Victoria's State Emergency Service is sending extra crews to help clean up after tornadoes damaged dozens of homes in the state's north-east.

The tornadoes brought winds of between 250 and 300 kph to the area from Cobram to Rutherglen on Thursday night, injuring 20 people and damaging more than 60 buildings.

SES incident controller Mark Cattell says six extra crews have been sent to help clean up in the worst-affected towns like Bundalong and Koonoomoo.

He says damaged powerlines and trees are still posing a risk and some caravan park residents are concerned about damaged gas cylinders.

"There may still be wires down or power down in some areas. Even though wires may be on the ground, they may still be live," he said.

"There may be properties where they've had ... some kind of surge which may be [causing] some issues within the home.

"Trees, as we've seen, [are also] fairly unstable at the moment."

About 12 homes were rendered uninhabitable and dozens of people spent last night in emergency accommodation.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-23/extra-ses-crews-sent-to-help-tornado-clean-up/4590044

Hopefully this is kosher (not a fake):

An Australian driver and passenger survive a close encounter with a tornado in New South Wales after it came within metres of their vehicle. The 24-year-old driver, Daniel Clarke, is travelling with his friend near the town of Mulwala, when the 50-metre tornado appears in a field next to them. The pair manage to escape the twister amid the flashes of exploding power lines

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/mar/22/australian-driver-escapes-tornado-video

Winter storms continued to blight virtually the whole of the country yesterday, with heavy snowfalls in the Midlands, Yorkshire and Wales, road and airport closures, and thousands left without electricity. Severe weather warnings covered the land, with only the south coast escaping.

The worst of the snow was in the Peak District, Pennines and north Wales. Bingley in West Yorkshire, which had 8.6 inches, and parts of north-east Wales, where 11.8 inches was reported in places, vied for the unenviable record of the most severe falls. A 27-year-old man was found dead in deep snow in Brierfield, near Burnley in Lancashire, yesterday. Police say the man, who has not yet been named, attempted to walk home late on Friday night. His death was not being treated as suspicious. At Millom in Cumbria, about 70 people who were stranded overnight were put up in a school; in Dumfries and Galloway motorists were trapped in their cars until morning; and in north Wales, the British Red Cross was brought in to help transport medical staff to hospitals in 4x4s, after roads became impassable. David Hallows, service manager for emergency response for the Red Cross in north Wales, said: "I've never seen snow like it. It's a metre thick in places and it's not drifting."

Channel 4 weather forecaster Liam Dutton says the cold weather is down to the position of the jet stream, which is unusually far south at the moment.

"As a result, the milder, changeable spring-like weather we would normally get is being steered across Iberia and northern Africa, leaving us in the freezer – along with the rest of northwest Europe," he explained.

The only good news on the horizon is a possible heatwave later in the spring. The Daily Telegraph blames the freeze on a "blocking” pattern of high pressure to the northeast of Britain which is bringing in cold winds from Scandinavia. Such a blocking pattern should mean warmer-than-average weather once the interior of Europe warms up or if the system moves slightly further south.

The paper also reports that the unseasonal cold snap could be the result of global warming.

Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/uk-news/weather/52171/britain-gears-first-white-easter-five-years#ixzz2ObVbCS8Y

Read article above.

See also: http://grist.org/series/skeptics/

and :

http://www.astronomynotes.com/solarsys/s11b.htm

Warnings of Global Cooling

Nigel Weiss, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge says that throughout earth's history climate change has been driven by factors other than man: "Variable behaviour of the sun is an obvious explanation," says Dr. Weiss, "and there is increasing evidence that Earth's climate responds to changing patterns of solar magnetic activity." The sun's most obvious magnetic features are sunspots, formed as magnetic fields rip through the sun's surface. "If you look back into the sun's past, you find that we live in a period of abnormally high solar activity," Dr. Weiss states. These hyperactive periods do not last long, "perhaps 50 to 100 years, then you get a crash," says Dr. Weiss. 'It's a boom-bust system, and I would expect a crash soon."
 
In addition to the 11-year cycle, sunspots almost entirely "crash," or die out, every 200 years or so as solar activity diminishes. When the crash occurs, the Earth can cool dramatically. These phenomenon, known as "Grand minima," have recurred over the past 10,000 years, if not longer. In the 17th century, sunspots almost completely disappeared for 70 years. That was the coldest interval of the Little Ice Age, when New York Harbour froze, allowing walkers to journey from Manhattan to Staten Island, and when Viking colonies abandoned Greenland, a once verdant land that became tundra.
 
In contrast, when the sun is very active, such as the period we're now in, the Earth can warm dramatically. This was the case during the Medieval Warm Period, when the Vikings first colonized Greenland and when Britain was wine-growing country.
 
No one knows precisely when a crash will occur but some expect it soon, because the sun's polar field is now at its weakest since measurements began in the early 1950s. Some predict the crash within five years, and many speculate about its effect on global warming. Several authorities are now warning of global cooling because the sun has entered a quiet period.

