pumpkinstrokemarrow

The first told us that buying solar panels for your roof was a big con put on by a consortium of eco. panel manufacturers, builders and the government. It seems that you can spend £15,000 to panel up your roof in order to save £100 a year. Murdoch and his kind wouldn't touch such an investment with a used 'News of the World'. Nor would I. I have never seen any trustworthy sums about the matter but my prejudices on this one are stroked by the headlines to this article and I can continue not to think about panels without bothering to read any further and without guilt.

The second was a half page article (with half as much again for the headlines) by a rather solemn looking chap who writes under the name of Christopher Booker. That may even be his real name. And he goes one further. The whole eco. thing is a big con. The lunatics have taken over the asylum. Not altogether clear who stands to gain on this one, apart from all those scientists banking fat grant cheques for their pet projects (or perquisites) dressed up in eco. clothes. Just like in the days of the cold war when anything dressed up in defence (or even attack) clothes was good for a few bob from the good ole' DoD.

His beef appears to be that we are having to stump up lots of dosh to fund all these pet projects and vastly more to fund a switch away from gases claimed to be green house by a bunch of long hairs. His argument appears to be that because temperature is not climbing up and up in a nice tidy way, the whole claim that temperature is climbing is tosh. That claims that changing weather is bad or that this changing is caused by green house gases are tosh. In fact, tosh everywhere.

For myself, I find the sober language deployed in the Stern Report (readily available from some Treasury website) more convincing than the populist style of this article. I am not convinced that just because the world has been whizzing around for billions of years without disaster, that we are not heading for one now. Is it not just the sort of thing it might be better to play safe on?

PS: according to Wikipedia, despite Christopher B's apparent solemnity, he was one of the founders of 'Private Eye' and harbours heretical beliefs about both evolution and the health risks associated with smoking. He may even be a flat earther. Glory be! Clearly a suitable person to be telling the readers of the Daily Mail all about the niceties of climate change.