Meanwile the decade of the teens has begun with snow, ice, and cold winds. Today the following message was received from M O'C:

''We have not had a winter like this here in Ireland in living or maybe even in dead memory. Completely unable to cope with it. It is so bad that even the drivers here in Kerry, who normally drive casually and at speed on all sides of the road simultaneously, are driving with care and a lack of speed. The wind-chill here in the extreme south-west is in such a hurry that it is not stopping off in Greenland or Iceland for a glass of Glühwein but comes now directly from the North Pole. When I walked up to the local shop for the papers, I had difficulty in detaching the icicle from the tip of my nose.......''

And he is not alone. We have extreme cold here in New York City and there are blizzards upstate. Of course in Quebec City, webmaster Roger has to shovel snow until at least April almost every year, but the amounts are high and there is a lot of ice this year.

Moreover now my brother-in-law is shoveling away the stuff from his doorstep in South London. Stockwell is not very far south, but they have not had a snow dump like this for a couple of decades. Frida Ghitis writes about freezing cold in Atlanta which she is about to escape from again. The orange trees are frozen in Florida. My children are shoveling unusually large quantities of white stuff in Boston and Cleveland.

There is 20-yr record snow in England and the airports are shut or slowed; the railroads are impassible and the roads dangerous because they have run out of grit. There is 40-year record snow in Beijing, where Tienanmin Square is blanketed with the stuff. Also record snow is Seoul. Most of northern Europe is shivering.

David Fuller's view When I arrived home yesterday evening, Mrs Fuller was watching a special item on Sky News, with the narrator talking assuredly about imminent global warming and rising sea levels, causing problems for Britain's agricultural industry.

A minute later, Sky's weather man provided chilling details of the UK's coldest winter in 29 years, and it was only the 5th of January. I thought... something is not right here.

I look forward to seeing how the global warming catastrophists explain this one. I am not a climate change denier - our planet's long-term weather history has been turbulent - but for medium-term forecasting what impresses me is evidence. I'm no scientist but doesn't the coldest winter in at least 29 years look like the technical equivalent of a downward dynamic on price charts?

Presumably we will know if ice thickness on the polar caps increases. Meanwhile, we have seen at least 18 months and counting with minimal sun spots, and I believe there has also been an increase in volcanic activity (Search the site under Browning for more on these subjects).

If I wanted to be unkind, I would suggest that someone strap Al Gore to a giant icicle.