Snow traps thousands as weather death toll rises
The snow in Rome today
Snow drifts reaching up to rooftops kept tens of thousands of villagers prisoners in their own homes in the Balkans today as the death toll from Europe's big freeze rose past 550.
More heavy snow fell on the Balkans and in Italy, while the Danube river, already closed to shipping for hundreds of kilometres (miles) because of thick ice, froze over in Bulgaria for the first time in 27 years.
Montenegro's capital of Podgorica was brought to a standstill by snow 50 centimetres (20 inches) deep, a 50-year record, closing the city's airport and halting rail services to Serbia because of an avalanche.
Eight more people were reported to have died in Romania, taking the toll for the country to 65, three in Serbia, one in the Czech Republic and one in Austria.
Polish fire brigade spokesman Pawel Fratcak said Saturday that defective heating had triggered a spate of deadly blazes in houses and apartments, with eight people killed on Friday night and three the night before.
New Romanian Prime Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu and his defence and interior ministers, who were sworn in only on Thursday, flew by helicopter to the eastern Buzau region, one of the worst hit, on Saturday.
He called on the authorities to work hard to beat the challenges facing them, as food threatened to run out in some villages in spite of air drops.
At Carligul Mic firemen and volunteers helped people dig tunnels and trenches in the snow reaching to the house roofs in some places.
"I've never seen as much snow in my whole life," resident Aneta Dumitrache, 78, told an AFP photographer.
Authorities said an estimated 30,000 people were still cut off in Romania, and more than 110,000 in the Balkan countries, including 60,000 in Montenegro, nearly 10 percent of the population.
Belgrade has taken steps to limit electricity consumption in the face of threatened shortages, calling on companies to reduce their activities to a minimum.
With Wednesday and Thursday already public holidays for Serbia's national day, the government has also declared Friday a non-working day to extend into next weekend.
Forecasters expect the cold snap, which started two weeks ago, to continue until mid-February.
ROME BLANKETED BY SNOW
In Italy Rome was again blanketed by snow for the second time in a week, but authorities seemed to have learned from their previous experience, when the capital was brought to a halt.
Public transport functioned almost normally, thanks to 700 snowploughs and gritters mobilised, but other parts of the country, especially the south where snow is extremely rare, were having difficulties.
In the Calabria region, Campana's mayor Pasquale Manfredi, where many villages were cut off, likened the weather to "an earthquake without the shaking."
On the French Mediterranean island of Corsica snow was up to one metre thick in the higher villages and all flights were cancelled from Bastia airport.
Many people are determined to enjoy the icy conditions to their utmost, however.
Thousands have taken to frozen lakes and rivers, including the Aussenalster lake at Hamburg in northern Germany, iced over for the first time in 15 years, which is mounting a huge festival expected to attact one million people over the weekend.
In Poland ice yachting or ice-surfing, on a surfboard equipped with skates, are the rage, while in the Czech Republic tourists have flocked to the village of Kvilda, reckoned to be one of the coldest in the country, for the experience of camping out in temperatures of up to minus 39 Celsius (minus 38 Fahrenheit).
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Alex Ellul
Feb 12th, 00:23
And this is the reason why the planet is freezig:
http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2011/11/12/100-years-of-cooling-global-cooling-habibullo-abdussamatov-climate-change-solar-minimum/
Selection: (But one must visit the site and review the graphs, they explain everything:)
In a study of cyclic behavior of the Sun, Russian scientists now predict 100 years of cooling. IceAgeNow reports that these are not just any scientists. This forecast comes from astrophysicist Dr Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the Russian segment of the International Space Station, and head of Space Research of the Sun Sector at the Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The Russian scientists began by looking at a paper published by J. A. Eddy* in 1976 that documented the correlation between sunspot activity and corresponding large – and disruptive – climate changes on Earth. Disruptive because the changes frequently lead to economic and demographic crises that affected the existence of entire nations.
