After no big snowfall for 26 years, Rome is being hit by its second snowstorm in a week.

Snow blanketed Rome's suburbs over the weekend, and has settled in the capital's centre.

New measurements show that the ice melt less than expected - in the Alps and the Himalayas, they are not shrunk since 2003.

New sat data shows Himalayan glaciers hardly melting at all

This weeks piece of nonsense from George Monbiot in the Guardian is based around a scientific paper that “revealed that people with conservative beliefs are likely to be of low intelligence”

IF the paper were true, I would respond with the famous quote by Thomas Sowell:

“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it”

Italy is set to hold emergency talks aimed at maximising gas supplies to vulnerable households as a cold snap tightened its grip on the country and the death toll rose to 26.

The scheduled talks on Tuesday come a day after the economic development ministry activated a plan to reduce gas supplies to industrial clients and switch from gas to oil-fired power stations amid fears of another cold wave in Russia, which could limit supplies to Italy.

Amazingly, the Muir Russell panel failed to interview either Jones or Briffa on the deletion of emails (see discussion of the fall hearing below). Despite this neglect, the Muir Russell report stated (incorrectly) that there was “no evidence of any attempt to delete information in respect of a request already made” as follows:

28. Deliberate actions to avoid release. There seems clear incitement to delete emails, although we have seen no evidence of any attempt to delete information in respect of a request already made.

In September 2010, Fred Pearce wrote sarcastically in September 2010 that Muir Russell must have been the “only person studying the affair not to have known about it”:

A wave of cold and snow has blanketed much of Europe, killing hundreds of people, trapping thousands more, and holding up travel across the continent. Eastern Europe has been hit hardest, with 131 reported dead in Ukraine alone. London’s Heathrow Airport was forced to cancel more than 600 flights on Sunday, and Bosnian helicopters have been put into action in order to access villages hit with up to six feet of snow. Italy experienced a blackout, and residents of Rome are furious with their mayor’s slow response to icy roads, even calling for his ouster. In the Netherlands, however, the deep freeze offers a rare chance to hold a traditional 125-mile skating race through the nation’s canals that has been called off since 1997 due to thin ice.

In a previously overlooked email exchange buried among the thousands of ClimateGate files, leading climate scientists were tasked to produce a diagram that showed an “obvious” picture of “unprecedented warming,” but the result did not show this:”

A controversial scientist flew 20,000 miles to Tahiti and back… to preach about global warming.

Prof Phil Jones’ trip to the Pacific is among more than a QUARTER OF A MILLION miles of air travel he has racked up in the past five years.

The boffin’s fuel-burning flights mean his carbon footprint is so big it would take 95 acres of trees a year to absorb it all, Government figures show.

A loss of sea ice could be a cause of the bitter winds that have swept across the UK in the past week, weather experts say

In Switzerland, are always measured lower temperatures. Some places experienced the coldest February night for over 30 years.

Commemorative postal cover issued on the occasion of the Skate (SSN-578), as the first Submarine to surface at the North Pole, 17 March 1959.

This caption used to read :

Skate (SSN-578), surfaced at the North Pole, 17 March 1959

Now it reads :

Skate (SSN-578),taken in summer, perhaps in August 1958.

Since I have gotten my new 3G iPhone I no longer rely on the Main Stream Media (MSM) or what I like to call the Main Stream Matrix or better still an Orwellian Term, Big Brother Corporation, (BBC). I use to watch Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, (CBC) News and was addicted to shows like Diplomatic Immunity on TV Ontario. After having access to SOURCE Material from all around the World through the Net it became clearer to me that CBC and TV Ontario where just feeding me Propaganda. I realized even though I have worked in the Media or should I say the Propaganda Biz for over 35 Years I continually fall for Lies that the MSM Manufacture. I like to think I am smarter than the Propaganda but this Arrogance is what keeps me in the Matrix.

The RTCC's entry on the "Stupid List" is, The Arab Spring. Yep that's right, Global Warming was a contributing factor to the unrest in the Middle East that caused the overthrow of governments. As Dr. Jeffrey Mazo wrote:

At first blush, the question might seem absurd. [ya think?]Surely the myriad long- and short-term social, economic, political and religious drivers of anger and dissent are the obvious culprits. How could climate change have had any – let alone a significant or meaningful – impact on the Arab spring?

Please don't hold what this guy says against me because we have the same first name. According to Mazo, Climate Change didn't cause the unrest all on its own, but made it more likely to happen.

Blizzard conditions whipped through Colorado on Friday, closing some 70 miles of interstate highway as heavy snow blanketed the region, according to the state's Department of Transportation.

Officials reported a total of 203 flight cancellations at Denver International Airport.

