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Energy White Paper

My Lords, we have waited a long time to get a White Paper on this subject. I instigated a debate on this subject in 1978. The science has not changed, and the situation has not changed, so why has it taken so long to get to the point where there is a plethora of White Papers on the problem of carbon? Is it because of the division among scientists that carbon may not be the main cause of the problem? Indeed, the ice cores that have been collected and analysed in the intervening 29 years have indicated that global warming occurs before an increase in atmospheric carbon. Just as one cannot have smoke without fire, one has to have fire first. Secondly, there has been no mention of methane. The latest papers written by Kepler and Röckmann and published in Scientific American earlier this year indicate that growing crops, especially crops to produce biodiesel, may greatly increase atmospheric methane. Why has there been no discussion about this? Before we enter into a whole mass of legislation and new taxes, the science should be looked at again. The latest report from Russia is that the planet Mars has increased in temperature over the past 25 years in exactly the same proportion as the Earth has increased in temperature. Therefore, is solar radiation perhaps the cause of our problem?