who suffered broken bones when his pickup truck was hit by a tornado, according to Nebraska emergency management spokeswoman Jodie Fawl.

Fawl said the twister did millions of dollars of damage - pummelling a local airplane hanger, farm implement supply businesses and several homes.