(Pictures taken in Hamburg last week)
With the snow still high and temperatures down to a chilly minus 15 (cold for these parts) again last night, I have been hearing a few of those comments about global cooling again over the past few days…
But Professor Hartmut Graßl from the Max Panck Institute for Meterology in Hamburg has been putting the story right in interviews with news agencies: It’s a long winter and a cold one, he says, but nothing out of the ordinary.In fact some northern parts of the globe are experiencing unusually mild temperatures.
And the long cold spell in our part of the world is definitely not a sign that global warming is not happening, he says, and refers to a study indicating the decade from 1997 to 2007 was the warmest decade ever.
The geese who live near my office hear in Bonn are still a bit sceptical. But if you look carefully, there is a bit of green coming through the melting snow..

A poll conducted recently for the BBC indicates that the number of people in the UK who are sceptical about science has risen. Of the 1,001 adults who were questioned, 25% said they did not think global warming was happening. BBC news says this shows an increase of 10% since a similar poll in November.
The percentage who accepted climate change as a reality apparently fell from 83% in November to 75% in the latest poll, and only 26% of those interviewed said they believed climate change was happening and “now established as largely man-made”.
The poll was conducted by Populus, the same group who carried out a similar poll for the Times paper in November 2009. At that time, 41% agreed climate change was happening and was largely the result of human activities, so that would appear to be a considerable drop.
Although these polls refer to the UK – home to the University of East Anglia, at the centre of the leaked emails controversy – I feel sure the trend will not be limited to that country.
Populus poll for bbc results
It appears to confirm my fear that the email scandal and the faults in IPCC reports have seriously damaged the credibility of climate science.
The failure of the Copenhagen summit after all the hype could also have made a lot of people doubt the seriousness and urgency of the climate change issue.