Dealing in Hot Air: The Pitfalls of Europe's New Emissions Trading System - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

The next stage in the world's CO2 emissions-trading scheme will begin in two years. Everyone agrees that the rulebook is complicated and that the costs for industry will be enormous. But nobody knows if the system will really help the environment -- or merely create a burdensome bureaucracy.

EU Referendum: Clever boy!

Says Met Office spokesman Dave Britton: "What has been quite unprecedented has been the prolonged nature of the cold. We have had some colder spells in December but what has been quite noticeable about this one is quite how prolonged it was and the amount of snow we had."

Someone in the Met Office must have looked out of the window.

James Hansen 2008: Warm Winters “Clear Sign” of Global Warming. | hauntingthelibrary

The recent warm winters that Britain has experienced are a clear sign that the climate is changing, he says.

NASA 1999: “Winter in the Northern Hemisphere will continue to warm”. Will Someone Tell Monbiot ? | hauntingthelibrary

That’s the official climate science line in 2010. Changes in the atmospheric circulation above the Arctic lead to colder and snowier winters, thanks to global warming. All clear? Good. Now, let’s rewind eleven years . . .

Back in the balmy, El Nino days of 1999, a study from NASA GISS’s Gavin Schmidt, Drew Schindell and Ron Miller told a very different story. Back then, when winters were mild and largely snow-free, climate science was coming to the opposite conclusion: