That trip ended finally. It was cold in Europe to the point that the day on which temperatures rose to 3 degrees was the warmest of the trip. This cold spell could be the beginning of a decade or more of lower temperatures, if one were to believe the theory that the global warming / cooling is occurring due to cycles of temperatures. It is terrible timing for the Copenhagen summit to have occurred now during one really big freeze. “Could we be in for 30 years of global cooling?” asks the Daily Mail today quoting scientists who believe in the concept of multi decadal oscillations. What of the low sunspot activity recorded in recent years? Could that presage another Maunder Minimum?

The politicians, especially the ones on the conservative end of the spectrum, have won the battle to confuse the issue completely. No one really seems to care for the science in any case. The really interesting thing is that the so-called conservatives don’t seem to want to conserve the environment. Forget the global warming / anthropomorphic climate change, isn’t it worth it to spend some efforts to clean up the environment of pollutants just so that we have clean air, water and land; and are in a position to leave that as a legacy to future generations?

In this context, I also wanted to highlight a wonderful piece in the Guardian I read yesterday on the flight (the Guardian and the International Herald Tribune were the only English language newspapers available in Madrid): Irrational fears give nuclear power a bad name. It is a wonderful report on how fear-mongering by politicians, contractors and media have led the world to ignore nuclear power as a source of energy.

Back on topic of the freezing cold, if there were to be a global decline in temperatures, I wish that leads to a little cooler clime here in Bombay. At a time the entire northern hemisphere is struggling with the cold, Bombay is almost sweltering at 30 degrees C plus temperatures.