Hurricane Irene and Computer Modeling

We all know how 'really smart' consensus scientists are telling us that we're at doom's door with respect to climate change; they use really sophisticated computer models to predict that in 18 months to 7 years to 8 years to 1000 years (all depends on the alarmist idiot to whom you listen), we're all going to be swimming in melted ice water, because we keep burning fossil fuels--the byproduct of which heats up the planet (they say).

Now consider something more manageable--a single storm, with FAR FEWER variables than an entire climate system. Computer models can't even get a single storm right. And hurricane season predictions have been even less accurate. So, are you going to believe stupid models, because models are only as good as the people who create them. The entire climate of the planet is FAR MORE COMPLEX than a single hurricane. And if someone has an agenda to support their theory, it's very easy to design the model to do whatever you want it to.

Instead of admitting that they screwed up on the intensity and overhyped the devastation and doom with respect to Hurricane Irene (which the media did in spades, by the way), the alarmists have already started blaming global warming for Irene (which was a creme puff of a storm unlike its predicted 'catastrophic intensity'). Saw that one coming from a mile away!

While forecasters have gotten better at estimating the trajectories of storms because the winds propelling them, known as steering currents, have gotten easier to predict with computer models, projecting intensity is driven by dozens of variables that make modeling more difficult, Clark said.

[From Irene Forecasters Missed Storm’s Intensity While Correctly Predicting Path - Bloomberg]

Hurricane Irene: Harbinger of Climate Change?

Of course, we all KNOW the real answer to this idiot's question. The answer is no…so called global warming is not causing or strengthening tropical cyclones. It's utter bullshit. Even NOAA admits it. But we see this story repeated with nearly every tropical weather disturbance; global warming is attributed as the cause. The reality is far more benign than they would have you believe.

So why do liberal morons in the media continue the hype? Because they're trying to prop up the global warming myth--a myth which is reeling under its own ridiculous weight. It's the same reason they attribute NEARLY EVERYTHING deemed bad to global warming; for the government to be granted more control by its citizens, there must be a collective perception of some threat. It's as simple as that.

The scale of Hurricane Irene, which could cause more extensive damage along the Eastern Seaboard than any storm in decades, is reviving an old question: are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change?

The short answer from scientists is that they are still trying to figure it out. But many of them do believe that hurricanes will get more intense as the planet warms, and they see large hurricanes like Irene as a harbinger.

[From As Climate Changes, Scientists See Irene as a Harbinger - NYTimes.com]

Oops: Coolest March since 1994

Doh! Here they are trying to blame the summer heat (and everything else) on global warming and this pesky story shows up.

March 2011 ended up as the coolest March globally since March of 1994. The actual global temperature anomaly for the lower troposphere last month was negative 0.026 C. This is also the first month since June of 2008 that the global temperature anomaly was in the negative.

[From AccuWeather.com - Climate Change | Coolest March since 1994]

Global Weirding? They Can't Back That Up

At first we were told that anthropogenic global warming was a result of man's CO2 emissions and that we'd see less and less snow and ice. Ice would melt and raise the sea levels, flooding cities. Then, when it was obvious that empirical data showed we were actually cooling more than warming, they said that dynamic weather variability was the result of manmade 'climate change.' Another group said that global warming was merely being 'masked' by the La Nina effect; that was why we were experiencing cooler summers and winters. Dynamic weather referred to anything deemed 'unusual,' such that a blizzard or freezing temperatures would give the same support to the renamed 'climate change' as a would a heat wave or tornado outbreak. I call these sudden grasps at explaining non-correlating empirical data CLIMATE REVISIONISM.

Somewhere in the midst of the mounting empirical evidence to the contrary, climate scandal upon climate scandal erupted. Interested powers tried to put the genie back in the bottle, but it was too late.

As the public continued to reject the idea of manmade global warming or climate change, Thulsa Doom Obama decided to go with the new moniker of 'global climate disruption.' And most recently, the term 'global weirding' came into vogue. No matter what alias they use, it still all comes down to an indictment of capitalism as the driving force behind a climate gone mad. Americans aren't buying it, and neither are Europeans. The rat radar is up and detecting something foul.