Only 19 percent of U.S. meteorologists saw human influences as the sole driver of climate change in a 2011 survey. And some, like the Weather Channel's founder John Coleman are vocal in their opposition.

"It is the greatest scam in history," wrote Coleman, one of the first meteorologists to publicly express doubts about climate change, on his blog in 2007. "I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; it is a SCAM."

It is true it’s the warmest decade on record, but the “record” only goes back 160 years – and it does not follow that the long-term warming trend has not abated because of this fact. Actually, a quick look at the data shows that Trenberth is either dishonest or refuses to look at data that contradicts his religious views.

A quick trip over to woodfortrees.org to graph the data from Hadley shows that the temperature has in fact declined over the past decade:

As described in a paper recently published in the journal Nature, Harvard Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Peter Huybers confirmed that slow changes in both the tilt and orientation of Earth’s spin axis combined to help determine when the major deglaciations of the past million years occurred.

UPDATE: kayakers already “stuck” in ice at 80.52397 degrees N

Heavy snow has caused disruption across Europe, carpeting much of Italy to the south and Turkey to the east.

The freeze that has swept south through the continent has caused at least 80 deaths, mainly in Ukraine and Poland.

Temperatures were so low that some areas in Romania along the shores of the Black Sea froze.

In central Italy, heavy goods lorries were barred from motorways and several top-flight football matches have fallen victim to the wintry conditions.

The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth.

The supposed "consensus" on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Parts of eastern and central Europe were hit hard by heavy snow and frigid temperatures for a second day Thursday, leaving hundreds trapped in cars, dozens of communities without power and at least one person dead. Some areas saw as much as three meters (10 feet) of snow.

There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy.

Citing concerns over global warming, Mihevc is asking the city's licensing and standards committee to review when city landlords are legally required to turn the heat on.

California's attempts to switch to green energy have inadvertently put the survival of the state’s golden eagles at risk.

Scores of the protected birds have been dying each year after colliding with the blades of about 5,000 wind turbines.

Now the drive for renewable power sources, such as wind and the sun, being promoted by President Obama and state Governor Jerry Brown has raised fears that the number of newborn golden eagles may not be able to keep pace with the number of turbine fatalities.

The symbol of Green renewable energy, our saviour from the non existent problem of Global Warming, abandoned wind farms are starting to litter the planet as globally governments cut the subsidies taxes that consumers pay for the privilege of having a very expensive power source that does not work every day for various reasons like it’s too cold or the wind speed is too high.

The US experience with wind farms has left over 14,000 wind turbines abandoned and slowly decaying, in most instances the turbines are just left as symbols of a dying Climate Religion, nowhere have the Green Environmentalists appeared to clear up their mess or even complain about the abandoned wind farms.

As written, the South African Weather Service Amendment Bill would affect not just TV weathermen and online weather sites but also community-based weather services. First offenses would be punished with a fine or up to 5 million rand (about $630,000) or five years in jail. The fines and jail time would be doubled for subsequent offenses.

The costs of subsidizing solar electricity have exceeded the 100-billion-euro mark in Germany, but poor results are jeopardizing the country's transition to renewable energy. The government is struggling to come up with a new concept to promote the inefficient technology in the future.

Parts of central and southern California were under a winter weather warning as a storm system was expected to sweep into the area late Sunday into Monday morning, with the weather service predicting 6 to 12 inches of snow.

One of Mount Kilimanjaro's most dramatic features is its breathtaking glaciers, which slither across its dormant volcanic plateau and down its crater slope in frigid shades of bluish-green.

And one of the saddest claims of some scientists and environmental activists is that those glaciers are disappearing, perhaps before the end of the decade, another victim of rising global temperatures.

Athumani Juma doesn't believe it. A guide who's been hiking the mountain for the past seven years, he laughed when he was asked about the likelihood that Kilimanjaro's snowcap would disappear soon. The glaciers, he claimed, no longer are shrinking, but growing.

There’s been a lot of buzz and conflicting reports over what the BEST data actually says, especially about the last decade where we have dueling opinions on a “slowing down”, “leveling off”, “standstill”, or “slight rise” (depending on whose pronouncements you read) of global warming.

Here’s some media quotes that have been thrown about recently about the BEST preliminary data and preliminary results:

“‘We see no evidence of it [global warming] having slowed down,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. There was, he added, ‘no levelling off’.” – Dr. Richard Muller

In The Sunday Mail Prof Curry said, the project’s research data show there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties:

Hyderabad/Bangalore: The unprecedented cold wave sweeping across southern India has claimed seven lives so far in Andhra Pradesh and broken century-old temperature records at several places in neighbouring Karnataka.

