With  winter temperatures across Europe dipping to long time lows, climate sceptics are on a roll. Just where is global warming? Fritz Vahrenholt is an example. A former top manager at one of Germany’s largest utilities companies, he is reported as  feeling “duped on climate change”. Granted – hundreds of people frozen to death, temperatures below minus 20 degrees Celsius and snow on Mediterranean islands don’t intuitively go well together with the idea that the planet is warming.

Yet, scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) near Berlin are saying just that. And that’s not all. Their findings suggest that temperatures have dropped so low precisely because of global warming. What? Well, in simple terms, here’s what’s happening:

Oh, for a funny take on the same story – cold winters, hot doubts – check out this report by Comedy Central’s John Stewart: