Blizzard kills 13 in northwest China

URUMQI: The worst snow in northwestern China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in six decades has claimed 13 lives by Monday, according to the regional bureau of civil affairs.

The bureau said in a printed report to news outlets Monday the blizzard and freezing temperatures that swept the northern part of Xinjiang, particularly Altay and Tacheng, had left another 1,168 people ill and injured.

Nine people died in Altay, including one from cold and eight in avalanches, and four died in avalanches in Ili Kazak Autonomous Prefecture, as of 10 am Monday, said the report.

Almost 1.42 million people were affected by the weather, and of them, 161,856 have been evacuated.

The severe frigidity has also helped topple 7,125 residential buildings and damage another 21,856 homes and 8,911 animal pens and vegetable sheds, leaving 101,000 head of livestock dead or injured. The grim weather also made it hard for 3.71 million head of livestock to find enough to eat. it said.

Scientists 'losing climate fight' - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Professor Pitman says sceptics have used the IPCC's error to skew the climate change debate.

"Climate scientists are losing the fight with the sceptics," he said.

"The sceptics are so well funded, so well organised. "They have nothing else to do. They don't have day jobs so they can put all their efforts into misinforming and miscommunicating climate science to the general public, whereas the climate scientists have day jobs and [managing publicity] actually isn't one of them.

"All of the efforts you do in an IPCC report is done out of hours, voluntarily, for no funding and no pay, whereas the sceptics are being funded to put out full-scale misinformation campaigns and are doing a damn good job, I think.

"They are doing a superb job at misinforming and miscommunicating the general public, state and federal governments."

Amazing IPCC: Finding Climate Change Before The Climate Changes « The Unbearable Nakedness of CLIMATE CHANGE

QED: the IPCC AR4-WG2-Chapter1 is a sad joke almost devoid of scientific content. All that effort has been for nothing, all the more so as it reported (especially) about warming-related climate changes no matter what.

That is, independently even from the actual measured temperatures.