There are greater forces acting upon our planet than we yet understand

A sense of due proportion

From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, snowed in at his country seat on the shore of Loch Rannoch

It is a glorious day outside the window of the Library at Carie. A foot or two of snow is on the fields and forests and on the distant Grampian Mountains. It is so cold that Loch Rannoch, the watery remnant of a mighty glacier that once swept majestically down from Rannoch Moor to distant Dundee 110 miles to the east and now placidly laps at the foot of our graceful lawns, is giving off a pearly mist, through which occasional darts of sunlight strike diamond fire from the fresh snow on Beinn Mhorlach, the little mountain on the far shore.

We cannot go anywhere, and no one can come to us. The roads for 30 miles around are impassable, and there is nothing the gallant roadmen of Perth and Kinross Council can do to keep them clear. So there is time to think a little, after the pandemonium of the collapsed Copenhagen climate conference.

The glaciers were here as recently as 9000 years ago. Then, by little and little, they went. Did they go because of manmade “global warmingâ€