So it has to be a matter of developing technology to make it easier to adapt to whatever happens. The food production and price problem is leading to riots and increased starvation in many parts of the world, greatly exacerbated by this absurd global warming religion which has lead to subsidies being given — America and the EU are very guilty — to produce crops and use land for biofuels. Indeed, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, has said this is wicked and has called for a moratorium for five years on the production of biofuels. It is wicked; that is the only word for it.

So you’ve got to approach this rationally, and see what is in the interest of the people of the world, particularly the people of the developing countries, but also the people of our own country. The science is very uncertain. It’s not that the existence of the greenhouse effect is uncertain, but there’s no agreement on how much warming is produced by increases in carbon dioxide; and there’s no agreement — or understanding, really — on most of the other factors that determine the world’s climate and temperature. Nobody predicted that, after the global warming that there undoubtedly was during the last quarter of the last century, there would so far this century be no further warming. The Hadley Centre, the branch of the Met Office which deals with climate change, has now said that they expect this lull, which they didn’t predict, and which they now try to explain as having happened because of natural forces counteracting the greenhouse effect, is likely to last until 2009 or thereabouts. My own sources within the Hadley Centre tell me privately that they don’t expect it to resume until about 2015, and studies have been published by other reputable scientists saying that it is not likely to resume until 2015. We ought to realise how great the uncertainties are in this whole area. But there is one great certainty, and that is that if we cut back drastically on our carbon dioxide emissions, this will be extremely costly — politically as well as economically.