Falling Asleep To The Denialist Playbook

Some people like to crawl into bed and read a book. Others have one last cup of tea snug under the covers. Me, I like to listen to the radio.

I got into the habit of drifting off to sleep listening to world events about twenty years ago, when I first moved to Edinburgh (dear god, was that 20 years ago???). I had a basement bedsit at the top of Leith Walk which was full of mice. The only way I could escape the nightly madness of listening to them padding around the room was to keep the light on and the radio up quite loud. Which is possibly why I've developed a reputation for being able to fall asleep anywhere these days.

Funnily enough, I can't listen to music radio in bed. It has to be speech, either the news or a documentary or a phone-in show. This has its drawbacks, though - if the item I'm listening to is really interesting, then it's hard to fall asleep!

Before I go further, I should point out that I don't waste much electricity doing this. My current alarm clock radio has a sleep timer, set to turn itself off after a set period of time. Also, the alarm clock itself is only plugged in at night when I need it and is not left on all day.

Last night, I was anticipating being soothed into the land of nod by Richard Bacon on BBC Five Live. Unfortunately, his show started off with a discussion based on yesterday's news about Northern Ireland's Environment Minister being a twat. To put the climate change denier's point of view across was Christopher Monckton, a man who I'm convinced gets dizzy from his head constantly spinning 360 degrees. Actually, maybe I should give him his full title of 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. And then doff my cap.

Monckton is quite clearly from the sceptic's school of "shout something loud enough and often enough and people will believe you". He continually talked over and talked down to the poor chap who had been wheeled on to provide the "global warming believer" view. As I listened to Monckton frothing at the mouth at the very suggestion that we should try and conserve energy, I decided to start playing Climate Change Deniers Bingo. He was reeling off every argument in the sceptic playbook, and I was hanging on his every word - because I was waiting for the words "computer models" and "solar variations". I wasn't disappointed, they came out in due course. It was the comedy highlight of my day.

What wasn't funny, though, was the amount of callers and texters to the show that were proclaiming climate change to be a government fraud or an excuse to raise taxes. It seems the general public still don't get it, and are either unwilling to change or don't see why they have to. Which left me despairing.