Bush in denial over global warming

George Bush is like the penguin sitting on the iceberg and saying "Global warming, my ass!"

All around him the ice caps are melting but he’d prefer not to believe it. He didn’t believe flooding in New Orleans either. All my friends in America are ashamed of him and the harm he has done to the world and to America. They apologise for him. I feel sorry for them.

About global warming, I recently read in the London Times the following sentence: "As sea ice is already floating, it does not raise global sea levels when it melts."

When my wife and I got to talking and thinking about this, we decided, yes, that must be right. Otherwise, the Bacardi and coke into which ice cubes are copiously shovelled would surely spill over the edge of the glass.

Neither of us being scientists, in order to reassure ourselves that we weren't losing the plot, I took some ice cubes from the fridge, dropped them into a glass of water and marked the level of the water in the glass. When the cubes had melted, the water was the same level. Eureka!, as Archimedes said, when water slopped over the side of his bath. Hooray for kitchen-sink experiments; there was no need for it, I know, but there's nothing as convincing as the evidence of one's own eyes.

However, what about if we put a huge iceberg in a pond, and it melts, surely the pond will overflow. What was the missing element in our logic? Was it the ice above water, not the ice below? Seven-eighths of an iceberg is below the surface, and that seven-eighths should displace the same volume as it would in liquid form. But what about the one-eighth above? And what about the ice on land, on the Arctic islands, the Antarctic mountains and the permafrost within the Arctic Circle? Surely, that ice, freed as water, would swell the seas and raise the levels of the oceans? The answer is, it would. And the Texas penguin and the Enron Oil-supported scientists who rubbish global warming know it too.

Yet, at the recent Montreal conference on climate change, Bush's delegation succeeded in forcing the rest of the world to dilute the terms of the agreement to keep the US on board. Two hundred countries are signed up to the Kyoto Protocol, including all major industrialised nations except the US and Australia. Shame on them.

A friend asked what kind of food can one put out for wrens. It's a problem; they are insectivores and can't manage the peanut feeder, even if they wanted to, because they don't have short, nut-crushing beaks. They usually come to the bird table only when in dire straits. Up to 80% die in bad winters, but the population quickly recovers. They are one of the species that now breeds earlier each year, probably due to climate change. Whatever George and the cold-ass penguin say, some penguins are doing that too.

There is a robin/wren preparation of finely milled pinhead oatmeal mixed with 2% ground-up insects for sale. If it snows, food should be scattered under the bird table for wrens and hedge sparrows, which generally feed on the ground. Rats may get it, but it's hard to prevent that. Gardens with lots of bugs and warm sheltered places are the best way of catering for insectivore birds.

As for our merry little rats (about which I wrote some weeks ago), the game is up. No more trying to swing from the sycamore tree onto the bird table, no more dancing and prancing amongst the leaves on the lawn. A stoat arrived, and it was curtains for the rats thereafter.

We saw it only once; 'weasels', as they are incorrectly called, are shy. Perhaps it was there all the time, but otherwise engaged while the rat family cavorted. We last saw it a year ago, a small, sleek creature with a white chest and beady eyes, standing on its hind legs amongst the ferns across our stream, straining to look over the rampant vegetation.

Once, I found it in the garden, where it abandoned the warm corpse of a very young rabbit as I approached. Now, suddenly, here it was again and, as suddenly, the rats were gone. One stoat equals no rats. What a useful animal!

As 2005 draws to a close, I see some trivia I noted down during the year. Margaret Atwood, the famous Canadian writer, interviewed on the Kenny programme in October, said it was well-known that the Vikings favoured Irish women and that 80% of DNA in Icelandic women known for their beauty is Irish. Wouldn't you know it! A happy Christmas to all!