It's getting colder, not warmer

Brrrrrrrr! It's cold out there. From Austria to the West Coast of the United States, reports of record early snow and dramatically low temperatures suggest that this will be a long, hard winter.

But isn't the world supposed to be getting hotter? You know, "global warming", and all that. In fact, it's the opposite that's happening. Did you know that there has not been any increase in global temperatures for the last 11 years? And did you know that the warmest year recorded globally in the past decade was not 2008 or 2007 or even 2003, when a heat wave killed 15,000 people in France? It was 1998.

When BBC News climate correspondent Paul Hudson asked "What happened to global warming?", he could not have imagined the passionate debate that would take place over the last few days. Now, as a result, some of the believers in "global warming" are backing away from the term and are using the more moderate "climate change" instead. But if the terminology and the predictions keep changing with the weather reports, why should we believe those who keeping telling us that a very warm end of the world is coming soon?

Yes, the climate is changing. But it's always been changing, and we don't fully understand why. Maybe we never will. Whatever about the ideology, however, I am a big believer in climate change. I think that all of us need to be more responsible in how we use energy, and we need to encourage our leaders to invest more money in areas such as geo-engineering and genetically modified food to help deal with global hunger and resource scarcity. But global warming? Frankly, I'm much more worried about global cooling. It's real; it's right outside the window, and I don't like it. Brrrrrrrr!