A Russian Academy of Sciences report in August 2006 warns that global cooling could develop on Earth in 50 years and have serious consequences.

David Archibal presentation titled "The Past and Future of Climate" here presented to the Lavoisier Group's 2007 Workshop in Melbourne, Australia, shows a forecast of global temperatures based on a detailed analysis of sunspot cycles. He expects the next sunspot cycle (24) to be weak resulting in the start of a long cooling trend. The forecast shows a 1.5 oC drop in global temperature from 2007 to 2025. He warns "...this will have a large and negative effect on Canadian grain production...".

On July 1, 2008, the Space and Science Research Center, a solar research organization, issued a formal declaration on climate change: Global warming has ended -  a new climate era of pronounced cold weather has begun.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Burn baby burn — burn fossil fuels by the bucket load...

The deception used by the denialists is becoming more sophisticated... For example the "Friends of Science" — from the website of which the rubbish above can be found — use many graphs and twisted explanations from "scientists" (they must be scientists since they have important letters after their names) to present a case that global warming is not influenced by CO2 and that we can burn as much carbon as we like... Burn baby burn...

Excellent... Most of their graphs interpretations are dubiously erroneous if you ask my humble opinion... But then I do not have any degrees of any sorts, not even one in bullshit artistry (BA) which could become handy in a debate where fist fights shall not suffice. 

All my life I have used small doses of my "common sense" (it can be overrated in some people) as well as performed my own observations, made my own calculations and developed my understanding of processes — simple and complex... So, I can smell bullshit from three miles away, even when well wrapped up with a pink bow or presented on a street of "scientific facts" that one could drive a truck loaded with ammonium nitrate through... 

So let me say from the onset that my sixth sense tells me that the "Friends of Science" are telling us a lot of garbage...

Here, they are telling us that the sun is responsible for the heat on planets. Fair enough... Indisputable... Apparently the sun has driven a noticeable rise in temperature on Jupiter, Neptune and Fantasy Island recently. But the earth is not warming anymore since 2006, and it's on its way to cool down. Good for you, I say — but this does not fit my observations nor those of the climate change commission. 

The heat from the sun also drives the greenhouse effect that emanated from the gaseous mix in the atmosphere... Should there be more oxygen in the atmosphere, the temperatures would drop... Should there be say no water vapour in the atmosphere, the temperatures would be nearly 30 degrees Celsius below what they are presently... Water vapour is the "enfant terrible" of the atmosphere... It's erratic, unsaturated/saturated — or nearly absent at the poles... for example the air at the pole needs only 3 per cent of the water vapour to saturate into clouds than at the equator... Serious scientists would note a certain increase of water vapour while the "Friends of Science" would note a decrease... It all depends on where you don't look... From the tropopause, the concentration of water vapour becomes about one per cent of the saturated quantity at the equator. There is little or no water in the stratosphere. No matter what the skeptics say, humidity is increasing:

Humidity is falling

"...the largest of all the positive or temperature-amplifying feedbacks in the UN’s arsenal is the water-vapor feedback. The UN gets this feedback wrong in numerous fundamental ways. For instance, its models tend to treat column absolute humidity as being uniform at all altitudes, when in fact – as Paltridge et al. (2009) have demonstrated recently – the upper troposphere (the only place where adding CO2 to the atmosphere could make any difference to temperature) is considerably drier than the models are tuned to expect." (Christopher Monckton)

What the science says...

To claim that humidity is decreasing requires you ignore a multitude of independent reanalyses that all show increasing humidity. It requires you accept a flawed reanalysis that even its own authors express caution about. It fails to explain how we can have short-term positive feedback and long-term negative feedback. In short, to insist that humidity is decreasing is to neglect the full body of evidence.

I won't bore you with the lot of fancy graphs from the "Friends of Science" that are so spectacularly complicated that one of then has been placed on a 5 degrees angle down, for the "Friends of Science" to interpret a a flat line of whatever from what obviously is a rise... Most of the graphs show increases all the way, except for the last tiny segment of data that points to a drop of whatever, to tell us the trend has peaked and it's all down hill from there towards freezing your tits off... And of course the small portion of the Vostok Ice record, used by Jo Nova, features prominently with its dust particle record missing. As if we did not know better.

Yes the increase in temperature has flat-lined for a while in the last decase... So what?... Or has it? ... Hey look, here comes 123 weather records on this continent alone just between December, January and February 2013 and if my estimates are correct, March will cook the goose again for the denialists... So will April, May, June....

---------------------

I must mention,  the "Friends of Science" present this beaut diagram that tells us that casualties due to catastrophic weather events have dropped dramatically since the mid-whatever, so this would mean that catastrophic weather events are getting less potent and less numerous. To which I say BOLLOCKS in capital letters... BOLLOCKS! BOLLOCKS!!!!

