From Father Christmas to the governing class

He has just published a very nice, beautifully-spelled article in all of South Africa's business newspapers, explaining that there will probably be about 1 C° of manmade warming this century. Even if it were the 3 or 4 or even 10 C° you mention in your letter, it would still be a whole lot cheaper to adapt to it than to try to tax, trade, regulate, replace or reduce carbon dioxide.

You see, children, the science and economics behind your little story don't add up. You can't pretend any more that the Durban climate talks were talks about the climate. They were really about taking democracy and freedom away.

As Italy and Greece recently discovered when the naughty ninnies of the super-silly European Union ordered them not to have elections or a referendum respectively and appointed unelected brats like you to rule them instead, you are stealthily taking away the people's right to make and unmake those who make and unmake their laws and taxes. The new power, elected by none, answerable to none, sackable by none, lies in the pampered, over-manicured hands of the thousand bureaucracies (and counting) created by what your letter calls the Copenhagen-Cancun-Durban-Rio "process".

Your letter demands $100 billion a year from the West, by way of a tax on all financial transactions worldwide, in so-called reparation for alleged "climate debt", in the name of "climate justice". Remember, children, that I've been reading letters from kids for more than 1000 years. I know all your tricks. Your suggestion of ganging up on a minority sector – here, the hard-pressed financial sector – is very naughty.

For about the 15^th year in a row, there has been no statistically-significant global warming. For eight years, according to the Envisat sea-level satellite, the oceans have been rising at a rate equivalent to just two inchesper century. And you want me to help you to Save The Planet from that?

Sea ice? Shmea ice. Just as the Arctic ice has declined ever since the satellites began watching, the Antarctic sea ice has been growing more or less to match. Global sea-ice extent has not really changed in a third of a century.

Glaciers? Julia, how many of them are there worldwide? About 2000, you think? No. I fly over them all, you know. There are more than 160,000 glaciers on Earth. Most of them are in Antarctica. Most of them have never been visited or studied by Man. Most of them are doing just fine. The biggest of them is 250 miles long and 40 miles wide.

And that is why, children, I'm not giving you any presents at all until you grow up and learn that you can't repeal the laws of arithmetic, of physics or of economics just because you are the governing class. King Canute couldn't control sea level. No more can you.

If you really and truly believe that a natural trace gas that greens the planet is somehow dangerous, stop holding fortnight-long junkets at fancy holiday destinations like Durban and Rio and hold virtual conferences online instead. You can't expect your taxpayers to cut their carbon dioxide footprint until you have set an example by cutting your own.

As George Orwell once wrote, "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. Once that is granted, all else follows." More mathematics and less politics for all of you this Christmas, children!