As the Met Office desperately tries to salvage its reputation, another of this 'warm' winter's ice disasters is unfolding in the Sea of Okhotsk.

First it was a national joke. Then its professional failings became a national disaster. Now, the dishonesty of its attempts to fight off a barrage of criticism has become a real national scandal. I am talking yet again of that sad organisation the UK Met Office, as it now defends its bizarre record with claims as embarrassingly absurd as any which can ever have been made by highly-paid government officials.

Let us begin with last week's astonishing claim that, far from failing to predict the coldest November and December since records began, the Met Office had secretly warned the Cabinet Office in October that Britain was facing an early and extremely cold winter. In what looked like a concerted effort at damage limitation, this was revealed by the BBC's environmental correspondent, Roger Harrabin, a leading evangelist for man-made climate change. But the Met Office website - as reported by the blog Autonomous Mind - still contains a chart it published in October, predicting that UK temperatures between December and February would be up to 2C warmer than average.

So if the Met Office told the Government in October the opposite of what it told the public, it seems to be admitting that its information was false and misleading. But we have no evidence of what it did tell the Government other than its own latest account. And on the model of the famous Cretan Paradox, how can we now trust that statement?

Months after the US government declared the waters in the Gulf of Mexico safe, thick layers of oil have been found along Louisiana coastal marshes, prompting local officials to accuse relevant authorities of 'cover-up.'

Louisiana officials say parts of the state's coastline are still being fouled more than eight months after British Petroleum's (BP) Deepwater Horizon rig caused the biggest oil disaster in the United States.

"This is the biggest cover-up in the history of America,'' Associated Press quoted Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser as saying.

On Friday, Robert Barham, secretary of Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, joined Nungesser on a tour of the area.

"It has been eight months since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, and five months since the well was capped. While workers along the coast dedicated themselves to cleaning up our shores there is still so much to be done," Barham said in a statement.

The heavily saturated area that reporters saw was 30 feet (9 meters) to 100 feet (30 meters) wide in sections.

"There's been no mechanism to clean that up thus far," the parish president said.

"Every day, this shoreline is moving inland," lessening flood protection for residents, Nungesser added.

Noctilucent clouds were captured on the following video by the International Space Station's Science Officer, Ed Lu, in 2003. Now, the rare high-altitude clouds are showing up at lower and lower latitudes and scientists aren't sure why.

Date-Time:
Sunday, January 09, 2011 at 17:21:55 UTC

Monday, January 10, 2011 at 04:21:55 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
19.281°S, 168.132°E

Depth:
32.8 km (20.4 miles)

Region:
VANUATU

Distances:
125 km (75 miles) WNW of Isangel, Tanna, Vanuatu

170 km (105 miles) S of PORT-VILA, Efate, Vanuatu

250 km (155 miles) N of Tadine, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia

1785 km (1110 miles) ENE of BRISBANE, Queensland, Australia

Date-Time:
Sunday, January 09, 2011 at 10:03:43 UTC

Sunday, January 09, 2011 at 09:03:43 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
19.163°S, 168.326°E

Depth:
17.4 km (10.8 miles)

Region:
VANUATU

Distances:
110 km (65 miles) WNW of Isangel, Tanna, Vanuatu

160 km (100 miles) S of PORT-VILA, Efate, Vanuatu

270 km (165 miles) N of Tadine, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia

1815 km (1130 miles) ENE of BRISBANE, Queensland, Australia

A few things that should be considered when talking about so-called "chemtrails":

1) Obviously, there is some "spraying" that goes on and it's not for the benefit of humanity. I've heard a few stories from people about very low flying planes dispersing stuff that lands all over everything or makes people sick. And I do mean LOW flying.

2) Spraying that actually affects a designated area beneath the sprayer (the plane in question) must be at a fairly low altitude otherwise what is sprayed will not come down on the area beneath the spraying. This is due to the fact that our atmosphere has a number of layers and each layer has its own temperature and wind speed and direction, and very often, things in one layer take a very long time and distance to mix or mingle with other layers, IF they mix at all. Usually, the wind speeds in the upper layers are such that anything deposited there might only penetrate to lower, weather, layers, after many thousands of miles of travel. It's a very nonlinear situation and highly, impossibly, unpredictable.

3) So, if you are talking about chemical spraying that you can see above in the sky, that then falls on the area below it, you must be talking about low altitude spraying.

4) Therefore, trails that are very high in the sky that have no hope of ever interacting with the ground below them cannot properly be called "chemtrails" except, perhaps, if a chemical is being sprayed that is supposed to affect the weather (and even that is done fairly low). Cloud seeding is done by dispersing elements such as dry ice crystals or silver iodide in the atmosphere with an airplane or even ground based stations. Seeding clouds is believed to promote condensation of water droplets, thus, rain.

Officials investigating the mysterious deaths of up to 100 birds on a road in Sweden say tests have revealed they suffered external injuries.

Dozens of jackdaws were found in the centre of Falkoeping prompting comparisons with the mysterious deaths of 3,000 birds in the US.

Sweden's National Veterinary Institute said it had tested five of the birds and found evidence of traumatic injury.

Food inflation is here and it's here to stay. We can see it getting worse every time we buy groceries. Basic food commodities like wheat, corn, soybeans, and rice have been skyrocketing since July, 2010 to record highs. These sustained price increases are only expected to continue as food production shortfalls really begin to take their toll this year and beyond.

This summer Russia banned exports of wheat to ensure their nation's supply, which sparked complaints of protectionism. The U.S. agriculture community is already talking about rationing corn over ethanol mandates versus supply concerns. We've seen nothing yet in terms of food protectionism.

Global food shortages have forced emergency meetings at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization where they claim "urgent action" is needed. They point to extreme weather as the main contributing factor to the growing food shortages. However, commodity speculation has also been targeted as one of the culprits.

Kizimen Volcano on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula sent a plume toward the west-southwest on January 6, 2010, according to a NASA statement. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA's Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured this natural-color image the same day.

Low-angled sunlight illuminates the southern face of the plume, leaving the northern side in shadow.

The plume's beige color suggests that its visible components are a mixture of volcanic ash and water vapor. The slopes of Kizimen and the nearby land surfaces appear dull gray-brown, likely resulting from a coating of volcanic ash. (A wider view of the region shows areas father from the volcano blanketed in snowy white.)

Monday, officers with the said an investigation into what killed nearly 100,000 fresh water drum fish has turned up the possibility of a virus or bacteria.

It was on Thursday when people started reporting the dead fish lining the banks of the Arkansas River.

Game and fish officers said that during their investigation, they discovered the dead fish covered about 17 miles of river from the Ozark Lock and Dam downstream to River Mile 240, directly south of Hartman, Ark.