One of the main reasons for the drop of freak-weather-catastrophe casualty numbers is mostly due to ADVANCE WARNING.... People are told to piss off inland, ahead of a storm surge. In the past, before our satellites and our instrumentation were placed in most nooks and crannies of the earth, we'd be riding storms blind... becoming a dead statistic in a whirlwind.

It can still happen if a tree falls on your rooftop... It has been my observation that tree canopies are not matched by their root system, contrarily to some simplistic diagrams... As well, should you have cut tree roots to remove a stump like I have done many times, you would know that though roots are tough and stringy, they are rarely as strong as tree branches... Thirdly, after a few days of rain, the soil around trees become soggy... Tall trees like some species of Angophora and Eucalyptus in Sydney "loose" their footing... As the wind shake them about, their root system slowly unearth itself until they fall — finally pushed only by a small puff and your roof is cut in half by a 60 metre tall tree. 

Thus the drop in human casualties is due to our understanding and management of information about weather events...

When Katrina came into the Gulf of Mexico, I saw it develop, on Google Earff... I emailed my friends in New Orleans to tell them to rack off with as much as they could take in their little car of loved possessions... But they forgot the photo albums... Rats... So there, the photos got swamped under six foot of water.  The storm killed more than 1,836 people with more than 700 still missing.... DESPITE THE WARNINGS... Meanwhile we all can recall the chaos in the Superbowl stadium.

When Sandy formed in the Caribbean Sea, LATE last year, I said to myself "hu-ho... There is something nasty... for me to follow on Google Earff again"... After Sandy devastated parts of Cuba, I kept a snapshot record of its travels... Things did not add up as for a "usual" storm and my guestimate was that Sandy was going to turn bad along the coast of the USA.

Where and when was still anyone's guess, even for the weather forecasters in the US, till that massive front from the North-west showed up... As Sandy was motoring north-east, I said to myself  "this ain't going to be a Sunday picnic when it veers west into that front" ... Soon there were warnings for people living along the coast to move inland. especially away from New Jersey... Without this warming, there could have been in excess of 10,000 casualties on the US coast. 

So the "Friends of Science" tell us some glorious bullshit, most of which in lengthy detailed rubbish that could be dismantled one step at a time, but why bother... It's time consuming, annoying, and the evidence is there to prove that global warming is accelerating... Proper scientific experiments tell us that CO2 is the main culprit in this anthropogenically driven global warming— after all other influences to climate change have been tallied...

Beware, the denialists though are becoming clever enough to fool the smaller minds, like that of Tony Abbott's... 

Should Einstein be alive today he would be ashamed at the gall of these pseudo-scientists at the "Friends of Science"... He would be furious at the highjacking of such a "good feeling title" to promote CRAP —  or Cunning Rubbish Antediluvian Poppycock.

-------------------------------

See here for the Competitive Enterprise Institute rubbish...

See here for rubbish by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley... 

If you can be bothered that is... 

Beware, their pseudo-science can appear convincing enough, until one starts to peel the idiotic potato skins from in... 

Don't be tempted... I have killed the links...

Gus Leonisky

See : http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/19279

and : http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/8985

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/records-tumble-in-summers-final-blast-20130327-2gugj.html#ixzz2Oj2wd3Jn

Governments around the world subsidize gasoline, electricity and other major forms of energy to the tune of $1.9 trillion a year according to a new International Monetary Fund study that calls for that amount to be offset through carbon taxes or other means to battle climate change and other social problems.

For the United States, that would require a $1.40 levy per gallon of gas and other fees totaling about $1,170 per person to offset the full cost [real cost] of fossil fuel use, including “externalities” such as pollution and steps to mitigate the effects of global warming...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/imf-citing-trillions-in-government-subsidies-calls-for-end-to-mispricing-of-energy/2013/03/27/09957d6e-96e1-11e2-814b-063623d80a60_story.html?hpid=z2

As England has been warned it will be in the grip of a cold winter till the end of April (in line with global warming computer models), as Australia keeps breaking more heat records, global warming is having some effect in other regions of the globe:

THE ORGANISERS of next year’s Winter Olympics have begun collecting snow from Russia’s rural mountains in case this year’s warm winter is repeated – an outcome which could leave them short of snow when the games come around.

The Russian city of Sochi, located on the Black Sea close to the border with Georgia, has had unusually little snowfall this winter, as temperatures stayed far higher than expected.

If the conditions were repeated next year, the Winter Olympics being held just outside the city could be in danger. The games are to be held in the city itself and in the nearby resort town of Krasnaya Polyana, which occasionally suffers from avalanches given the levels of snow that usually fall there.

The last winter games in Vancouver in 2010 had similar issues, when Cypress Mountain – which hosted downhill events – experienced only light snowfall. In that case, organisers had to truck in snow from a park about 160 miles east of the city.

http://www.thescore.ie/winter-olympics-sochi-collecting-snow