Our news conference yesterday digressed out into the stratosphere when conversation turned to things environmental.
It all started because next week there is going to be a powwow at the Hadley Centre for Climate Change Prediction and Research, part of our humble Met Office. Ought we not, piped up the newsroom's green lobby, report those environmental issues in full?
Indeed we ought, spake the upper echelons of editorial power. But does anyone here really understand this stuff?
Yes, rejoindered the News Desk, Robin McKie does and he is the finest science writer in the land.
Did anyone read that story in the Guardian about the US oil lobby funding sceptical scientists to play down the threat of global warming? interjected an entreprising cub.
Indeed we did, replied the assembled hackery. And was it not also suggested that Tony Blair, when addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos toned down his formerly quite forthright views on the threat of global warning to placate/woo the US component in the audience?
It's all so desperately complicated, lamented the Editor, politics mixed with science mixed with opaque commercial interests. Despatch agent McKie to explain it to me.
And thus was a big green feature born. We hope. There is also an election in Iraq this weekend, so anything could happen on the news pages.
