How many of us are really aware of the costs involved in trying to meet the European Union's target of cutting 60% of our Carbon Dioxide emissions over the next four decades? The Government is spending billlions of pounds of your money on wind turbines and many other schemes such as the production of biofuels, but could not most of this money be better spent on improving our quality of life in other ways.
The scientific models upon which so many predictions have been developed recently are beginning to have their credibility questioned. Despite atmospheric Carbon Dioxide continuing to rise, global temperatures have not. In fact, over the last ten years temperatures have levelled off and even started dropping. Just how closely connected are global temperatures and Carbon Dioxide?
The winter of 2007/08 has seen unprecedented snow falls settling on the beaches of Greece and even Saudi Arabia has experienced similar weather. The Chinese winter has also disrupted life throughout vast areas of the Country.
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been monitoring and studying these issues since 1988 and has over 20 years of evidence before it. They predict only a 23" rise in sea levels over the next 100 years. And as for global warming, human beings seem to be able to survive quite happily in temperatures between permanently sub zero to over 40 degrees.
So is anything likely to be achieved by throwing billions of pounds at a phenomena that is far from showing to be having any effect upon it, but is severely restricting investment in enhancing our quality of life through economic development.
A prominent member of the IPCC has stated that to indulge in 'feelgood' measures such as driving a hybrid car or not leaving our televisions on standby overnight in this context are trivial to the point of irrelevance.
