(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.

Apologies for blog-silence. I had a few days off thanks to the “Karneval” holidays in Germany, so I resisted the temptation to sit down and blog.I have been doing a lot of reading though, trying to get to the bottom – or at least fairly deep down into – the controversy over the IPCC figures, the emails leaked towards the end of last year etc. I have strong feelings about people illegally hacking into other people’s emails. However, I must admit to being very disturbed by what I have read recently about the background to this whole affair.
In a comment posted on the Ice Blog Victoria Quade says she thinks “the emphasis on exact figures is a distraction when talking about global warming.” She continues:
“The only thing we can say with certainty is there is sufficient evidence that industrialized society is having a detrimental effect on the environment, one of which appears to be global warming. For me this is enough of a reason to support efforts aimed at reducing human behaviour that contributes to global warming.”
Victoria, I agree with the spirit of what you say. Too much nit-picking about details is distracting and doesn’t change the general trend. There are too many people who will use this kind of thing as an excuse for not changing that behaviour contributing to global warming.
But at the moment I’m worried about the effect on the credibility of scientists. The IPCC reports are based on the “peer review” process, which should mean papers are reviewed anonymously and independently. If it is true that some influential scientists are blocking the publication of research which doesn’t fit in with theirs or the mainstream view, then we have a real problem.
I come back to the talk I had with Professor Adil Najam, IPCC lead author, a couple of weeks ago. He stresses that, unfortunately, because of the huge implications for human society, climate science is being argued out in detail in our “everyday” media, where in other branches of science, the experts will conduct their debates in scientific journals without being constantly in the spotlight. At the same time he says a lot of politicians “hide” behind this scientific to-ing and fro-ing, using it as an excuse for inaction.
Let me finish for today by directing your attention to an article by climate scientist Dave Stainforth from the
Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
Climate science in the spotlight – on GUARDIAN website
He says we have to distinguish between “school” science and “research” science, with the latter being constantly in progress.He says whatever the disputes over details and the impossibility of exactly how and to what extent climate change will affect particular regions at particular times, there should be no disputing the fact that greenhouse gas emissions are changing the climate and we would do well to do something about it.

Bob Rau in Australia has posted a comment expressing his amazement that amongst all the scientific data, one figure can be extracted and blown up out of all proportion.
I agree with you to some extent Bob, but I think there’s method in it. Of course we have a right to expect something like the IPCC report to be extremely well checked and checked again, but I also think there are people who seek out things like this, not necessarily in the interests of scientific accuracy, but because they want to encourage climate scepticism. It’s certainly a mistake that shouldn’t happen and has done a lot of damage in terms of the climate scientists’s credibility, but I agree it should not be allowed to throw a question mark over all the data.
My colleague Nathan Witkop recorded an interview with the IPCC lead author Adil Najam, as mentioned in a previous entry, for this week’s edition of Living Planet. By tonight (Thursday) or Friday morning, both European time, it should be available to listen or download. Highly recommendable.
Living Planet Environment Magazine (weekly)

I’ll never forget the beauty, the silence and the wonder of stepping out on the frozen Arctic waters of the Chukchi Sea in Barrow, Alaska.

Ice Blog Archive Alaska 2008
Nor will I forget the tales of the Inupiat people of the changes to the ice and the consequences for wildlife, like polar bears and whales.
On the same trip, I visited Prince William Sound. That site of great natural beauty was also the location of the Exxon Valdez disaster, just over 20 years ago. At first sight, you don’t notice that, but underneath some of the rocks you find traces of oil, which takes a long, long time to break down in the cold Arctic waters.
So it’s with some concern that I follow the controversy over plans by Royal Dutch Shell to drill for billions of barrels of oil in the Chukchi Sea this year. The sea lies between Alaska and Siberia and is thought to hold large quantities of oil and gas.
The US authorities conditionally approved the plans to drill three exploratory wells in December 2009. The decision was delayed on the grounds that the area is a prime habitat for polar bears, now recognized by US law as a threatened species.
Now indigenous and conservationist groups are suing to stop the project.
Concern from the Northern Alaska Environmental Centre
The oil industry has a strong position in Alaska. It provides around 40% of the state’s tax revenue and provides a lot of funding for the University of Alaska. Shell says it is working to improve its environmental impact. But the environment lobby is not happy that enough is known about the potential impacts of further drilling and the changes being brought by climate change. With the race to get at the Arctic’s natural resources speeding up as the region warms – more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet – the risk of development without adequate research on environmental impacts seems to me to be increasing all the time.
“Shell comes under attack in Alaska” – in THE GUARDIAN