Politicians to tell the truth ?

This is an interesting article

In it, two "leading UK climate researchers" are accusing some of their fellow scientists of exaggerating the effects, current and future, of global warming and while they confirm that climate change is happening allover the world they question the extrapolation of some of the scientific data by their peers and warn that ominous predictions of armegeddon in a Hollywod stylee are premature to say the least.

I might also extend their criticism to politicians too.

There is no doubt that politicians of all flavours are curently making headlines on their dire predictions of global warming agenda's and its no coincidence that most of what comes out of all such poliitical mouths seems to concern taxation - taxation to force us to use facilities less and offer tax refunds when we do (as if ! ).

For instance Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer (the man who holds the purse strings in the UK) and Prime Minister in waiting, this week helped to unveil HM Governments draft Climate Change Bill which calls for a 60% reduction of carbon emmissions in the EU by 2050 by which time I'll be 93 years of age and quite frankly past caring.

The important factor though is that political parties in the UK seem to be making so-called green issues into party political issues and its obvious that they are bandying around ideas at the moment in preparation for their own party manifestos at the next election, which as everyone knows is in, oooh, lets see, a few years time yet.

Gordon Brown this week urged us all to switch off TV sets and light bulbs when not in use, use energy efficient light bulbs, insulate our houses better (why - if the climate is getter warmer in the UK then we won't need better insulated houses will we ?) and use our vehicles less - in order to do this he is promising some vague "tax breaks" although in true politician stylee he does not mention this phrase again and does not offer any sort of explanation as to how he is going to refund some of my tax if I switch my TV off standby every night - or how he is going to know.

George Osborne on the other hand - Who he ? He be shadow chancellor, the Tory party spokesman on financial stuff who may or may not be a total wanker but it doesnt matter because as "shadow" anything you don't have any responsibility nor do you have to get anything right or hold valid opinions - he says that increasing taxation on airplane flights is the way forward and that we will save the world by not travelling anywhere by 'plane at all.

Its a remarkable point of view that we can save the planet by not using air travel and for the first time ever we can point to the USA as world leaders in greenhouse gas reduction for it is a well known fact that only one American in each generation ever gets to travel outside of his/her own country, and even though they drive cars the size of a small french gite that only do 4 miles to the gallon, they don't drive them far, rarely venturing out of their own towns.

So there we have it, maybe the Tory boy was right, maybe we should use the USA as our blueprint, maybe we should all stop popping to the South of France every weekend just because we can and just because its cheaper to fly to Nice than drive to the Wallmart Asda 2 miles up the road, its all our fault and we should be spanked with an airline tax until our bottoms glow red enough to read a book by, which would also save on lightbulbs.

As always, we thrash out the issues here until they are resolved, I wish Golden Brown would read this column more often and include some of this good stuff in his next manifesto.