There have been over 300 complaints about the Act on CO2 advert, which shows a child being told a bedtime story about extreme global warming and features a cartoon dog drowning.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change launched the £6m campaign, in which the government states for the first time that scientific evidence has confirmed that climate change is man-made, earlier this month.

I showed it to my two children (ages 10 and 8). They couldn't see what the fuss was about, although I can understand that it may worry younger children.

Watch the advert below and you can decide.

I have been to a few public lectures at Newcastle University but never have I seen the Hall so packed.
All were there to listen to the infamous environmentalist Jonathon Porritt, who amongst other things has been called weird, wacky and even evil due to his views on population growth.

This is possibly the most significant question facing this country. 2020 is a medium term date with some particular targets. First a related digression:

After my first blog I received the following email: 'You say the UK is currently in Europe only ahead of Malta and Luxembourg in adopting renewable energy. That's a very useful statistic. Do you have a reference for it please?'

Well, this perfectly illustrated the point I made at the end of my second blog. We have the power, in a way that has never before been available, of accessing all sorts of key resources, including scientific and government reports, and using it. In a search through my paper files I couldn't put my hands on the source, so I opened Google and typed in - 'renewable energy targets 2020'. I took one of the first choices 'The EU's target for Renewable Energy 20% by 2020'. This turned out to be the report of the House of Lords EU committee 2007-2008. There on pages 15 and 16, Table 1, were the full embarrassing facts - 3 columns: the countries, their percentages of renewable energy in 2005, and their agreed targets for 2020. I had not seen the full stark table before. These are the figures at the bottom of the scale for 2005: Malta 0%, Luxembourg 0.9%, UK 1.3%... and at the top: Sweden 39.8%, Latvia 34.9%, Finland 28.5%. Look at the table yourself. In the light of all the claims made by Tony Blair that we are world leaders in tackling climate change, and the way most people in Britain and even outside Britain believed him, these figures are mind bogglingly horrific.

Free training day for the public on Thursday

My involvement in all things eco and ethical started at birth and it's fair to say, was more directed at the ethical side of things; for example the 'Walks for Whales' my lovely mother used to take me on as a child (when all I really wanted to do was eat Monster Munch crisps to my little hearts content).

I have always lived this way, always turned the taps and lights off, used the car less, always taken our bottles to the recycling bank (or when I was younger, a neighbour's boy used to take everyone's bottles to the shop to earn some money).

I know that, considering I write this blog, I should be really au-fait with the language of climate change - but I'm not.