Ten southern and central European countries have declared a red alert after heatwave ‘Lucifer’ caused temperatures to skyrocket over 40C, with scientists warning that the extreme heat could end up killing 152,000 people a year by 2100.

Italy, Switzerland, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, and Serbia are on red alert, European forecast network Meteoalarm said on Saturday.

Florence’s famous Uffizi Gallery was temporarily closed on Friday after the museum’s air conditioning system broke down, ANSA news agency reported.

It's another #hot day in southern & eastern Europe - temps into the low 40s in parts of #Italy, around 6C above average #heatwave#holidayspic.twitter.com/QX8jOdVkCL

— Weather Co Europe (@WeatherCoEurope) 2 августа 2017 г.

Greece, Spain, Bulgaria, France, Macedonia, Slovakia, and Moldova have issued orange alerts to stress the potential for worsening weather conditions.

At least two people have died from the heat, one in Romania and one in Poland, Reuters reported, adding that many more have been taken to the hospital for sunstroke.

“In two hours of my shift today I saw four people fainting on the street and complaining of heat exhaustion,” a traffic warden told Reuters in Belgrade.

Authorities in Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia, and Croatia advised people to stay indoors to avoid the heat, with temperatures expected to stay around 40C (104F) next week.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/398721-lucifer-heatwave-alert-europe/

 

meanwhile:

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/weather/article/National-media-freaks-about-typical-Seattle-11732952.php

 

 

Florida is currently bracing itself for Hurricane Irma to hit early Sunday after claiming at least 21 lives in the eastern Caribbean. Currently at category 4, the storm is expected to strengthen before moving on to the US.

Irma looms as Texas recovers from Hurricane Harvey, which killed 70 people when it struck last month. The state’s governor says the clean-up could cost up to $120bn.

READ MORE: Stream of planes flees Florida ahead of Hurricane Irma (IMAGES)

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly denied global warming, dubbing it a hoax, and pulled the US out of the United Nations Paris Agreement on climate change in June.

The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012

 

French Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot also made a dig at the president’s climate policy on Friday, saying:“What will change in the United States are the federal states, the cities, a whole section of society. I think that is what will make up for the reservations of the American president on the links between cause and effect.”

US environmental chief Scott Pruitt meanwhile told CNN that now is not the time for discussion about climate change.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/402600-assange-climate-change-us/

 

read also: www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33287

Articles like this one in the Washington Post infuriate me...

This hurricane season is, indisputably, a nightmare. And it’s indisputable that climate change is affecting our weather. The fingerprint of climate change is on every storm, it’s in every raindrop and sunny day. It is a new, yet untested and ill-understood, factor in the way our planet works.

 

Read more:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/09/23/h...

 

Here the author, Angela Fritz, is trying to tell us that climate change is "untested and ill-understood". That is rubbish. The scientific community is quite clear about the process and what is coming from burning fossil fuels. The doubt is only sowed by idiots and journalists who have not studied the problem and are still prepared to believe that global warming is "ill-understood". 

Compared to say, Quantum mechanics which powers your iPhone and its communication capability, global warming is a very simple scientific equation: you add CO2 in the atmosphere, the atmosphere warms up. Is this not simple enough for you? And we are now beyond climate change which has natural limits in the present set up of atmospheric conditions for the last few million years. By adding extra CO2 in the atmosphere, we change the upper limit of climate change. This is called global warming. Is this too hard to understand? No, because you have to pander to your advertisers who are mostly those who impose the burning of fossil fuels. So you pussyfoot about, still dragging along the "doubt" and giving the absolution from the guilt we all should feel because we all burn fossil fuels. 

Now, because the US's administration is full of idiots and denialists — a bunch of imbeciles like Pruitt in favour of burning more fossil fuels — does not mean that they do not understand the problem, but that they are prepared to take the gamble till it is impossible for the press gang to do a complete (or partial: doubt) denial of global warming. By then their mates would have loaded their pockets with more cash. UNTIL THE PRESS GANG IS PREPARED TO REMOVE ALL DOUBTS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING (and stop pussyfooting with "untested and ill-understood" like Angela Fritz does) THE MORONS IN CHARGE WILL GET AWAY WITH MURDER.

