PETER MCKAY: It's a crisis! Miliband's in need of your votes



Ed Miliband says the evidence on climate change is clear...but is it?

Ed Miliband warns that we are ‘sleepwalking into a national security crisis over climate change’. Our recent weather ‘should serve as a wake-up call for us all’, he says.



Do sleepwalkers need wake-up calls?



The Labour leader blames the Prime Minister, David Cameron, for back-tracking on environment issues.



Opportunistically, Miliband attempts to harness the fear and suffering caused by recent storms to increase his small poll lead prior to next year’s general election.



He says: ‘The science is clear.’ But is it?



The recent bad weather was brought to us by a change in the course of the jetstream, a high-speed global current of air which acts as a ‘storm conveyor belt’.



Is climate change to blame for that? No, says Professor Mat Collins, of Exeter University, who advises the United Nations on climate change. The possibility wasn’t even mentioned in the UN’s last report.



‘There is no evidence that global warming can cause the jetstream to get stuck in the way it has this winter,’ says Prof Collins. ‘If this is due to climate change, it is beyond our knowledge.’



Not beyond Ed Miliband’s knowledge, though.



‘Climate change’ is now preferred to ‘global warming’ by those who believe human behaviour is altering our atmosphere.



It has the advantage of being comprehensive, explaining freakishly high and low temperatures, high or low rainfalls.



Is Miliband right to say we’re ‘sleepwalking into a national security crisis over climate change’? Only if there is a national security crisis.



He doesn’t know for sure there’s one. Nor does anyone else. So I think it’s fair to assume there isn’t.



However, it does serve Miliband’s political purposes to suggest there is, and that he — not David Cameron — is on top of it. In effect, he accuses climate change doubters of heresy. Of holding views that are at variance with established religious beliefs and customs.



But is there an established scientific view about our responsibility for climate change? Not really.



Now and then a scientist, or public figure, says there can now be no doubt about it. The Prince of Wales said so the other day. But there remain doubts, among scientists and everyone else. There are still too many ifs and buts.



The climate might be changing, but what part does our air-polluting behaviour contribute to this process — is it wholly, partly or not to blame at all?



Miliband says we’ve been sleepwalking over this matter, but surely there’s been an intense national conversation about our climate, certainly among those who talk about things other than their personal day-to-day travails.



Some mulishly refuse to accept any scientific theories about weather that contradict their own instincts, but I think most climate change sceptics are open to being persuaded if the evidence seems to make sense.



Being called ‘deniers’, ‘flat earthers’ and now ‘sleepwalkers’ doesn’t encourage reason, though. Neither do ‘the end is nigh unless you do as I say’ doom-mongers.



'The tone and urgency of Miliband's remarks are intended to suggest that he, if he had power, would inaugurate an immediate, national programme to eliminate carbon pollution'

Miliband takes the most gloomy view available about our responsibility for climate change, but we are entitled to think he saw the great storms as a splendid opportunity to make political capital.



After all, what are we supposed to do about this national security crisis he warns about? We’re still drowning in debt.



We cannot easily afford the day-to-day programmes our Government is mandated to provide.



The tone and urgency of Miliband’s remarks are intended to suggest that he, if he had power, would inaugurate an immediate, national programme to eliminate carbon pollution while at the same time spending untold billions protecting our vulnerable areas from flooding.



We know perfectly well that he would do nothing of the kind. We couldn’t afford it. It might not be necessary. And, without the other occupants of Planet Earth following suit, it would serve no purpose.



If Miliband were really concerned about a national security crisis — and political divisions preventing serious discussion about it — wouldn’t he have written to David Cameron and Nick Clegg, suggesting all-party talks, rather than packaging his so-called concerns for a splash in the Labour-supporting Observer?

Downton Abbey’s Lady Mary, Michelle Dockery, might have to be killed off in the next series, according to friends.



They say she needs time for other projects and is now ‘the talk of Hollywood . . . Steven Spielberg is said to have asked for a meeting’.



Killed off? Maybe so according to friends who say actress Michelle Dockrey needs time for other projects

Is this kind of chatter by so-called chums really helpful? I wonder how many times Spielberg is said to have asked for a meeting with some up-and-coming artiste.



As for Downton, surely ITV will conclude that it has delighted us for long enough after another series.

A new Duce for Italy?

Italy's prime minister in waiting, 39-year-old Matteo Renzi — the third in succession to be appointed, not elected — vows to cut public spending, rewrite voting laws and scrap the Senate.



‘He’s Blair without his Gordon Brown,’ says an Italian economist, explaining: ‘He has yet to demonstrate an ability to manage complex macro-financial issues on the international stage.’



Blair without Brown? Some think that would have been fine. Tony wouldn’t have had to worry about Gordon snapping at his heels.



But party feuding abhors a vacuum. Someone else would have taken on Tony. Gordon would always have had a poison-dripping awkward squad on the back benches.



Besides, aren’t we grateful Gordon drove Tony out in the end? Otherwise TB might have gone on and on.



Incidentally, Renzi models himself on Blair. He’s a few weeks younger than Italy’s World War II fascist leader Benito Mussolini when he became its PM in 1922.



Small wonder there’s a faint rattling of fine crockery in European chancelleries.

The Tories are accused of bullying the Scots after Chancellor George Osborne said they wouldn’t be able to use the pound if they chose to break away from the UK. Inevitably.



But can you imagine a couple who look less like bullying victims than First Minister Alex Salmond and his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, who might pass, respectively, for a bouncer and a shot putter?

The Guardian says Rupert Murdoch, 85, couldn’t keep up with his third ex-wife, Wendi Deng (pictured). He’d be heading off for the gym at 6am as she came home from parties.



The Sandal Wearer’s Gazette doesn’t normally concern itself with reporting the lifestyles of the rich and famous, but makes an exception for Rupert. He is their anti-Christ.

The prison psychiatrist writing under the pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple says of the serial killer Joanna Dennehy, who turned her back on her children and respectable early life for squalor, drugs and finally the motiveless murders of three men: ‘A squalid life is seldom without crisis and drama, which, even if unpleasant or worse, keeps the adrenaline pumping and the ennui at bay.’



That old ennui will get you every time.

Celebrity hairdresser Andrew Barton says the Duchess of Cambridge’s hair is too long and needs a trim. He favours an Audrey Hepburn ‘beehive’ or a Cheryl Cole ‘shoulder skimmer.’



No doubt Kate will pay heed to his strictures. While women now run some of our biggest companies, they don’t complain about the male dominion that is top ladies’ hairdressers.



Why mess around when it’s something really important?

Glenn Greenwald, 46, the American who fed the Guardian secret files stolen by fugitive National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, bases himself in Rio, the home of his boyfriend, David Miranda, 28.



He tells the Financial Times that the chances of him being arrested if he returns to America ‘are more than trivial’.



Miranda was arrested and held for nine hours last November while passing through London on his way home to Rio after flying to Germany — at the Guardian’s expense — to pick up the Snowden files for Greenwald.



Greenwald and the Guardian kicked up a huge fuss at the time, calling it ‘a blatant abuse’ of anti-terrorist laws.

