Global warming: It's worse than we thought (Pub-friendly) [The Rockall Times]

For many who were roasted by the searing heat on 15 May - and I for one left Silverstone with a toasted forehead and arms like salamis - global warming has already placed its clammy hand upon us. But just what are the signals? As telly boffin David Bellamy and intellectual observer George Monbiot went at it hammer and tongue on Channel 4 News, outside the general plebiscite were being roasted like hogs by temperatures not seen since last summer.

Confusion still persists though, as one group of scientists try to tell a doubting public that hot summer weather is uncharacteristic, whilst another group of scientists tell us that climatic effects are the result of waning ice ages, cows farting and too many clouds. How are the uninformed to cut through the fog of misinformation. We all remember the summer of '76, except those who were born from 1977 onwards, obviously, but even they will have heard the anecdotes of ice cream sellers becoming millionaires, Jubblies melting before you could get them anywhere near your mouth, and the Wimbledon Men's Singles title being won by desert nomad Ikhman Rafaiti of Libya.

I decided to take my frazzled limbs up to the Department of Climactic Change and Apocalyptic Studies at the University of Morecambe Lancaster. There I met Doctor Christian Cartwright, one of Britain's leading global warming experts who sits very squarely in the "we're all going to die" camp. I asked him what are the signs that global warming exists.

"Very simple," he begins. "Mean annual temperatures around the world are 0.25 degrees warmer now than they were in 1793. And these are inland temperatures which take into account the fact that there are more cars and trains than there were in 1793. Also the days are longer by approximately 0.0074 per cent than in 1793." Doctor Cartwright contradicts all expectations of what a global warming doomsayer should look like: he doesn't wear wooly-pullies, hasn't got a beard, doesn't smoke a pipe and insists he never eats lentil soup. Does he live in a brick house, I ask? "Yes, although I will be moving into one made out of dung in September."

I ask him what other evidence there is to support global warming and it's at this point that Doctor Cartwright's research explodes into all its gory detail. "I developed a sort of early warning system on computer. The software, codenamed BeachErosion, documents every example of global warming." At the click of the mouse a terrifying list of catastrophic events rolls into place. I scan some of them:

14/05/03: Cliff face collapses at Broom near Skegness, north Wales. Four garden sheds lost.
08/07/03: Temperature reaches 29 degrees Celsius, uncharacteristically hot for central Halifax in July.
22/05/04: Millwall lose FA Cup final in Cardiff.
20/09/04: Brian Clough dies.
13/12/04: 37-year-old woman in Maidenhead becomes pregnant.
25/12/04: West Bromwich Albion are bottom of the Barclaycard Premiership.
06/04/05: Pirating of DVDs escalates in line with sea level rises in Cambodia.
14/05/05: Carlisle United return to Division 3 after only one season.

I ask Doctor Cartwright why his research seems to be biased towards footballing data. "It's a very accurate litmus test. When peculiar things happen in football it's usually climate related." Unconvinced, I make my excuses and leave.

Over in Lowestoft, the doomsayers are gathering for their annual conference. This year the theme is Global Warming Death Misery Suffering Consequences: who is responsible? Armed with my press pass made from recycled materials I sit in on the main delegates presentation and listen to a roll call of the bastards who are killing us all. The names are frighteningly familiar:

Owners of cars registered before 1999
People who take cheap flights to never before heard of airports
Owners of terraced houses
Smokers
Drinkers
Smokers and drinkers
People who enjoy long hot baths
People who don't enjoy long walks
Families with a television in every room
Householders who don't recycle their used Volvos
Fans of Coronation Street
Anyone who bought Is This the Way to Amarillo?

It sounded suspiciously to me like an attack on working class people. After the presentation I cornered Malcolm Whispy, leader of the Movement Against Car Ownership, and asked him why global warming wasn't caused by people who live in big houses. "Because they have an attitude of deference which in itself contains a fundamental respect for things. They respect the Queen, authority, the rule of law and by natural extension, the environment. They can afford to buy proper plane tickets so that they can holiday somewhere that is already warm, like the Virgin Islands where my wife and I will be holidaying later this year. Don't get me wrong, the lower classes are not being singled out for blame. They simply can't afford to respect the planet. It's a simple truth. Erdo non sequastum venii."

