The big news yesterday was that Claude Allegre one of France’s leading socialist politicians and most celebrated scientists (France's former minister of national education, research, and technology) has recanted his views on global warming. Quick someone tell Al Gore so he can recall the DVD’s of “An Inconvenient Truth”.

Allegre was one of the first scientists to warn of the global warming dangers 20 years ago.

"By burning fossil fuels, man increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, for example, has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Dr. Allegre, a renowned geochemist, wrote 20 years ago in Cles pour la geologie.." Fifteen years ago, Dr. Allegre was among the 1500 prominent scientists who signed "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity," a highly publicized letter stressing that global warming's "potential risks are very great" and demanding a new caring ethic that recognizes the globe's fragility in order to stave off "spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic and environmental collapse."

With a wealth of data now in, Dr. Allegre has recanted his views. To his surprise, the many climate models and studies failed dismally in establishing a man-made cause of catastrophic global warming. Meanwhile, increasing evidence indicates that most of the warming comes of natural phenomena. Dr. Allegre now sees global warming as over-hyped and an environmental concern of second rank.

The UN report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was published in February. At the time it was promoted as being backed by more than 2,000 of the world's leading scientists.
But Professor Paul Reiter, of the Pasteur Institute in Paris (a very prestigious private scientific institute houses 100 research units, 2,700 people, including 500 permanent scientists), said it was a "sham" given that this list included the names of scientists who disagreed with its findings.  Professor Reiter, an expert in malaria, said his name was removed from an assessment only when he threatened legal action against the panel.
"That is how they make it seem that all the top scientists are agreed," he said. "It's not true."

Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, said climate change is too complicated to be caused by just one factor, whether CO2 or clouds.
He said: "The system is too complex to say exactly what the effect of cutting back on CO2 production would be or indeed of continuing to produce CO2.
"It is ridiculous to see politicians arguing over whether they will allow the global temperature to rise by 2c or 3c."

So as they say in Yorkshire and Lancashire “trouble at mill".

On a more political note we have replaced ten 50 watt halogen lights with ten short tube fluorescent lights. Saving the environment I hear you say. No, just cutting down heat in the roof which is quite crowded with air conditioning ducts etc. In saying that rather than using 500 watts of power an hour we now use 180 watts. So over a year we use 441,000 watts or 441 KW rather than 1,225,000 watts or 1225 KW. By my count we will recoup the capital cost in 2097.