Last week a severe storm froze Dallas under a sheet of ice, just in time to disrupt the plans of the tens of thousands of (American) football fans descending on the city for the Super Bowl. On the other side of the globe, Cyclone Yasi slammed northeastern Australia, destroying homes and crops and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

Some climate alarmists would have us believe that these storms are yet another baleful consequence of man-made CO2 emissions. In addition to the latest weather events, they also point to recent cyclones in Burma, last winter's fatal chills in Nepal and Bangladesh, December's blizzards in Britain, and every other drought, typhoon and unseasonable heat wave around the world.

But is it true? To answer that question, you need to understand whether recent weather trends are extreme by historical standards. The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project is the latest attempt to find out, using super-computers to generate a dataset of global atmospheric circulation from 1871 to the present.

As it happens, the project's initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. "In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years," atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, one of the researchers on the project, tells me from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871."

[From The Weather Isn't Getting Weirder - WSJ.com]

The Globe That Warms: -50 in Maine

An older article, but you get the point. Ironic that New England is packed full of liberals who believe in global warming. It's appropriate that they endure this weather. Maybe it will change minds and hearts.

FORT KENT, Maine — An arctic blast from Canada is bringing brutally frigid air and wind chills expected to dip to 50 below zero to northern New England, prompting officials to warn residents to take precautions against the cold.

The National Weather Service in Caribou issued a statewide wind chill warning Sunday night effective through Monday.

Bitterly cold air will remain over northern Maine through Monday night, forcing temperatures down below zero with negative double-digit wind chill values.

[From Arctic air blast prompts warnings - Bangor Daily News]

GASP!: Global Warming to Cause 'Cataclysmic Super Storm'

Yep...another disaster prediction issued by warming alarmists. Throw it on the pile. Except this one gives no specific date or date range; it's just that we're 'overdue,' especially due to 'rising atmospheric temperatures.' (Which aren't rising, by the way...) It's all a bunch of bunk.

Here's one thing I will guarantee you: We will ALWAYS have unusual weather events, because weather is unpredictable and REAL climate change is unstoppable (and NOT caused by capitalism). This is why North Africa is now a desert (normal, cyclical climate change on the Earth). Almanacs and historical accounts have long recorded unusual, record-breaking weather and climate events. That will continue. Even if we enacted every stupid global warming solution that liberals have dreamed up, the weather and climate will still behave in an oblivious fashion. We're mere gnats on this Great Earth.

Get more fear in the GASP! series and warmlist, you kooks.

It sounds like the plot of an apocalyptic action movie, but scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey warned federal and state emergency officials that California's geological history shows such "superstorms" have happened in the past, and should be added to the long list of natural disasters to worry about in the Golden State.

The threat of a cataclysmic California storm has been dormant for the past 150 years. Geological Survey director Marcia K. McNutt told the New York Times that a 300-mile stretch of the Central Valley was inundated from 1861-62. The floods were so bad that the state capital had to be moved to San Francisco, and Governor Leland Stanford had to take a rowboat to his own inauguration, the report notes. Even larger storms happened in past centuries, over the dates 212, 440, 603, 1029, 1418, and 1605, according to geological evidence.

The risk is gathering momentum now, scientists say, due to rising temperatures in the atmosphere, which has generally made weather patterns more volatile.

[From Scientists warn California could be struck by winter ‘superstorm’ - Yahoo! News]

Animal Death Watch: Record Cold Endangers Sea Life?

Well, this is an interesting turn of events. The Animal Death Watch series has almost exclusively focused on living things dying or going extinct because of 'warming,' but here's a proven, real-world example of animals dying from exposure. More extinction stupidity at Dr. Brignell's warmlist page.

Thousands of dead starfish that littered a beach near Charleston last weekend are the first signs of what might become a disastrous winter for coastal sea life. They died because water was chilled to a lethal temperature by frigid weather earlier this month.

With coastal waters already hovering near critical lows, biologists worry there might be a mass die-off of shrimp, sea trout and red drum as the season turns cold again.

William Gay, owner of Port Royal Seafood, said he has heard Beaufort crab trappers talk about dead shrimp showing up in their crab pots, but said the cold water hasn't yet affected his business.

[From Cold weather endangers sea creatures | islandpacket.com]

Oft-right Soothsayer: Ice Age Coming

Of course, this prediction could be as flawed as all the recent warming predictions and the 1970s ice age predictions. But this person isn't the first to utter an antithetical prediction of late, and it certainly is cold outside.

He seems to get it right about 85 per cent of the time and serious business people - notably in farming - are starting to invest in his forecasts. In the eyes of many punters, he puts the taxpayer-funded Met Office to shame. How on earth does he do it? He studies the Sun.

