Global warming anguish might be just hot air

Many other theorists are now attributing these increases (and decreases) in temperature, measured over the decades, to changes in the patterns of ocean currents.

Another spin that GH advocates put on the augments is that water vapour, correctly being regarded as by far and away the most important greenhouse gas, will lead to some sort of chain reaction if the planet warms too much as water will enter the atmosphere and store more heat. This argument neatly ignores the quite sensible prediction that increased water vapour means more clouds and hence lower temperatures as light and heat are reflected back into space.

Of course, when backed into a corner the spin/witch doctors quote black magic chants like 'the Precautionary Principle'. In that case we should also raise taxes so everyone can be given Kevlar anti-meteorite shields to wear on their heads. Or just stay safely at home and not even go to work. Oops! Hang on, isn't the home the most dangerous place of all . . .?

But seriously, in terms of our attempts to get rid of the dreaded bogey-gas, carbon dioxide to keep the planet cooler, the problem is also that:

· less than five percent of CO2 in the atmosphere is the result of human activity, and there's good geological evidence that the warmer it gets the more C02 is naturally introduced into the atmosphere, so the current 0.01% increase could be a result of the previously mentioned solar activity increasing temperatures, and have nothing to do with human activity, in this chicken and egg argument

· most of the CO2 that gets taken out of the atmosphere is taken up by the oceans, which happens quite quickly on an annual basis and not over thousands of years as some have suggested

· water vapour is by far the most significant Greenhouse gas. (If it weren't, the average temperature in south-eastern Australia would be minus sixty degrees Centigrade.)

· recent NASA satellite figures show the planet is actually cooling. Some number-crunchers on the Greenhouse side claim these figures are in error, while members in the same camp agree with them and then try to discount the findings as irrelevant

· "hundreds of studies show" that an increase in CO2 in good for plant growth and good for food production, especially in the third world.

I have nothing but humble respect for someone who would chain themselves to something as tangible as a tree to try to save it, or who'd play chicken with a whaling vessel to save those great beasts, but Greenpeace has got the C02 thing wrong. At a Greenpeace sponsored conference last year, the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was quoted as the last word on the truth of the Greenhouse Effect. The current edition of the report blames current global warming on the Greenhouse Effect, the so-called artificial global warming cause by human-produced CO2 entering the atmosphere. However, the IPCC report initially stated, among other things: "None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases. "

That is a very important statement but the final editor deleted such sections of the report.

The past president of America's National Academy of Sciences, Frederick Seitz, called this the most 'disturbing corruption of the peer-review process' he had ever seen in sixty years as a scientist.