More from Christopher Booker

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Excerpt:

"Surely this was just the moment in history for which the European Union was created." So said Prince Charles in Brussels on Thursday, as he won a standing ovation from MEPs for the most overtly pro-EU speech ever made by a British Royal. To the evident delight of the Foreign Office officials present, he not only unreservedly praised the European Commission and its President, Jose Manuel Barroso, for all they are doing to "fight global warming", but urged them to do more.

The only MEP who stayed seated during the ovation was Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, who said afterwards: "As a loyal monarchist I was the first to rise to my feet when the prince entered, because I was paying respect to a member of the Royal Family. But he then spoke as a politician, making a highly political speech with which I profoundly disagreed."

As it happened, the timing of the prince's remarks was impeccable. They came just when satellite data are confirming that the northern hemisphere (except for western Europe) has been enduring its coldest winter for decades, with snow cover at its greatest extent since 1966. January's global temperatures were lower than their entire 20th-century average. Even as the prince expressed fears that within seven years summer ice in the Arctic might be gone forever, Antarctic summer ice was at its highest January level ever recorded, 30 per cent above normal.

Amid the continuing absence of sunspot activity, many thoughtful climate scientists now believe that the Earth may be entering on a period of marked cooling, similar to that which in the 1970s prompted fears of a "new ice age".

The "warmists" are already trying to explain that this recent drop in global temperatures is only "masking the underlying warming trend". But if such continued emissions of hot air are to have any practical effect, I am sure that all those in China, Afghanistan, the USA and elsewhere who have recently been suffering their worst blizzards in decades will be hugely grateful.