[Now look what you've done: "Unprecedented" weather on Saturn]

Sept. 15, 2009 -- A tempest that erupted on Saturn in January has become the Solar System's longest continuously observed lightning storm, astronomers reported on Tuesday.

The storm broke out in "Storm Alley," a region 35 degrees south of the ringed giant's equator, researchers told the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, near Berlin.

Thunderstorms there can be as big as 3,000 kilometers (nearly 2,000 miles) across.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Jimmy Carter: The “overwhelming” portion of animosity towards Obama is racist

The difference between Carter and most of the left, I think, is that he really believes this crap. And, to boot, he really believes he’s doing good by mentioning it rather than poisoning race relations by equating opposition to government expansion with white supremacism.

Live debate: Science reporting: is it good for you?

Join Science Minister Lord Drayson and Dr Ben Goldacre (author of Bad Science) for an open discussion on the state of science reporting in Britain.

BBC - Today: Tom Feilden: An inconvenient truth about global warming

And the timing couldn't be much worse. World leaders are due to meet in Copenhagen in December to hammer out an agreement on cutting greenhouse gas emissions to replace the Kyoto Treaty. It certainly won't help if there are a couple of inches of snow on the ground outside the convention centre, and climate models are predicting a sustained period of steady, or even falling, global temperatures.

Professor Philip Stott believes climate sceptics may seize on the research as evidence that the whole global warming hypothesis is fundamentally flawed: If natural cycles can interrupt, or even reverse climate change, maybe we don't need to take it so seriously.