Have you seen this man?

Have you seen this man? No, he's not actually an Ayatollah, though he's just as fanatical and misguided. This is Phil Thornhill, of the Campaign against Climate Change, or CACC for short.

Yes, that's right, they are against climate change. They're also against your prosperity, and against you having reliable gas and electricity supplies. That's CACC.

So when Cuadrilla Resources announces it seems to have huge shale deposits in Lancashire, our Phil swings into action. The BBC strapline is not the strategic size of the resources, but that

An energy firm which has been test drilling for controversial shale gas in Lancashire has said it could create up to 5,600 jobs across the UK.

Good but not startling. As Nick Grealy explains

Cuadrilla revealed 200 TCF gas in place today. How big a number is that? Assume a conservative 20% recovery rate and this find is as big as the North Sea Troll super giant field. That's about 15 years of total UK demand. Or replacing ALL LNG imports for 40 years! There will be other challenges, but running out of gas will not be one of them. Cuadrilla also released figures showing the potential for £5 to 6 billion in tax revenues over 30 years.

But Phil is having none of that, thank you.

The BBC want to give less exposure to scientists who properly question the causes of global warming (which has stopped), but they're happy to quote this Ayatollah ecoloon.

"Those jobs could and should be in green energy. We need a revolution in the economy to really deal with climate change effectively", he says.

Despite his rantings, it would make not a bit of difference to global temperatures if Britain gave up all use of fossil fuels. Completely. For ever. Why? Because we're a small country with less than 2% of world output, and because bigger countries like China and India are producing more and more carbon dioxide all the time.

(That's not some obscure poison called 'carbon' by the way, that's carbon dioxide, the stuff which plants need to grow. Oh, and if they got more of it, they wouldn't be poisoned. They'd ... um ... grow faster.)

Now, economics being what it is, there would be more jobs in "green energy" if it paid. But it doesn't. Even though we subsidise it. A subsidy which is wholly pointless.

"They could create jobs in renewables", he whines, "if they put the investment there."

Just who is this anonymous, mysterious unfeeling "they"? Could it be that Phil wants taxpayers to pour even more subsidy into expensive and unreliable energy schemes?

Then taxpayers will be even poorer. And even if the wind turbines suddenly become reliable, economic, and attractive, they will make no difference to the air temperature at all. None. We will be poorer for no good reason.

Shale gas is changing the US economy. There's loads of it, all over the world. It's cheap and it can make us and our children and our children's children better off. The world will rely less on rogue nations for its fuel supplies, so it might even become more peaceful.

But the Climate Ayatollah is not interested in any of that. Britain can halt the runaway global warming we see all around us. Let us worship at the sacred flame, even as we shiver.

The BBC should surely be giving hardly any coverage to the rantings of this blinkered, ill informed ecoloon.

UPDATE The BBC have amended the page to strapline the resources:

An energy firm which has been test drilling for controversial "shale gas" in Lancashire has said it has found vast gas resources underground.

The page still stresses "green" issues, rather than energy security and cheapness.