The lunatic ambitions of the "man-made" climate change fanatics are reaching new heights. They also pose a serious danger to human survival - the very objective they claim to champion. Among the latest Frankenstein proposals are "cloud ships" to generate more cloud and deflect the sun's rays. This scheme envisages 1,900 wind-powered ships cruising through the world's oceans creating bad weather.

Scientists insist the effects would be purely local (how can climate interference be localised, without a domino effect?) and that it could be reversed. This would cost a mere $9 billion, compared to the $395 trillion it would cost to launch mirrors into space to deflect the sun. We should count ourselves lucky this fruitcake scheme to switch off the light that sustains life on earth is too expensive to be implemented.

Man-made global warming is a fantasy. Climate change is occurring - as it always has - and is harmless. The same cannot be said for the unspeakably irresponsible proposals of scientists whose egos have far outstripped their knowledge. For now the danger is that man-made climate change will genuinely take place - engineered by the global warming alarmists themselves, who cannot leave well alone.

The suggestion, for example, that iron powder should be scattered into the seas to encourage plankton, or that particles should be released in the atmosphere to mimic the effects of volcanic eruption in initiating global cooling (if the super-volcano beneath Yellowstone Park in America erupts, such efforts will be superfluous) are breathtakingly absurd.

As always, scientific lunacy marches hand-in-hand with entrepreneurial opportunism: people are already making vast fortunes out of the climate change hysteria and the environmental wideboys and complicit scientists have realised this is a dripping roast of billions, even trillions, of dollars and pounds to be extracted from gullible taxpayers. Global warming will not kill us, but the fanatics and know-all scientists could well do so.