Conducting research similar to Eddy’s, Russia’s Eugene Borisenkov discovered a quasi 200- year cycle of global cooling during the past 7,500 years that correlates to times of sunspot minima similar to the Maunder minimum. Abdussamatov points that these were also times when any industrial influence was non-existent. Our planet warms and cools in predictable 200-year cycles corresponding to 200-year variations in the size and luminosity of the Sun, the scientists found. Previous global warmings – of which there have been many – have always been followed by deep cooling. The 200-year variations in sunspot activity and total solar irradiance (TSI) are the dominating reason for climate change.
Alex Ellul
Feb 12th, 00:18
The theory of man-made global warming is dead. Scientifically dead. Many scientists have now realised that our planet has not seen a rise in temperature for the last 15 years. This has been declared by the UK MET office which is in the forefront of the AGW propoganda machine. Meanwhile, the leading German green environmentalist scientist has written a book Die Kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun), explaining how he has found out that the AGW theory is just a scam perpetrated by the UN's IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change ) abettted by a few sientists who are in the politicians' paylist. Today Germany’s national tabloid Bild (which has a whopping circulation of 16 million) devoted half of page 2 on an article called:
THE CO2 LIE
Renowned team of scientists claim the climate catastrophe is fear-mongering by politics“
The widely read Bild will follow with the rest of the series in the days ahead. In part I today Bild presents “What the IPCC of the UN doesn’t tell you.” Bild asks “what if the IPCC is wrong? Can we really blindly trust these experts? Are they really independent?”
Bild then writes:
The phenomenal prognoses of heat from the IPCC are pure fear-mongering.”
The Bild series is sure to cause radical environmentalists to seethe and lash out. Expect an all-out assault in the days and weeks ahead. Already the reaction from activists has been swift and virulent – though they have yet to read the book.
They never wanted the debate – and now the dam has broken
This book has reached the top list in Gremany and when it is translated into English it will devastate the whole AGW/Climate Change shebang. There are trilions of dollars/euros up for grabs in green alternative energy such a wind turbines and solar panels that are being subsidised heavily from workers' taxes and breaking many countries' economies in the process.
http://notrickszone.com/2012/02/06/body-blow-to-german-global-warming-movement-major-media-outlets-unload-on-co2-lies/
Reinhard Azzopardi
Feb 11th, 18:15
Global warming?
J. Falzon
Feb 11th, 19:03
Yep, Global Warming. In summer, heat radiation from the Sun can penetrate the Earth's (polluted) atmosphere, but is too weak to get out. Hence, temperatures rise. In Winter, heat from the Sun does not have enough power to penetrate the gas barrier that we have built due to harmful gases, and so, temperatures are colder than average. Quite simple really.
R. Cilia
Feb 11th, 19:17
I keep asking the same question!
Mark Vassallo
Feb 11th, 19:29
Climate change - not global warming.
Climate change means that we will experience colder winters and hotter summers.
On the whole the average temperature is increasing very slowly, but what is more noticeable is the fact that our winters will be getting a lot colder.
Wilfred Camilleri
Feb 11th, 19:43
Balderdash! It doesn't matter what kind of weather we have, those who believe in Global Warming will always have an explanation! The truth is that earth goes through weather cycles that repeat over the centuries. So was the ice age created by global warming? Of course not but those using fake science to push and promote their global warming agenda ignore history and instead base their dire predictions on a few hundred years of climate statistics, which they meld and mould to fit their view of the world!
William Attard McCarthy
Feb 11th, 23:17
Yes, Global Warming...but not as some people have it written on their agenda. Global Warming does not mean that the planet as a whole is getting warmer. If you make some Googling and some research, you will find that warming in certain regions of the world will cause colder conditions in other parts. The Earth is a living planet which goes through stages, and it is part of a star system which travels through various perturbances in the galaxy. There are many factors which are causing the freak weather in Europe; if you have a look through www.meteoweb.eu you will find that there is concern over the change of the Gulf Stream, which is basically the ocean's currents responsible for climate conditions around the globe.
As Wilfred said above, it is not humankind that is causing this phenomenon, but it is part and parcel of living on a rotating planet with a fluctuating axis.