He looks at the flow of particles from the Sun, and how they interact with the upper atmosphere, especially air currents such as the jet stream, and he looks at how the Moon and other factors influence those streaming particles.

He takes a snapshot of what the Sun is doing at any given moment, and then he looks back at the record to see when it last did something similar. Then he checks what the weather was like on Earth at the time - and he makes a prophecy.

[From There's a mini ice age coming, says man who beats weather experts]

Empirically Frigid February

Yeah, I know, I know...global warming is causing all this record-setting, deadly cold. (My ass...)

If colder-than-normal temperatures continue into February, this winter could possibly set records for the coldest winter ever in some parts of Georgia. Record low temperatures were set at Macon, Savannah and Alma Jan. 14. Macon reported 16 degrees, breaking the old record of 19 degrees set that date in 1970. Savannah and Alma reported 18 degrees, surpassing the old records of 20 degrees set at both locations in 1964.

[From Georgia eyes coldest winter ever | Freeze Damage content from Southeast Farm Press]

The average temperature in January 2011 was 30.0 F. This was -0.8 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 37th coolest January in 117 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.

[From CONTIGUOUS UNITED STATES Climate Summary]

The fresh snow was especially troublesome in Tulsa, Okla., where many roads were still impassable from last week's record 14-inch snowfall. The previous storm kept students out of school for at least six days. Mail, bus and trash service were only recently restored.

Five more inches of snow fell Wednesday in Tulsa, according to the National Weather Service. That raised the city's total for the winter to 25.9 inches, breaking the previous seasonal record of 25.6 inches, set during the winter of 1923-24.

[From Frigid air, snow, worry ranchers in Plains, South - Yahoo! News]

PLANO (CBSDFW.COM) – The demand for electricity could reach record high levels on Thursday morning, as temperatures reach a record low. Many people across North Texas will be struggling to stay warm. This means that rolling power outages could potentially return.

As cold temperatures rolled into the Metroplex last week, and the entire area was covered under a blanket of snow and ice, people became enraged when their power went out. The high demand for electricity late last week forced the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to coordinate rolling outages. This process, called load-shedding, is designed to take strain off of the state’s electric grid.

[From North Texas Could See More Rolling Blackouts « CBS Dallas / Fort Worth]

In fact, some temperatures across the state Thursday morning were lower than the North Pole which was a balmy 16 degrees.

In Bartlesville, the temperature reached 28 degrees below 0, an all-time record for Oklahoma. It also sets an all-time record for the city.

The previous state record was -27 in Watts in 1930 and -27 in Vinita in 1909.

[From Bartlesville ties Oklahoma state record for low temperature, Tulsa ties city record]

We Freeze Because It's Too Warm?

Oh, I see, professor. The climate is becoming more 'dynamic' because of manmade greenhouse gases. But what about when your climatology brothers said that future snows would be a 'rare and exciting event'? You guys want it both ways; and we're all just NOT that dumb.

But before we write off our current cold snap as the British weather playing its usual tricks, we still need to explain why the Arctic high pressure has strayed so far south. And here, says Prof Maslin, is the more likely, and more subtle, link with climate change. "For me," he says, "this shows that the climate is becoming more dynamic, and thus large shifts in the wind patterns are possible – in this case, sub-tropical air being trapped further south than usual."

In other words, we need to remember that while the average temperature is rising, climate change also delivers more extreme weather, from chills to heatwaves. Today, we're stocking up on snowshoes – but best to invest in some air-conditioning as well.

[From Are we freezing because of global warming? - Telegraph]

NYT: Record Cold Caused by Warming (They're Serious)

I've been saying this for years, but try not to swallow your tongue anyway. These guys in the media (and the leftist "thinking" establishment) can't accept that they've been completely bamboozled by a climate cartel intent on global governance and global economic control. That's all this bullshit is. Average Americans know it. But the so-called 'smartest among us' are apparently the greatest morons. Every recent winter has been record setting in terms of COLD and the summers HAVE NOT been record setting in terms of WARMTH, despite predictions to the contrary! So, the shift has been to blame the cooler climate on warming in both summer and winter. Can anyone else see the imbecility of this crap besides me?!!!!

All of this cold was met with perfect comic timing by the release of a World Meteorological Organization report showing that 2010 will probably be among the three warmest years on record, and 2001 through 2010 the warmest decade on record.

