The climate change debate is hedged by uncertainties, the novelist Ian McEwan wrote in Grist magazine last month (correction - I should have said that this piece originated on Open Democracy and also appeared in the Guardian newspaper).
Can we avoid what is coming at us, or is there nothing much coming at all? Are we at the beginning of an unprecedented era of international cooperation, or are we living in an Edwardian summer of reckless denial? Is this the beginning, or the end? We need to talk.
Any regular readers of George Monbiot's Guardian columns will probably be aware of his disagreements with his fellow environmentalist David Bellamy over climate change.
Bellamy claimed in the New Scientist (subscription required, unfortunately) that "glaciers in many parts of the world are not shrinking, but are in fact growing". Monbiot disputes this vigorously, claiming in his latest column that "the latest studies show unequivocally that most of the world's glaciers are retreating".
Viewers of Channel 4 News got a chance to witness their dingdong last night, with the face to face confrontation providing the presenter, Jon Snow, with the chance to sit back and watch as Monbiot and Bellamy engaged in verbal sparring. If you missed it, the transcript is on the Channel 4 site.
For more on the climate change debate, check out OpenDemocracy's page on the politics of climate change.