Chilly winds blew across coastal and north Telangana districts, claiming the lives of four elderly persons at Gudipudi village near Sattenapalle in Guntur district on Monday. Two women each died in Bapatla and Visakhapatnam.

Ethanol ventures backed by billionaire entrepreneur Vinod Khosla — including Range ?Fuels, which built a failed factory in Georgia — were given the green light for an estimated $600 million in federal and state subsidies, according to an analysis by The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Yet none of the dozen or so companies financed or controlled by Khosla over the last decade has produced commercially viable ethanol. Some failed or, hamstrung by unproven technology and insufficient capital, remain behind schedule.

Red-faced global warming policymakers are now back tracking as independent experts increasingly discredit the cornerstone of climatology: the greenhouse gas effect (GHE).

One such whistleblower is Dr. Pierre R Latour who explains adroitly below how his NASA colleague, septuagenarian Dr. James Hansen, concocted a mythical 33°C [91.4°F] atmospheric greenhouse gas global warming phenomenon.

As the U.S. government Venture Capitalist-in-Chief (and President) Barack Obama and his Department of Energy investment guru (and Energy Secretary) Steven Chu pour other peoples’ money into their favorite “clean” technology schemes, private backers appear to be following them off the cliff, “as publicly traded battery makers watched their stocks tank and their businesses stumble,” according to a Dow Jones report late last month.

This "Even though I was wrong I'm still right" syndrome afflicts a lot of people in the climate alarmist community. But then, you can hardly blame them for their wilful self-delusion and glib complacency for they seem to operate in a bubble in which there are no punishments for failure.

The classic example is Paul Ehrlich who lost a famous bet on "scarce resources" with the late economist Julian Simon (aka the "Doomslayer" because he was so good at confounding environmentalists' hysterical scaremongering using actual scientific data as opposed to computer projections).

The Virginia AG Kenneth Cuccinelli wants the documents from Mann, who formerly worked at the University of Virginia. Cuccinelli is attempting to determine if Mann was involved in defrauding Virginia taxpayers in his requests for grants to fund his questionable research.

The four accomplices Fabrice Sakoun were also punished: Haroun Cohen, who has taken refuge in Israel, has been sentenced to four years in prison and one million euro fine, Elie Baloukas to 30 months imprisonment of which six month suspended sentence and a fine of 100,000 euros, David Illouz to three years in prison and 100,000 euro fine and Sid Foudil to one year in prison....

Moreover, Justice confiscated the Aston Martin and Fabrice Sakoun boat, and many buildings belonging to Haroun Cohen.
She also confiscated some 13 million placed in accounts in Israel by two men, considered by the court as "the main beneficiaries of the designers (...) and fraudulent transactions."...

The fishing town of Cordova, Alaska has seen 18 feet of snow this winter, and with the town of 2,239 residents (23% of them Native) buried in the white stuff, Mayor Jim Kallendar declared a state of emergency on Sunday and called in the National Guard.

The city’s website, CityofCordova.net, displays periodic updates on “Snowpocalypse 2012,” and the catchy nickname isn’t entirely hyperbole. According to a CBS news report, the accumulation is three times the average for the area; a resident says there is “more snow in Cordova than people and shovels to deal with it.”

"Thus we have chickens coming home to roost. After years of warmist propaganda, Alaska is suffering a ferocious winter, and the US government has been caught out, totally unprepared to deal with the conditions."

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.

The Seward Highway remains closed between Anchorage and Girdwood due to whiteout conditions from blowing snow, snowdrifts along the roadway and two avalanches this morning in the McHugh Creek area, a spokesman for the state transportation department said.

Some avalanche debris reached the northbound lane and highway crews are working in the area, said Rick Feller, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. The department and Alaska State Troopers have closed the highway between Potter Marsh and Girdwood, he said.

"It's zero visibility and extremely difficult driving conditions," Feller said.

Teams were looking closely at the snowpack elsewhere to see if explosives would be needed to clear other potential avalanche hazards, Feller said.

The Inupiat village of Noatak, where temperatures dipped to 45 below or colder each of the past three days, ran out of heating oil Saturday at the village store, residents say. Elder Bernice Monroe said her 78-year-old husband drove a snowmachine to nearby Red Dog Mine to buy a drum of fuel, while the store borrowed drums from the utility pump house and began rationing sales to 10 gallons per family.

People called each other on the VHF radio asking if anyone has fuel to sell or share, said Noatak resident Hilda Booth. "My husband and I are using our fish rack woods to heat up our home because it's so cold to go out and get wood."

Extreme winter weather has left one Alaskan town battling huge snowdrifts and forced another to seek fuel supplies from a Russian tanker.

The Alaskan National Guard has arrived to dig out the town of Cordova, which has seen 10ft (3m) of snow in a week.