How can we reconcile this? The not-so-obvious short answer is that the overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes. Last winter, too, was exceptionally snowy and cold across the Eastern United States and Eurasia, as were seven of the previous nine winters.

For a more detailed explanation, we must turn our attention to the snow in Siberia.

Annual cycles like El Niño/Southern Oscillation, solar variability and global ocean currents cannot account for recent winter cooling. And though it is well documented that the earth’s frozen areas are in retreat, evidence of thinning Arctic sea ice does not explain why the world’s major cities are having colder winters.

[From Bundle Up, It’s Global Warming - NYTimes.com]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Global Shamming would like to wish everyone a Merry CHRISTmas and Happy New Year. Please enjoy all the warm weather outside, brought to you courtesy of that evil capitalist carbon atom.

A storm system off the Northeast Coast will unleash a paralyzing blizzard along a vast swath of the I-95 corridor today.

The storm is no joke and threatens to shut down major highways in the region and could close some major airports, creating a nightmare for those souls heading home after the Christmas holiday.

[From AccuWeather.com - Weather News | Dangerous Blizzard to Slam Philadelphia to Boston]

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A winter storm that brought a rare white Christmas to parts of the South was barreling up the East Coast early Sunday, with forecasters predicting 6 to 10 inches of snow for Washington and blizzard conditions for New York City and New England.

Airlines canceled hundreds of Sunday flights in the Northeast corridor, with more likely to come as the storm intensifies.

Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina declared states of emergency early Sunday or Saturday night. As North Carolina road crews tried to clear snowy and icy highways, Mid-Atlantic officials spent Christmas Day preparing for up to a foot of snow, plunging temperatures and high winds.

[From Major winter storm barrels up East Coast - Yahoo! News]

MOSCOW, Dec 26 (Reuters) - Moscow's Domodedovo airport was closed and thousands of Muscovites were left without power on Sunday after a heavy overnight snowfall, the RIA Novosti news agency said.

It quoted an airport spokeswoman as saying flights at the airport, Russia's busiest, were halted after two electricity substations were knocked out.

"The airport service is suspended," the spokeswoman, Elena Galanova, was quoted as saying, adding that it was not clear when operations would resume.

The Moscow United Electric Grid Company said about 100,000 people in the region were affected by power outages, according to RIA.

The temperature in Moscow hovered around zero degrees Celsius on Saturday and early Sunday. Some rail services were also disrupted.

[From Moscow's main airport closed after overnight snow | Reuters]

PARIS (Reuters) – Hundreds of travellers trapped by icy weather spent Christmas Day queuing for flights in Europe on Saturday after sleeping on camp beds overnight in Paris and Brussels airports.

Travel disruptions this month have upset year-end travel for hundreds of thousands of people and raised questions about the air industry's lack of preparation for icy weather.
Flight schedules were returning to normal in Paris, thanks to fresh deliveries of de-icing fluid from Germany and the United States.

[From Airport Christmas for Europe's stranded travellers - Yahoo! News]

Empirical Winter Worsens for Warming Believers

A look at recent cold weather news from around the globe here in one of these "warmest years on record." Empirical evidence has looked like this for the past several years during winter. Weird how alarmists either look only at warming-related empirical data, or they now proclaim that these winter weather events are caused by warming too.

“We could really see some big avalanches that we haven’t seen in 50, maybe even 100 years if this kind of snow comes in like they say,” Toepher said.
For too many people safety isn’t a concern. When it snows, people will come despite the warnings.

[From Avalanche Danger Could Be Worst In Colo. History « CBS Denver – News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and the Best of Denver]

But in this city, hard by the Snow Belt beneath Lake Ontario, there is no need for any caveat. By this time, every year, it has snowed so heavily and so often that any more would be incomprehensible.

Syracuse has met the incomprehensible. As of Tuesday, even before winter had officially begun — at 6:38 p.m. Eastern time — 71.9 inches of snow had fallen this month, making it the city’s snowiest December on record.

[From In Syracuse, a Record December Snowfall - NYTimes.com]

The snow will likely continue across metro Atlanta through Saturday night before ending Sunday morning.

"Across the north Georgia mountains, the precipitation should fall as snow the entire time, allowing 2 to 4 inch accumulations there," Nitz said.

In a statement issued early Thursday, the National Weather Service predicted that 1 to 3 inches of snow could fall across metro Atlanta, with accumulations of an inch or less south of the city.

