Booker: More hot air from Met Office - Telegraph

The Met Office, which played a key part in setting up the IPCC, has long since abandoned any pretence that it is an impartial scientific body when it comes to promoting its favourite cause of man-made climate change.

As the Met Office's website boasts, its ''world-leading expertise'' enables it to provide ''an understanding of the future through risk analysis and long-range forecasting''. It stages seminars to equip ''professionals in Government and the public sector'' to ''dispel scepticism about climate change in your organisation''.

It is just a pity that our Met Office's comically consistent inability to predict weather even a few weeks ahead (let alone a century hence) is beginning to make it an international laughing stock.

EU's new figurehead believes climate change is a myth - Times Online

The European Union's new figurehead believes that climate change is a dangerous myth and has compared the union to a Communist state.

The views of President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, 67, have left the government of Mirek Topolanek, his bitter opponent, determined to keep him as far away as possible from the EU presidency, which it took over from France yesterday.

The Czech president, who caused a diplomatic incident by dining with opponents of the EU’s Lisbon treaty on a recent visit to Ireland, has a largely ceremonial role.

But there are already fears that, after the dynamic EU presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy - including his hyper-active attempts at international diplomacy over the credit crisis and Georgia as well as an historic agreement to cut greenhouse gases - the Czech effort will be mired in infighting and overshadowed by the platform it will give to Mr Klaus and his controversial views.