Perth Weather Forecast | Coldest July on Record

Bureau figures show the average minimum temperature this month has been 5.1 degrees, making it the coolest July since 1997.

Stephen H. Schneider, climate change expert, dies at 65

"No one, and I mean no one, had a broader and deeper understanding of the climate issue than Stephen," said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University. "More than anyone else, he helped shape the way the public and experts thought about this problem -- from the basic physics of the problem, to the impact of human beings on nature's ecosystems, to developing policy."

One of Dr. Schneider's strongest talents as a scientist was finding vivid ways of describing the harm of global warming. He often appeared on television as a climate expert, including the HBO program "Real Time With Bill Maher."

He once told Maher's viewers that humans were to blame for global warming because of our use of the atmosphere as a "sewer to dump our smokestack and our tailpipe waste."
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His passionate views on the climate debate occasionally attracted vitriol from extremist groups. An FBI investigation recently found he was named on a neo-Nazi "death list," and Dr. Schneider said he received hundreds of hate e-mails a day.

"What do I do? Learn to shoot a magnum? Wear a bulletproof jacket?" Dr. Schneider said. "I have now had extra alarms fitted at my home, and my address is unlisted. I get scared that we're now in a new Weimar Republic where people are prepared to listen to what amounts to Hitlerian lies about climate scientists."

Cold Wave Kills 18 in Bolivia

The Bolivian authorities said on Monday that 18 people had died in a cold wave with the lowest temperature of 3 Celsius degrees in 29 years.

Santa Cruz, a department in the east of the country, registered on Monday the record low temperature of 3 Celsius degrees.

The cold wave made the authorities suspend schools till Wednesday in nine departments of the country.