Hurrah for Mr Justice Barton. At last we can have a sensible discussion about what is causing all those lakes to dry up and cities to flood.
The high court judge who yesterday criticised Al Gore's global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, acknowledged that scientific evidence overwhelming supports the fact that climate change is mainly attributable to human emissions and that global temperatures are rising and are likely to continue rising. That is why he ruled that the documentary can be shown in schools as part of a climate change package.
But by highlighting nine scientific errors in the film's argument, he has shone the spotlight on many other important human actions that are screwing up the planet.
It has been too easy to attribute every weather-related disaster in the last few years to climate change. In doing so we - by which I mean governments, the UN, the media and even NGOs - have increasingly ignored the role that population increase, urbanisation, over-grazing and deforestation plays in floods and droughts.
And Spike Lee's excellent documentary about Hurricane Katrina clearly demonstrated, New Orleans was devastated, not by nature, but by cuts in flood defence funding which left the city shockingly exposed.
By jumping on the climate change bandwagon, we ignore other human actions at our peril. As Mr Justice Barton said over-fishing and pollution is probably as much, if not more (no one knows), to blame for coral reefs bleaching than climate change, while the drying up of Lake Chad, is the likely result of "population increase, over-grazing and regional climate variability".
So, the next time we feel smug about buying an energy efficient bulb or taking the train instead of flying, we'd do well to remember that lobbying government's to stop illegal logging or over-fishing is probably a better way to save the world.
And what about the protesters who earlier this week disrupted Manchester airport and chained themselves to a conveyor belt at a coal-fired power station (inspired by Al Gore's film). Wouldn't they be better directing their climate concern at other targets?
Hasn't climate change become a diversion from tackling some of the more intractable geopolitical and economic problems that are destroying our planet?