Time to go with the reality of scientific observations which started way back nearly 200 hundred years ago with Fourier in 1824. These guys were far cleverer than idiot Trump and imbecile Pruitt. Why we elect these morons comes from the mystery of our philosophical vacuum filled by religious fart gases.

Please read again and again:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33287

 

Bushit emmissions .....

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt on Tuesday used the Bible to explain his major changes to the composition of the agency’s independent science advisory committees, which play an important role in guiding and advising the EPA’s regulatory work.

“In the book of Joshua there is a story about Joshua leading the people of Israel into the promised land after Moses passed away,” Pruitt said. “And Joshua says to the people of Israel choose this day whom you’re going to serve. And I would say to you this is sort of like the ‘Joshua Principle’ that as it relates to grants to this agency, you are going to have to choose either service on the committee to provide counsel to us in an independent fashion or you can choose grants, but you cannot do both.”

What the “Joshua Principle” means for the EPA is that scientists who receive agency grants for their research are now barred from serving on any of its independent advisory boards. This opens the door to more industry and political representation on the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, the Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC), and the Science Advisory Board (SAB). The EPA’s most ardent critics in past administrations cheered the directive, which was announced at a “Live Press Event”—though it was unclear that many reporters were invited to attend. 

Among the most vocal critics of the science advisory boards has been House Science Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who sponsored a bill that would have required no SAB panel members to receive “current grants or contracts from the Environmental Protection Agency and shall not apply for a grant or contract for 3 years following the end of that member’s service on the Board.” The directive announced today reflects Smith’s priorities and also outlines efforts to insure what Pruitt calls “fresh perspectives” and “geographic diversity.”

These boards are independent, but appointed by the administrator, and serve as a type of peer review on the agency’s work, reviewing the rigor and integrity of how the agency uses science to support its rulemaking. One high-profile example from the Obama administration was the SAB’s critique of the EPA’s 2015 finding that fracking had not led to”to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States.” The SAB responded by noting inconsistencies between that conclusion and “the observations/data presented in the body of the report.” There are widespread implications of appointing industry-sympathetic members, especially as Pruitt’s EPA plans to take a new look at many of the EPA’s scientific conclusions regarding climate change, air pollution, and water pollution. 

read more:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/10/scott-pruitt-is-using-the...

 

Just days after helping orchestrate the United States’ exit from a global climate accord last June, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt embarked on a whirlwind tour aimed at championing President Trump’s agenda at home and abroad.

On Monday, June 5, accompanied by his personal security detail, Pruitt settled into his $1,641.43 first-class seat for a short flight from the District to New York City. His ticket cost more than six times that of the two media aides who came along and sat in coach, according to agency travel vouchers; the records do not show whether his security detail accompanied him at the front of the plane.

In Manhattan, Pruitt made two brief television appearances praising the White House’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, stayed with staff at an upscale hotel near Times Square and returned to Washington the next day.

That Wednesday, after traveling with Trump on Air Force One for an infrastructure event in Cincinnati, Pruitt and several staffers raced to New York on a military jet, at a cost of $36,068.50, to catch a plane to Rome.

The transatlantic flight was part of a round-trip ticket for the administrator that cost $7,003.52, according to EPA records — several times what was paid for other officials who went. The documents do not explain the discrepancy. In Rome, Pruitt and a coterie of aides and security personnel got private tours of the Vatican and met with papal officials, business executives and legal experts before heading briefly to a meeting of environmental ministers in Bologna. Pruitt departed the Group of Seven summit a day early, before negotiations had concluded, to attend a Cabinet meeting at which Trump’s deputies lauded the president’s job performance.

 

Read more:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/first-class-trave...