[From Atlanta weather | Snow accumulations likely on Christmas Day | ajc.com]

Winter is already in full swing in the Colorado high country as a WINTER STORM WARNING remains in effect through Tuesday night for nearly all mountain areas in Colorado, which could see 12 to 36 inches of snow.

The mountains surrounding Vail, Aspen, Snowmass, Crested Butte, Telluride and Silverton should see 1 to 3 feet of snow by Tuesday evening with the heaviest snow on west-facing slopes.

[From 9NEWS.com | Denver | Colorado's Online News Leader | Colorado weather forecast: 'Epic proportions' of snow could fall in Colo. mountains]

Swathes of Britain skidded to a halt today as the big freeze returned - grounding flights, closing rail links and leaving traffic at a standstill.

And tonight the nation was braced for another 10in of snow and yet more sub-zero temperatures - with no let-up in the bitterly cold weather for at least a month, forecasters have warned.

The Arctic conditions are set to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond and as temperatures plummeted to -10c (14f) the Met Office said this December was ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest since records began in 1910.

[From Big freeze: Temperatures plummet to -10C bringing travel chaos across Britain | Mail Online]

At least 60 people have died across Europe during the current cold snap, as snow plagued transport in Britain on Friday and serious flooding prompted mass evacuations in the Balkans.

Seventeen people died in Central Europe in the last 24 hours from the cold, bringing the total this week to 45. A further 11 died in Russia, plus three in France and one in Germany, according to local authorities.

[From At least 60 killed by cold snap across Europe - Emirates24|7]

Heavy snow and subzero temperatures swept across Europe, killing at least eight homeless people in Poland, closing major airports in Britain and Switzerland and causing hundreds of highway accidents.

Workmen clear snow from Edinburgh Airport car park on December 1, 2010 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Freezing weather conditions and heavy snow have forced Scotland's main airport to close for the day.

Gatwick, London's second largest airport, and Geneva, a major hub for low-cost carrier Easyjet, were forced to shut down Wednesday as staff struggled to clear runways of snow, along with Edinburgh airport in Scotland and Lyon-Bron in southeastern France.

[From Weather - Heavy Snow Causes Severe Disruption in Europe - CNBC]

NOAA and Old Farmer's Almanac Duel

So who's going to be right? Will NOAA's warming-centric prediction--one that has been increasingly WRONG--hold true for the winter, or will the Old Farmer's Almanac (80-85% accuracy) win the day with its colder-than-normal winter? We've seen how NOAA has blown it over the past several years; the world has had DEADLY COLD winters since 2008, even though NOAA, NASA, and other AGW proponents of the "consensus" tried to prop up "warmest <fill-in-the-blank> on record" claims. All of this while story upon story touted record cold and winter events in China, Russia, United States, and many other places around the world.

Here's my prediction: OFA wins by a mile!

DUBLIN, N.H. – Most of the country will see a colder-than-usual winter while summer and spring will be relatively cool and dry, according to the time-honored, complex calculations of the "Old Farmer's Almanac."

[From Old Farmer's Almanac: Global cooling to continue - Yahoo! News]

ABOVE NORMAL TEMPERATURES ARE FAVORED IN OND 2010 FOR LARGE PARTS OF THE LOWER 48 STATES EXCLUDING THE PACIFIC COAST, THE NORTHWEST AND IN THE SOUTHEAST EXTENDING NORTHWARD ALONG THE EAST COAST TO NEW ENGLAND.  PROBABILITIES ARE GREATEST IN THE DESERT SOUTHWEST DUE PRIMARILY TO DECADAL TEMPERATURE TRENDS AND LA NINA IMPACTS.  BELOW AVERAGE TEMPERATURES ARE FAVORED RIGHT ALONG THE PACIFIC COAST, MAINLY DUE TO THE PERSISTENCE OF BELOW AVERAGE SSTS UP AND DOWN THE COAST.

[From Climate Prediction Center - Seasonal Outlook]

2010 Cyclone Season Marks 33-Year LOW

Ever since Katrina in 2005 (a devastating hurricane season for sure), climatologists and various authorities on tropical weather have predicted "stronger than average" hurricane seasons. While the Atlantic season did appear active this year, no major storms hit the United States, even though there have been no shortage of cyclonic doom predictions since Katrina.