Later in the day I shared a cup of tea with Libby Drizel, a self-styled extreme-climatologist. I say shared because she insisted on not wasting energy to create two cups of tea. I asked her how easy or difficult it was to be an extreme-climatologist. After handing the straw back to me she told me: "Quite easy once you get used to it. For example, I starting walking to this conference eight days ago. I'm sleeping in a tent made from recycled organic cotton, I limit my calorie intake to 1750 calories per day so that my carbon monoxide and methane production is less than one part in twenty five million, and I've now found a cello instructor who lives within 75 miles of where I live." I have to ask her to repeat that last point. "Yes, I know," she says wearily, "the cello isn't made from wood harvested from sustainable woodland, but as soon as someone develops a cello made from hemp fibre I'll be the first to own one."

The port of Lowestoft is a charming place after dark. None of the street lights work and the silhouettes of boats in the harbour lit by natural light causes me to reflect on my own lifestyle. Every time I breath out another 126 people in the developing world die from dehydration because my breath adds to the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. I cough, and another 17,879 hectares of tropical woodland is reduced to ash, and god help the river deltas of Bangladesh if I fart. You see, that's the problem. Every one us is a potential nuclear bomb, each man, woman and child is a cataclysmic meteorite the size of Missouri, from the baby in the cot to the geriatric in a walk-in bathtub, we are Death; the Destroyer of Worlds.

Unless, of course, you can afford to be the giver of life. According to the Centre of Earth Studies each person in the UK has a "carbon dioxide quotient". For example, if you drive three 1977 Ford Escorts, holiday four times a year in Fuengirola and live at number 14 Shite Street, your quotient might be 9.4 urms (the measurement of environmental compromise and global warming acceleration). Statistics show that as the income level per household rises the urm level drops. A family of five living in Cambridge post code district CA12, the father an investment analyst with Deloitte and Touche, the mother a personnel director with Bank of Hamburg, will have an urm level of just 1.2.

The answer, says Dr Professor Sir Lord David Stanedge, Professor Emeritus of Sandringham College, Peebles, and an amateur expert on climate change, is urm trading: "If you decide not to own a car you'll be allowed more cheap flight air miles. If you choose to live in sheltered accommodation with another family you'll be able to have a long hot bath two times a week. That way everyone can continue to enjoy some quality of life and no-one will be forced to forego those little pleasures in life." Stanedge's idea was mooted at the conference earlier in the day and was cheered by a group of global warming polemicists from Highbury, north London.

I took a taxi back to my bed and breakfast and canvassed the opinion of Derek, a 59-year-old taxi driver who tells me he has driven taxis for sixty-eight years man and boy. "Ardest job in the world, mate," he tells his rear view mirror. I float some environmentally-friendly ideas to him. Would you run your taxi on beetroot juice? "Can't get it darn ere for love nor money, mate. And I've eard it's abart eight quid a gallon, well I'd ave to put me rates up to the punters, wouldn't I?" What about organically-grown polyester trousers and shirts? Fifteen times more energy efficient than artificial polyester. "Nah, her indoors wouldn't go fer anyfin like that." Does he know his urm quotient? "No idea, mate. You been darn to that climate change conference aven't yer?" I tell him I have and he tells me an anecdotal story about one delegate he had in the back of his taxi the previous evening. "Goin on abart this and that and mean annual temperatures rising thirty eight degrees by the year 2016, an they'll be growing coconuts and bananas in Darlington and Norf Yorkshire will be an island cut off by a bloated River Ooze, an he's soundin all darn in the dumps abart it. And I says listen mate, if Norf Yorkshire is cut off by the Great Ooze and has bananas and coconuts and temperatures of 85 degrees in the shade I'll be goin there for me holidays, won't haf to bovver abart Corfyu and I can leave me car at ome and take a bleedin boat up there. So what yer so fu*ckin miserable abart?"

He had a point. He also accused me of trying to pay with a counterfeit tenner, but he turned out to be mistaken. Perhaps if I hold my breath, stop eating baked beans and build a boat with an engine run on mashed carrots, Armageddon might be put back one or two years. Or then again this whole climate change thing might just be another post-cold-war-research-fund-generating scam to keep Luddites happy and bearded wonders in a job. The last word should go to Alan Penistock, an environmentalist agitator who has written for numerous publications including the prestigious Climate Weekly. "The south coast is not flooding because of post-glacial bounce, water vapour is not a greenhouse gas, volcanic activity in the Antarctic is not releasing millions of tons of ash into the atmosphere and the earth is not rotating slower because of cosmic entropy. The problem is the presence of human beings; only when we are all gone will the planet begin to heal itself." Perhaps Mister Penistock should set an example and do the right thing. Or failing that he should, in the words of Derek the taxi driver, "just shut the fu*ck up frightenin us all to def."

Global warming: It's worse than we thought

Previously