It would be rib-ticklingly funny if it were not so seriously misinformed : Jeremy Clarkson's latest spillage in the Sun claims we should not be alarmed about Global Warming.

His words gush like motor oil around his claim that, just as with previous global panic attacks, we can ignore Climate Change, because it's not going to be such a big deal (see below).

Well, Mr Clarkson, I'm going to have to remonstrate with you.

Here's a few global catastrophes that were (a) real and (b) only avoided by mind-boggling levels of human effort, the kind we need to combat Global Warming.

Let's start with something very dear to my heart, or rather my wallet, as it paid my way for several handsome years : Y2K.

Yes, I am currently a computer programmer, and I can confirm that people were panicking about the Millenium Bug for millions of very good reasons.

I worked on several Millenium Bug projects, to tidy up computer programmes for several large organisations to make sure their systems did not collapse on 1st January 2000 at 00:00

I can tell you there were some horrendous, brain-bending, momentous errors in the code that needed urgent fixing.

The reason you got up in the new Millenium and you could get cash out of an ATM was due to thousands of people like me who sweated and toiled for 18 months to put things right.

And the only reason you can share a Tube carriage with other people without wearing a mask is because scientists are on continual bird flu watch around the world, so don't tell me it's not a real crisis.

And as for nuclear holocaust, I'm afraid that one's still definitely possible, and very, very problematic, as each time somebody new gets into power in the "nuclear club" nations, the diplomatic services have to scurry like mad dogs to get them on-side against radioactive conflict.

And as for the World Meteorological Organisation pronouncement on temperatures in 2008, have you actually read the whole Press Release ? No, you didn't. Clearly.

What they are actually saying is that a combination of things, like La Nina for example, are causing air temperatures to be a bit lower for 2008, but that Global Warming is still trucking on and you can expect higher average temperatures as time goes by.

No, Jezza, Global Warming has not stopped, and temperatures are not permanently down.

You're not an engineer or a scientist, so I can understand why you don't follow what the WMO say. But even as a pistonhead and media personality, you should be able to read to the end of the first paragraph before making your judgement.

No, we're not alright. And it is a bad idea to ignore the risks that Climate Change poses.

Clarkson, you're a car crash waiting to happen. That's not a threat, by the way. That's a figurative analogy. Or something.

=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/columnists/clarkson/article652...

Ignore the end of the world

Published: 12 Apr 2008

FOR years, we've been told that unless we buy a stupid electric car
and eat mud for the rest of our lives, the world will boil, our
children will be microwaved and all the polar bears will sink.

But now, the World Meteorological Organisation has announced that this
year, the world will actually cool down a bit.

As a result, scientists are being forced to admit that the planet
(which weighs 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms) is more
resilient to the Range Rover (which weighs 3,000kg) than was first
thought.

In other words, everything we've been told for the past five years by
the Government, Al Gore, Channel Four News and hippies everywhere is a
big bucket of nonsense.

I'm not surprised. Because there's always someone somewhere telling us
the world is about to end.

And it never does.

First of all there was God, who said that if we carried on
fornicating, a big seven-headed monster would gobble us up.

Well, it hasn't even got round to eating Warren Beatty yet, and he's
spent most of his life fornicating.

Then, in the early 20th Century, we were solemnly informed that the
world's population would eventually become too stupid to survive
unless white people stopped mating with black people and disabled
people were banned from breeding at all.

And this wasn't some half-arsed Nazi theory either. Winston Churchill
supported it. So did H G Wells, Alexander Graham Bell, George Bernard
Shaw and almost all contemporary scientists.

Right up to the 1970s, Canada was sterilising Inuits in case their
silly semen somehow got into the womb of a white woman.

But then, one day, everyone realised that actually it was all a pack
of nonsense and the whole idea — an idea which had gripped and
terrified the world — simply went away.

Later, when I was growing up, we were all assured that the only
possible outcome of the Cold War was a nuclear holocaust.

Flash

Everyone agreed the world would end in a blinding flash of cancerous light.

No one — not even the CIA — ever predicted that Russia would just give
up and that a pack of East Germans would simply knock down the Berlin
Wall using nothing but DIY tools and their bare hands.

Starved of something to worry about, the human race came up with the
Millennium Bug. All computers would shut down on New Year's Eve, 1999,
and in an instant we'd be plunged into the Dark Ages.

Then it was Sars, and then it was Bird Flu and then it was global warming.

Hopefully, when the next big scare is dreamed up, we'll take a lesson
from history.

And carry on as normal.

=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=