"You liar. Is this your global warming?"

This unusual cold December in Europe, northern China and now eastern US has sparked quite some cynicism and sarcasm towards global warming.

Roger Cohen, journalist of the International Herald Tribune, said that global warming, which some people "apparently took to mean the end of European winters", is part of the reason for "the current farce", in which a few inches of snow have cast Europe into chaos. "This, according to some, is the result of global warming," he wrote in an article called Snow! Hit the panic button. "So if all else fails, blame global warming for the freeze."

Another journalist, The Guardian's George Monbiot, received a message on his voicemail: "It's minus 18 Celsius and my pipes have frozen. You liar. Is this your global warming?"

But Monbiot was adamant. His response to the message, given in his article entitled That snow outside is what global warming looks like, was: "She's not going to like the answer, and nore are you. It may be yes."

Making reference to the Arctic oscillations phenomenon, he maintained that "there is now strong evidence to suggest that the unusually cold winters of the last two years in Europe and the UK are the result of heating elsewhere". He also reminded the readers to pay attention to averages. "A global warming trend doesn't mean that every region becomes warmer every month," he wrote. For support, he quoted NASA's datasets, which show that the world has just experienced the warmest January to November period since the global record began 131 years ago, that 2010 looks likely to be either the hottest or the equal hottest year, and that this November was the warmest on record.

He was well aware that people's reaction to what he said is likely to be "Now you're claiming that this cooling is the result of warming!" or "Just look out of the window... there's a foot of snow outside", to which his response was that humans are so governed by their senses that what they see, taste and feel overrides analysis.

Admittedly, human beings are not known to be very rational.