Extreme Temperatures
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Ice Cube

Ice Age Cometh: Coldest U.S. winter in a century

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The circumpolar vortex has put this season into the record-books. The United States has just gone through its coldest interequinoctial winter (equinox to equinox) in a century. Hat-tip to CFACT, which has just sent me the graph.

The last U.S. winter colder than this one was in 1911/12, before the First World War.

Thank you, America! Most of Britain has had an unusually mild and wet winter, for you have had more than your fair share of the Northern Hemisphere's cold weather this season.

Global warming? What global warming?

Fish

Thousands of fish and frogs dead due harsh cold weather in Killingly, Connecticut

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© iWitness photoA fish kill in Killingly happened naturally, DEEP said.
Thousands of dead fish found in a pond in Killingly happened naturally, according to environmental officials.

The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection said thousands of fish and frogs died at Colwell Pond, also known as Lions Park Pond. Many of them froze in clusters along a very popular neighborhood pond.

It was first reported by a neighbor who said she noticed it in an area off of Lewis Boulevard. She said she was concerned that chemicals may have caused it.

"We've never seen so many dead fish," said Malinda Frantz, of Killingly. "In 30 years, I've lived in the neighborhood and I've never seen dead fish. I've never seen dead fish like this."

The DEEP classified it as a winter fish kill, which meant the amount of dissolved oxygen in the pond had been depleted. It said snow or thick ice that can cover ponds blocks sunlight, and that prevents plants in the water from producing oxygen.

DEEP said fish typically die in the winter and are usually noticed after the ice melts.

Employees with the town's parks and recreation department told Eyewitness News the fish will be cleaned up when the pond thaws out a little bit more.

Snowflake

Powerful Spring blizzard cuts power to thousands in New England

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© AP/Michael DwyerWind-driven waves crash on a sea wall in Scituate, Mass., Wednesday, March 26, 2014. Cape Cod and the islands were expected to bear the brunt of the spring storm that struck full force Wednesday.
Mother Nature proceeds to show no mercy, as only a few days after the official start of spring, the East Coast was blasted with yet another major snowstorm.

Spanning from Virginia up through New England and parts of Atlantic Canada, the system brought snow to regions in Maryland and Washington, D.C., before heading up the coast and slamming Cape Cod, Mass., with blizzard conditions.

Grounding flights, causing traffic accidents and knocking out power to nearly 6,000 people throughout Massachusetts, the storm was accompanied by howling winds that gusted up to more than 80 mph in Nantucket.

The severity of the winds also generated dangerous travel conditions, as blowing and drifting snow whipped the island and surrounding areas.

As the storm moves out of the United States and into Atlantic Canada, the Maritimes and western Newfoundland, it will be accompanied by hurricane-force winds, producing treacherous travel conditions.

Comment:
STILL not done - Massive March Nor'easter bigger than Hurricane Sandy expected to bring winds, snow, cold blast to Northeast


Snowflake

Experts warn the brutal weather that forced the cancellation of today's search for MH370 could continue for months

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Rough seas ahead: the HMAS Success has now left the target area, with severe weather and huge swells forcing it to abandon the search.
Unstable weather and dangerous conditions caused by an Antarctic cold front hitting warm tropical air 2,500kms off Australia's west coast is expected to severely affect the search for MH370 over the coming weeks and months.

An aviation meteorologist and an air and sea consultant have both predicted rough times for the planes and ships in the Indian Ocean, and an 'on and off' mission at best as the area's eight-month-long winter brings brutal swells and high winds to the search area.

Aviation safety consultant, Geoffrey Thomas of airline industry business publication airlineratings.com, warned today's weather was merely 'a taste' of conditions which would soon close in over the search area.

Snowflake Cold

Polar vortex or impending ice age?

freezing logs
© unknown

"Coldest Mardi Gras Ever?" asked the New Orleans Times-Picayune as revellers sported long underwear under their costumes to cope with temperatures in the thirties. On the same day it was four degrees Fahrenheit at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport, an all-time low - breaking a record set in 1873. Niagara Falls has frozen over twice this winter, and the ice cover on Lake Michigan reached 90 percent, matching the all-time record.

Record-low temperatures, so much snow that municipalities are running out of salt, and one "polar vortex" after another. What's going on? Where is the global warming we were warned about?

The temperature of the planet has not risen for the past seventeen years.

The climate models that were supposed to project "climate change" (global warming) on the basis of manmade carbon dioxide emissions have failed. The Climategate scandal gave us a glimpse of a corrupt scientific establishment scrambling to cover up that failure.

Horse

Abhorrent climate ugliness courtesy of Lawrence Torcello - assistant philosophy professor, Rochester Institute of Technology

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© RITFrom his RIT website: Lawrence Torcello Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy. Lawrence Torcello received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University at Buffalo in 2006. His research interests include ethical theory and applied ethics, social and political philosophy, moral pluralism, and skepticism. His current projects investigate the practical consequences and ethical responsibilities implicit to democratic citizenship in morally diverse societies, particularly in the domains of medicine, education, animal welfare, the environment, public policy, and political discourse. Dr. Torcelloโ€™s recent work pursues the moral implications of global warming denialism, as well as other forms of science denialism.
While the Anti Defamation League turns a blind eye to their own home grown hypocrisy and ugliness, Lawrence Torcello comes up with even more.