AccuWeather predicted the United States would be hit by five named storms in 2010; it didn't happen. And AccuWeather is one of these groups that peddles global warming nonsense. Previous seasonal predictions since 2005 have also failed to materialize.

And the oft blamed culprit for these dire predictions that don't materialize? You guessed it: manmade global warming.

The only problem with these silly (failed) predictions is that Mother Nature didn't cooperate, once again proving that our climate is enormously complex and still capable of baffling the so-called smartest among us.

Update: Current Year-to-Date analysis of Northern Hemisphere and Global Tropical Cyclone Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) AND Power Dissipation Index (PDI) has fallen even further than during the previous 3-years. The global inactivity is at 33-year lows and historical where Typhoons form in the Western Pacific.

While the North Atlantic has seen 15 tropical storms / hurricanes of various intensity, the Pacific basin as a whole is at historical lows! In the Western North Pacific stretching from Guam to Japan and the Philippines and China, the current ACE value of 48 is the lowest seen since reliable records became available (1945) and is 78% below normal*. The next lowest was an ACE of 78 in 1998. See figure below for visual evidence of the past 40-years of tropical cyclone activity.

[From coaps.fsu.edu | Ryan Maue's Seasonal Tropical Cyclone Activity Update]

Montana Gets September Snow

I guess this is that 'global climate disruption,' huh? 'Climate change' didn't do enough to throw off the laughable shackles of 'global warming,' given that we've seen record-setting winters and colder summers recently. More empirical evidence to show you that the Earth is not being heated by American capitalism.

Snow began falling in some areas of north central Montana and along the Rocky Mountain Front early on Friday, leaving some people checking their calendar to see if it is still, in fact, summer.

A rain-snow mix in and around Great Falls turned to all snow around 10 am in some areas. Up to an inch of accumulation may be possible throughout Friday, and temperatures will remain in the upper 30s to low 40s.

[From September snow surprise in Montana | KRTV.com | Great Falls, Montana]

Cold Snap Kills Amazon Fish

This would be empirical evidence that should point away from global warming, but the alarmists will use it as proof of "manmade climate change," while antithetical warm snaps here and there are strictly attributed to anthropogenic global warming. Neat little scam. All weird weather (which has always happened) is our fault.

Antarctic cold snap kills millions of aquatic animals in the Amazon.

The San Julián fish farm in the Santa Cruz department of Bolivia lost 15 tonnes of pacú fish in the extreme cold.Never Tejerina

With high Andean peaks and a humid tropical forest, Bolivia is a country of ecological extremes. But during the Southern Hemisphere's recent winter, unusually low temperatures in part of the country's tropical region hit freshwater species hard, killing an estimated 6 million fish and thousands of alligators, turtles and river dolphins.

[From Cold empties Bolivian rivers of fish : Nature News]

Moscow Breaks Heat Record - Radicals Scream Global Warming

Where were these same environmental radicals when Russia was freezing to death? Last year?!?

Temperatures in the capital hit 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time since 1981, said the Fobos weather forecasting centre, which provides weather data for the country's top media outlets.

Environmental groups including Greenpeace say Russia's heatwave is evidence of global warming, but forecasters with the national weather centre have said it is too early to draw a direct link.

[From Reuters AlertNet - Moscow heatwave breaks 29-year record]

Winter strikes South Africa with Vengeance

News is full of empirical evidence stories like this. Global warming is yesterday's fad...and it's deader than dead.

Cape Town - Winter has struck with a vengeance in the Western Cape with some towns recording their first snow falls in almost 20 years.

Several mountain passes in the Southern Cape and the Eastern Cape had to be closed after heavy snowfalls.

Tourists expecting sunny skies in Cape Town were greeted by snow on Table Mountain, where the temperature never rose above 1°C.

It was the heaviest snowfall on the mountain since 2003.

[From Winter strikes with a vengeance: News24: South Africa: News]

What summer? What about "what global warming?," LA Times?

This schmuckatellis will never get it. They're complete morons.

Unusually cold temperatures in Southern California continued, with Los Angeles International Airport setting a record low on Friday.

LAX got to only 67 degrees, breaking a record set in 1926, according to the National Weather Service.

Temperatures are expected to stay fairly cool Saturday, with highs around 70 on the coast and in the 80s inland. Conditions will be a bit warmer on Sunday, according to the weather service.

July has turned out to be cooler than normal.

[From What summer? Record cold at LAX as July gloom continues | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times]