Burn Down All the Forests

With a doff of the pointy archdruidical hat to Doug Chaplin (albeit on Twitter) for bringing this to my attention).

The BBC tells us that, thanks to CO2 emissions, the next ice age (which was due to being in about 1,500 years) will now be postponed.

This throws climate scientists who believe in warming (the majority) and those who deny (a few, and a lot of bloggers and people in bars) into a quandary.

Because a climate-change sceptic can't argue that we should keep on generating CO2 to stave off an ice-age, if they deny that producing the gas has any effect on the climate.

On the other hand, if you're one of the ones who say we should reduce carbon emissions to prevent global warming, but preventing global warming lets in an Ice Age in 1,500 years by the back door - then by how much should we reduce emissions safely? Do we try to reduce emissions to save the people of the next century, and hope the people of the next millennium will be able to help themselves?

It's really very hard to know what to do. It seems that if we take one path, this is it - we're all going to die.
Whereas if we take the other - then this is it, we're all going to die.

I've a sneaky feeling that religion got there before science on this one, with the very sane conclusion that we are all, indeed, going to die. But don't burn down the forests really - it's a silly idea but a catchy title.