Via Delingpole at Breitbart:

Scientists who don't believe in catastrophic man-made global warming should be put in prison, a US philosophy professor argues on a website funded by the UK government.

Lawrence Torcello - assistant professor of philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, writes in an essay at The Conversation that climate scientists who fail to communicate the correct message about "global warming" should face trial for "criminal negligence". (H/T Bishop Hill)
What are we to make of those behind the well documented corporate funding of global warming denial? Those who purposefully strive to make sure "inexact, incomplete and contradictory information" is given to the public? I believe we understand them correctly when we know them to be not only corrupt and deceitful, but criminally negligent in their willful disregard for human life. It is time for modern societies to interpret and update their legal systems accordingly.

Comment: Lawrence Torcello sounds an awful lot like an Authoritarian follower. From the Hypocrisy of the Authoritarians:

"The authoritarian mind doesn't simply adjust reality to its beliefs; subconsciously, it also adjusts ITSELF to the most apparent currents of the objective reality around it. Because of this, the authoritarians are conformists and conventional thinkers. This has been shown repeatedly in research, notably by Milgram. Following his thought, conformity can be linked to respect for the power of authority, including that of consensus. Robert Altmeyer made another profound observation. Since authoritarians have no genuine internal convictions, they simply lack basic individuality and sense of identity:
[..] I also discovered that if you ask subjects to rank the importance of various values in life, authoritarian followers place "being normal" substantially higher than most people do. It's almost as though they want to disappear as individuals into the vast vat of Ordinaries. [..]

They are quite capable of adhering to the beliefs emphasized by their in-groups when these conflict with what is held by society as a whole. Nevertheless, they do get tugged by what they think everybody else is saying and doing. [..]
Altmeyer also mentions that:
[T]hirty years ago the solid majority of high RWA students in my samples said premarital sexual intercourse was flat-out immoral. Now most say it is moral if the couple plans to get married"



Better Earth

Weather Channel founder: How the global warming scare began

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© UnknownJohn Coleman
A great scientist named Roger Revelle had Al Gore in his class at Harvard and the Global Warming campaign was born. Revelle tried to calm things down years later, but Gore said Revelle was Senile and refused to debate.

John Coleman documents the entire story and shows how our tax dollars are perpetuating the Global Warming alarmist campaign even though temperatures have not risen in years and years.

Ice Cube

Death toll of waterbirds on frozen Lake Erie likely to number tens of thousands

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© WKYCRed breasted mergansers and coot on Lake Erie.

The Great Lakes are the winter home to millions of sea birds and waterfowl that need open water to survive. The frigid weather of the past few months left 92 percent of the lakes covered in ice, and that left diver ducks out in the cold.

Jen Brumfield, a naturalist for the Cleveland Metroparks explains, "With the freeze-over, all of these birds are piling into very, very small, open-water outlets where they become stressed. There is limited food for them there, so they starve and die."

The death toll on Lake Erie could run in the tens of thousands.

As the frozen lake thaws, carcasses of the deceased ducks are washing up along the shore by the hundreds. The waterfowl are mostly diver ducks, like greater and lesser scaup, redheads, canvasbacks, and red-breasted mergansers.

Ice Cube

10 Fold increase in the number of dying water birds rescued in Toronto due to extreme cold

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© Torstar News ServiceCalls about dead birds to Toronto Animal Services went up 66 per cent between Jan. 1 and Mar. 12, compared to the same period last year.
Toronto's ducks and geese are among the hardest-hit victims of this year's brutal winter weather.

Calls about dead birds - found stuck in the ice or floating lifeless in the water - shot up 66 per cent between Jan. 1 and Mar. 12 compared to the same period last year, according to Toronto Animal Services.

Meanwhile, the city's only wildlife rescue charity has been overwhelmed with dozens of fragile, injured and dying birds, making this the worst winter it has seen in 21 years of operation.

"They're weak and they're starving," said Nathalie Karvonen, executive director of the Toronto Wildlife Centre. "Some of the birds are having traumatic injuries as well because they're in a weakened state."

The centre has rescued about 10 times as many water birds as it does during a normal winter, more than 130 since December. Admissions of wildlife are up 50 per cent overall, said Karvonen.

Many water birds spend the winter on Georgian Bay, which has frozen solid for the first time in 20 years. The mass migration led to an intense food competition this year, as thousands of fish-eating birds compete for a few small pools of water.

Ice Cube

Pod of over 30 dolphins die after being trapped by ice, Cape Ray, Newfoundland

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Dolphins stuck in ice
Most of a pod of white-beaked dolphins have already succumbed after becoming trapped by ice off the southwest coast. The pod of about 30 to 40 dophins became encircled by ice near Cape Ray on the weekend and were driven close to the shoreline. The animals' plight has caught the attention of local residents, but officials say there's little that can be done because of the dangerous weather and ice conditions.

As of this morning just three animals were left alive, and they were in bad shape. Wayne Ledwell of the Whale Release and Strandings Group says human safety is paramount when considering whether or not to save the animals. He says conditions in the area are so bad, people would be risking their lives to try to intervene.

Ledwell says white-beaked dolphins are one of a couple of species that stay in Newfoundland waters year-round, and ice strandings are not uncommon. He says in many cases the animals usually die, but he can remember saving some animals in an area where it was safe to do so, and transporting them to open water via snowmobile.