Don’t be fooled by this winter’s exceptional snowfalls, global warming is still real, warns a prominent scientist at Duke University.    Despite the snowy pummeling the US received, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Climate Data Center reports that January 2010 was one of the warmest Januarys on record. Temperatures were about half a degree Fahrenheit above the long-term averages in the chilly US while South Africa, Australia and Brazil suffered from excessive heat waves. “This pattern of warmer temperatures and stronger storms is consistent with climate models that show global warming will bring more extreme weather, specifically more severe storms with greater amounts of precipitation,” says  William L. Chameides, dean of Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Additionally, climate scientists are still reeling from leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit in November 2009. The documents were apparent proof to skeptics that scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.  But Chameides asserts that “careful, objective, complete reading of the scientific literature reveals the scientific evidence that the globe is warming – and that this warming is connected to human activities – remains strong.”