If only the skeptics would dial down their rhetoric so we could debate the issue rationally.

The Bishop of Stafford, Gordon Mursell, said that by failing to face up to the truth about climate change, we were – like Josef Fritzl – denying our children a future.

He stressed that he was not accusing those who do nothing about global warming of being child abusers, but said that shocking analogies were needed to force people to face up to the threat to the future of mankind.

In a pastoral letter distributed in parish magazines throughout the Diocese of Lichfield, the Bishop wrote: ‘Josef Fritzl represents merely the most extreme form of a very common philosophy of life: I will do what makes me happy, and if that causes others to suffer, hard luck.

‘In fact you could argue that, by our refusal to face the truth about climate change, we are as guilty as he is – we are in effect locking our children and grandchildren into a world with no future and throwing away the key.

This is how “An Inconvenient Truth” ended, isn’t it? With the oil industry, represented by a decrepit old man in a George Bush, forcing baby Gaia to bear his incest babies in a dungeon? Exit question: What “helpful” analogies might we glean from the right reverend’s logic to describe the burden of Baby Boomer entitlement programs on young adult taxpayers?