Thanks, Shiraz, for directing me to this excellent interview with Patrick Moore — one of the founders of Greenpeace.

Particular highlights:

We’re in an interglacial, but we’re in a longer-term Ice Age. If we look at local temperatures, we’re still in an Ice Age. It’s 14.5°C , peak 12°C, but in the greenhouse period ice ages are short and sharp; Greenhouse Ages are long and steady and last 10 million or 100 million years. The Earth’s averaged 22°C in these periods. So when people say global temperature is going to go up 2°C, and we’re going to die, I just laugh. We’re a tropical species. We haven’t adapted to cold and ice, except we have fires.

For example, the latest scare is ocean acidification – it’s totally made-up and ridiculous. Tomato growers inject CO2 to make the tomatoes grow; salt water aquarists inject CO2 to increase photosynthesis; and yet with coral we’re told the opposite is true.

Apocalyptic scenarios are just that – our fear of death. When you add self-loathing, and you have the apocalypse being externalised, this is what you get. We have to stop this self-defeating approach: that – “we’re going to die and we’re to blame”. That is enough to make you sick to your stomach. Much of this is collective neurosis. We should celebrate life.