Global Warming Hits Rome; Eastern Europe in Freezer -- Thank Goodness for the Drudge Report

Italy crippled by winter storm; snow as far south as Naples.

A winter storm battered much of Italy, bringing arctic temperatures to the north and snow as far south as Naples, disrupting transport and commerce across the country.

Rome got between six and eight inches of snow, the most in more than a quarter century, downing trees, snarling traffic and leaving shops shuttered. Some vehicles were trapped for 10 hours on the ring road that surrounds the capital and trucks were forced to pull off highways in much of the center and north of the country, SKYTG24 reported.

Temperatures at Malpensa Airport outside Milan dropped to minus 18 Celsius (0.4 degree Fahrenheit). The average low for February is 2 Celsius with a high of 8 degrees, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Snow falls in Rome for first time in 26 years -- MailOnline.

Snow fell in Rome today for the first time in 26 years as freezing temperatures took the death toll across Europe to more than 150.

The Italian capital is usually blessed by a moderate climate but the snowfall prompted authorities to stop visitors from entering the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, and the Palatine Hill, the former home of Rome's ancient emperors.

The last substantial snowfalls in Rome were in 1985 and 1986, though there have been other cases of lighter snow since then, including in 2010.

Global warming temperatures across Eastern Europe send deaths (due to freezing weather) to 150. The military is on alert in the United Kingdom as temperatures drop and heavy snow fall predicted.

Those predictions of a worse winter than usual appear to be holding true, albeit in the wrong part of the world. Those furry caterpillars must not have gotten the memo.

Reuters is posting the same thing: huge chill in central, eastern Europe.

At least 139 people have died across Eastern Europe and Germany since the cold snap began, interrupting what had been an unusually mild European winter.

In the Hungarian village of Farkaslyuk, people clambered up a 30-metre spoil heap from a disused mine to scrape together enough coal to heat their homes and cook for a few days.

Meanwhile, in the states, we have it so good that we can afford to ban Canadian oil via a proposed pipeline. We can use all that excess diesel to fuel thousands of trucks and Buffett trains rather than pipe it.  We are truly blessed to be such a resource-rich republic.

Miscellaneous notes:

Whenever I post that 0.6 degree increase in average global temperature over the next 90 years is neither reproducible nor statistically meaningful, I get a note from "anonymous" telling me that, in fact, 0.6 degrees over 90 years is incredibly significant. Am I missing something?

But, what I find most amusing is that no one is able to tell me a) the perfect average temperature for the earth; and, b) who set the thermostat in the first place, before natural forces and then man reset it, apparently.  

In the October, 2011, issue of National Geographic there is an interesting article, "World Without Ice: 56 million years ago a mysterious surge of carbon into the atmosphere sent global temperatures soaring. In a geologic eyeblink life was forever changed."

It was during that warm spell that modern mammals appeared. And then this quote: "But the lesson is that animals can evolve fast in a changing environment. When he first drove into the Bighorn four decades ago, it was precisely to learn where horse and primates came from. He now thinks that they come from [this time period] -- that those three orders of odern mammals acquired their distinctive characteristics right then, in a burst of evolution driven by the burst of carbon into the atmosphere." -- p. 109, National Geographic, October, 2011.