Ed Miliband, ‘climate secretary’, declares war on climate change sceptics:

"I think it would be wrong that when a mistake is made it’s somehow used to undermine the overwhelming picture that’s there," he said.

"We know there’s a physical effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leading to higher temperatures, that’s a question of physics; we know CO2 concentrations are at their highest for 6,000 years; we know there are observed increases in temperatures; and we know there are observed effects that point to the existence of human-made climate change. That’s what the vast majority of scientists tell us."

Mashed potatoes.

The whole point, as he must be assumed to know, is not that there are consequences of human activity on the planet, but rather how dealing with them over long time periods is sensibly to be costed. In other words, is it better to adapt as we go along, or impose vast new controls and costs now ‘just in case’?

The game is up. As more and more heavy lumps of nonsense fall from the IPCC and associated parts of the climate industrial complex with dull thuds, more and more voters are going to opt for adaption rather than mitigation. Since, given the manifold uncertainties and ambiguities (and yes sheer dishonesties) in this business now emerging every day, that is the smart thing to do.

And lo, our deadly enemy the meaningless precautionary principle (PP) promptly rears its evil head:

"There are a whole variety of people who are sceptical, but who they are is less important than what they are saying, and what they are saying is profoundly dangerous," he said.

"Every­thing we know about life is that we should obey the precautionary principle; to take what the sceptics say seriously would be a profound risk."

Simply not true.

Why? Because he applies the PP when it suits him – and ignores it when it doesn’t.

He has not costed the ‘risks’ of adverse impacts of the policies he proposes, and of countless other mass calamities which are foreseeable but whose likelihood is impossible sensibly to calculate, and then tried to weigh all that against the risks he chooses to champion.

Or as someone wrote a while back:

All this bureaucratic rubbish stemming from twisted versions of PP is part of a deep process of self-inflicted Stupidisation. What is scary is that it is like a malignant virus infecting the deepest parts of the operational public policy process in all sorts of unpredictable and unexpected and ultimately irrational ways.

Why? Because let’s be honest. Of course we need to think about what we do. But in the process of weighing options and trying to choose a reasonable way forward, over-focus on PP tends to empower those with high-energy neurotic anxieties and/or bizarrely lurid busybody imaginations, and compels taxpayers to waste astonishing sums of money accordingly.

Whatever.

Let’s just stop worrying about all these Marxist Milbandish imponderables and instead rely on the ineffable wisdom of Dr Rajenda Pachauri, Climate Guru Supreme, who has graced the planet with a novel containing lots of smutty bits.

“Sanjay saw a shapely dark-skinned girl lying on Vinay’s bed. He was overcome by a lust that he had never known before … He removed his clothes and began to feel Sajni’s body, caressing her voluptuous breasts.”

Enough to melt your glaciers, that one.