Climate change itself is already in the process of definitively rebutting climate alarmists who think human use of fossil fuels is causing ultimately catastrophic global warming. That is because natural climate cycles have already turned from warming to cooling, global temperatures have already been declining for more than 10 years, and global temperatures will continue to decline for another two decades or more.

That is one of the most interesting conclusions to come out of the seventh International Climate Change Conference sponsored by the Heartland Institute, held last week in Chicago. I attended, and served as one of the speakers, talking about The Economic Implications of High Cost Energy.

The conference featured serious natural science, contrary to the self-interested political science you hear from government financed global warming alarmists seeking to justify widely expanded regulatory and taxation powers for government bodies, or government body wannabees, such as the United Nations. See for yourself, as the conference speeches are online.

What you will see are calm, dispassionate presentations by serious, pedigreed scientists discussing and explaining reams of data. In sharp contrast to these climate realists, the climate alarmists have long admitted that they cannot defend their theory that humans are causing catastrophic global warming in public debate. With the conference presentations online, let's see if the alarmists really do have any response.

The Heartland Institute has effectively become the international headquarters of the climate realists, an analog to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It has achieved that status through these international climate conferences, and the publication of its Climate Change Reconsidered volumes, produced in conjunction with the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).

Those Climate Change Reconsidered volumes are an equivalently thorough scientific rebuttal to the irregular Assessment Reports of the UN's IPCC. You can ask any advocate of human caused catastrophic global warming what their response is to Climate Change Reconsidered. If they have none, they are not qualified to discuss the issue intelligently.

For an unbelievable third year in a row, Mount Washington will operate on Father's Day weekend for skiing and boarding. The resort will spin the Whiskey Jack Chairlift from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on June 16-17.

"We recently completed another stellar snow season up here so the writing was on the wall back in April-we were contemplating another summer snow session," explains resort spokesperson Brent Curtain.

To make some turns on the summer corn snow, tickets will cost $25 per person and rental skis and boards will be an additional $25. If you pre-purchase your tickets and rentals online at mountwashington.ca you get an additional 10 per cent discount.

The mountain is confirming that Linton's Loop will be open top to bottom that weekend but will determine if more runs can open closer to June 16. "We want to see what the weather brings over the next week before we commit to the number of runs we can open," adds Curtain.

The freak weather conditions continued in Europe this weekend when residents living in the Swiss Valley of Engadin awoke to discover the entire region blanketed in snow.

As these local webcam pictures show Engadin which is protected by high mountains on all sides and is famous for its sunny climate is usually packed with guests at this time of year enjoying the landscapes and outdoor activities.

As the rest of the country struggled to cope with massive rainfall totalling in some areas over 60 meters per square metre, over a height of 1,500 metres towns and villages had to tackle snow.

Some high Valley roads were closed temporarily because of the snow.

For the rest of the week weather experts in Switzerland predicted similar extremes with more snow predicted and rain at least until Wednesday.

Parts of Europe are being gripped by unusual cold, even though the calendar says it's meteorological summer. Now children in Sweden are finding out what snow is like - in June! Strangest warming I've ever seen.
The English language The Local here writes that "Stockholm broke an 84-year-old cold record on Saturday, as the capital's temperature only reached 6 degrees Celsius, the lowest June maximum daily temperature the city has seen since 1928."

"Indeed, you could be excused for thinking that the current chill is more like winter than summer. It was actually colder in the capital yesterday than on Christmas Eve. 'The temperature was a degree lower than it was at Christmas in Stockholm, so it is colder. And it's windier, too,' said SMHI's meteorologist Lisa Frost to newspaper Dagens Nyheter."

Just two days ago The Local here reported that snow blanketed northern parts.

As several record low temperatures for the month of June were recorded across Sweden the last couple of days, the Met Office now says the blustery, rainy weather is here to stay until at least next weekend.

On Friday morning, the town of Börtnan in northern Sweden had survived night temperatures of minus 6 degrees Celcius - the coldest June temperature in Sweden for the past two decades.

Sarajevo - The Bosnian capital and its surroundings were covered by snow on Monday, the first time in half a century snow has settled in Sarajevo at this time of year, as temperatures plunged to just above freezing. "The snow was nine centimetres (over three inches) high at 0500 GMT. It is the first time in the past 50 years that we have snow that remained in Sarajevo in May," Dzenan Zulum of the national meteorological institute told AFP.

Zulum said snow had previously covered the capital in May in 1962 and 1953, adding that it also fell in Sarajevo in May 2005, but immediately melted. Temperatures have plummeted in the past two days from 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit) on Saturday to 0.3 degrees Celsius on Monday.

Sunbathing one day, snowstorm the next: Bosnians are getting whiplash from the latest crazy weather to hit the Balkans.

Weeks after Bosnians had stashed away their winter clothes and their memories of last winter's unbearably heavy snow, residents had to drag out the shovels Monday after waking up to a blanket of snow in the middle of an otherwise unusually hot May.

Some 50 remote villages in a mountainous area near the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo lost power due to the snow.

Antibiotic resistance is often seen as a modern phenomenon - an ability generated by bacteria in order to defend against the challenges of modern medicine. This is supported by the fact that bacteria from before the era of antibiotics are often more susceptible to their use. Which is why I found it intriguing that recent studies (ref below) have unearthed bacteria from 30 000-year old permafrost sediment and have found evidence of genes that provide resistance against three of the most common types of antibiotics used in hospitals: β-lactam, tetracycline and glycopeptide antibiotics.

As every microbiologist knows, a good way to get bacteria to stay in an unchanged state is to freeze them. Digging down beneath the surface in areas such as Dawson City in Yukon, Canada reveals layers that have remained frozen since the ice-age and contain, among all the mammoths and toothy-tigers, frozen and uncontamined samples of bacteria.

The researchers focused on Actinobacteria; a soil bacteria with many strains still around in modern times. As a soil bacteria, modern Actinobacteria carries a whole arsenal of antibiotic and antifungal agents in order to protect itself in the cut-throat world of soil microbiotica. The researchers were looking to see what kind of antibiotic substances this ancient bacteria would have.

An unprecedented cold spell that struck Morocco in February and continued to linger well into March has raised serious questions about the country's national agricultural development programme, which will fail to achieve its desired results if climate change continues to be mismanaged.

The 'Green Morocco Plan' was launched last year with the aim of remedying major obstacles that still hinder development of the agricultural sector, tackling everything from ensuring food security for 32 million Moroccans, to meeting the requirements of European markets, the biggest consumers of Moroccan produce.

However, the Plan does not do a thorough job of diagnosing climate factors, citing only drought, which it considers 'periodical', as an impediment to successful farming. The report does not address the sudden and unexpected arrival of cold weather, whose damages have been no less than disastrous.

Last February, more than 8,200 of the country's 8,700 hectares of potatoes, were ravaged. A further 14,000 of about 21,000 hectares reserved for sugarcane were also blighted by the cold. This is particularly significant since potatoes and sugar are two of Morocco's primary export commodities.