Fracking is a fairly important question. In the standard - that is, the IPCC that we’re all working from - models that RCP 8.5 is the one where it all gets out of hand and accelerates. That’s also the model in which we do not exploit unconventional gas and oil and so retreat back to coal to power society. As long as we don’t do that then the varied models that are left produce chronic but entirely manageable problems from climate change.

Note that this is the output of those standard models being used to describe and predict the entire subject. This is not some oddity from us, it’s right there, right at the heart of the predictions being made.

It’s also true that fracking will require some drilling pads, there will be - very light - seismic effects and so on.

It’s possible to hold different views on the relative importance of these things. But any decision does require that the decision makers be serious:

The billionaire's bid to produce gas in Britain was dealt a blow this week when the Secretary of State for Levelling Up overturned approval for Ineos’s planning application for a fracking site near Rotherham.

The company had been seeking to extract rock to examine the concentration of shale gas on the site. The company aimed to frack on the site at a later stage.

But the Government has refused planning permission over concerns about plans to construct a three-metre fence around the well to reduce noise from drilling on the site.

Department for Levelling Up cited Mr Gove’s concern the structure would impact the "openness" of the Green Belt Area.

Ineos had been asked to construct the barrier by local planning officers and would have removed it after extracting the rock for testing.

These people are not being serious in the slightest, are they? We would go further, this is the action of buffoons bringing the entire idea of representative democracy into disrepute.

Could we, just possibly, return to a system in which the adults make decisions?