Getting to the nitty-gritty

Isn't it rather ironic that Newman University College in Birmingham used financial savings from carbon reduction schemes to purchase a new gritter to keep the campus open during snowy weather ("Get a grip", Campus round-up, January)?

The long and convoluted causal chains of climate change surely suggest that carbon reduction schemes should reduce the chances of snowy weather and thus make gritter lorries less necessary. Or maybe something else is going on here. Oh, the complex logics of climate change.

Mike Hulme, Professor of climate change, University of East Anglia