Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

Heaviest snowfall in 60 years hits China


China Daily
Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:16 UTC
Image
© XinhuaArmed police and railway workers remove snow from the track to free a train stranded near Jining in Inner Mongolia on Jan 4th. More than 1,400 passengers were evacuated.
Falling mercury causes power shortages; cold spell to continue

The heaviest snowfall to hit northern China in nearly six decades continued to snarl traffic yesterday, stranding thousands of passengers on railways and at airports.

The unusually harsh winter weather also caused coal shortages, forcing some provinces to cut power supplies.

Though snow stopped in most parts in the north by yesterday morning, heavy snowfall and biting cold continued in parts of Inner Mongolia, Hebei and Shandong.

The heavy snow led to the delay of 13 passenger trains in Inner Mongolia, and forced the closure of all four airports in Shandong, as well as 30 state highways in northern China.

Beijing Capital International Airport, with more than 1,400 flights scheduled to take off yesterday, reported severe disruptions. By 4 pm, 485 flights took off, 690 flights were delayed for an average of 90 minutes, and 98 flights were canceled, an airport spokesman said.
Read More...
Igloo

The mini ice age starts here

David Rose
UK Daily Mail
Sun, 10 Jan 2010 18:53 UTC
Image
© Jeremy SelwynA composite photograph released last year to propagandise the issue of melting ice and global warming
The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world's most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions - based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans - challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy's most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in summer by 2013.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 - and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.
Read More...
No Entry

Snow strands thousands of travelers around Europe

Stephanie Nebehay
Reuters
Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:07 UTC
Snow and icy weather disrupted travel across Europe on Sunday, closing Geneva airport on one of its busiest tourist weekends of the year and prompting a state of emergency on part of Germany's Baltic coast.

Thousands of passengers were stranded at Geneva's Cointrin airport after heavy overnight snow kept it closed until noon.

"It was the first time we had so much snow on the runway since 1985," airport spokesman Bertrand Staempfli said on French-language Swiss radio at midday as departures began.

Delays were expected as frustrated passengers queued to rebook flights at the airport, where 100,000 people had been due to transit over the weekend.

Many British, German and other European skiers use Geneva airport to reach popular Swiss and French ski resorts in the nearby Alpine region, including Verbier.
Read More...
Snowman

Extreme weather batters Poland


The News
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:29 UTC
Eighty-six people have died of hypothermia, rail traffic has come to a halt, and many roads are impassable, after the weekend's heavy snow and temperature drop across Poland, writes tabloid Fakt.

Several localities are cut off from the rest of the world, and thousands of households have no electricity, and the worst is still to come, warns the daily.

As Gazeta Wyborcza reports, Warsaw has so far forked out up to 10 mln euro for clearing roads, which is equal to the amount the city's culture budget. Meanwhile, cars in Bytom Odrzański, western Poland, have to plow through the snow as is in line with the city mayor's money-saving policy. "Why waste the money if the snow will melt anyway?" asked the official.
Read More...
Igloo

How Long Will the Cold-Snap Last?


The Washington's Blog
Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:47 UTC
The following sample of stories from the past year show that much of the world has been experiencing a cold spell:
  • Across the South, Midwest, and Eastern seaboard [of the United States], a stubborn “arctic outbreak," tacked onto an already cold return to work for many Americans, augurs what meteorologist at AccuWeather.com are calling “the coldest winter in many people’s memory.”
Image
Read More...
Snowman

Record cold in Florida strains power grid, sets usage record

Rick Neale
Florida Today
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 08:03 UTC
Demand for electricity across the bitterly cold Sunshine State has shattered Florida Power and Light's all-time record.

"This morning, we set a new all-time record peak load on the electrical system, with customers drawing more than 23,500 megawatt-hours of power," said Sarah Marmion, FPL spokeswoman. "This breaks FPL's previous peak record, which occurred on Aug. 17, 2005."
Read More...
Igloo

Cold stuns Floridians, causes deaths elsewhere

Brendan Ferrington
Associated Press
Sun, 10 Jan 2010 15:42 UTC
Orlando, Florida - Mark and Barbara Willard were at home in Wickford, England two weeks ago checking the weather forecast on the Internet before packing for their trip to Orlando - sunny and 70 degrees.

On Saturday afternoon they had the hoods on their brand new coats pulled tight around their heads as the walked down the International Drive tourist strip. The weather: 35 degrees and cloudy with a chance of icy rain or even snow.

"The good news is two days after we go home we're off to Jamaica," said Mark Willard.
Read More...
Propaganda

Global warmists falling deeper into denial: UK's Guardian asks "Could 2010 be the hottest year on record?"

Robin McKie
Guardian.co.uk
Sun, 10 Jan 2010 11:00 UTC
Despite the big freeze Britain's climate is getting distinctly warmer - and we may feel it this summer

It may be a hard notion to accept after a week that has seen the nation paralysed by snow and ice. Nevertheless, meteorologists are adamant that our world is still getting warmer. Indeed, many now believe that 2010 may turn out to be the hottest year on record.

Britain may be shivering, the Met Office may have issued emergency weather warnings for the entire country and hundreds of trains and flights may have been cancelled, but our future is destined to be a hot and sticky one. And we are likely to feel the consequences sooner rather than later.

It is a point stressed by Doug Smith, a climate expert at the Met Office. "The hottest year on record was 1998 and some people have argued that if global warming is really taking place, we should have had an even warmer year since then. We haven't, I admit. And yes, the weather is absolutely terrible at present. However, I am sure things will change - and we won't have to wait long either."


Comment: Very odd that he will admit in one breath that all the global warming hype has been a bunch of hooey and in the next breath, express hope that this hooey will come true in the future. This guy is delusional and should be locked up!

The most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines a delusion as:
A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture.
Read More...
Bell

John Hirst, UK's Top Meteorologist, Blasted For Receiving Bonus After Predicting 'Mild Winter'


Huffington Post
Sat, 09 Jan 2010 10:54 UTC
John Hirst, the head of the UK's national weather service (Met Office), came under fire this week over the fact that, as the country's top weatherman, he had a predicted a mild winter for Britain, which is instead currently suffering from its biggest cold spell in 30 years. To make matters worse, Hirst, following a significant pay increase, now makes more than the Prime Minister, despite leading an organization notorious for getting its forecasts wrong, the Telegraph reported recently.

In the video below, a BBC host asks Hirst bluntly, "So given that it's clearly not a mild winter by any standards, why are you getting a performance-related bonus?"

Read More...
Roses

How Plants 'Feel' the Temperature Rise


ScienceDaily
Sun, 10 Jan 2010 00:00 UTC
Image
© iStockphotoArabidopsis thaliana
Plants are incredibly temperature sensitive and can perceive changes of as little as one degree Celsius. Now, a report in the January 8th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, shows how they not only 'feel' the temperature rise, but also coordinate an appropriate response -- activating hundreds of genes and deactivating others; it turns out it's all about the way that their DNA is packaged.

The findings may help to explain how plants will respond in the face of climate change and offer scientists new leads in the quest to create crop plants better able to withstand high temperature stress, the researchers say.

"We've uncovered a master regulator of the entire temperature transcriptome," said Philip Wigge of John Innes Centre in the United Kingdom in reference to the thousands of genes that are differentially activated under warmer versus cooler conditions.
Read More...