CLIMATE CHANGE

January 2010 was the coldest month in the U.K. for 23 years, and it was the same in Scandinavia. Taking the two months together, it was the coldest January and December in England and Wales since 1981/2, in Northern Ireland since 1962/3, and in Scotland since 1914!

Does that mean that the world is cooling down and that climate change is now going the other way? Not judging by the media. Opinion formers are obviously quite willing to view this winter as an exception that doesn't alter the long-term trend. The world is hotting up, it just doesn't do it all of the time.

In these post-Copenhagen times, I find this asymmetric view of the data rather puzzling. It is quite clear that there have been times in the past when the world was both hotter and colder. Around the year 1000, it was warmer, thereby allowing Viking settlers to survive in southern Greenland, presumably so-called because it was green rather than white. In the 17th century, by contrast, it was colder. The Thames froze over according to Pepys; and the Swedes won one of their perennial wars against the Danes by marching an army across the frozen Belts from north Germany to attack Copenhagen from the west.

Are we, therefore, merely in the throes of one of these "natural" cycles. To be frank, I just don't know. Nor, I suspect, do the vast majority of people. The idea of climate change - for the worse, and everywhere, not just on small Pacific islands - seems to have taken strong root in people's minds. It will be interesting to see if that perception holds, if next winter turns out to be "the coldest since ...".

Walter Blotscher