The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia is under government investigation for fraud, data manipulation and withholding or destroying scientific data in defiance of freedom of information requests. Many of the disgraced scientists working at the CRU were closely involved in putting together the now ferociously suspect Fourth Assessment Report for the notoriously unreliable Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) headed by the lethally compromised Dr Rajendra Pachauri.

Is this really the best time, you might wonder, for the future King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to praise the CRU for the “quality” of its work and to dismiss the Climategate scandal as a “little blip”? (Hat tip: Roddy Campbell)

Well the Prince of Wales clearly thinks so or he wouldn’t have paid a visit to Norwich yesterday to deliver a jolly little fillip to the beleaguered scientists. In his sublime wisdom, Prince Charles clearly believes they have done no wrong at all.

On a visit to the disgraced CRU yesterday – shown here in full technicolour horror – the Prince told scientists including the organisation’s suspended director Dr Phil Jones:

“Well done all of you. Many, many congratulations on your work. I wish you great success in the future. Don’t get downhearted by these little blips here and there!”

“Little blips”? Does this mean that Prince Charles takes a relaxed view on law-breaking? Certainly if we are to believe the Information Commissioner, offences were committed at the CRU under the Freedom of Information Act. Unfortunately, as Bishop Hill discovered, there are unlikely to be any prosecutions because of a cunning escape-clause inserted by wily civil servants into the Freedom of Information Act.

Her parents must be so proud. But I ruddy well wouldn’t be if I’d forked out £9,172 a term for my daughter’s education.  That’s how much the current Westminster boarding fees are. If you’re a day pupil they are a mere £6,352 a term. I dare say things were slightly less expensive when little Tammy was there. But it’s still a fair bet it cost Mr and Mrs Omond an arm and a leg to educate their feisty and fearless young agitator.

What is it about privately educated, toffy rich kids and the modern green movement? Obviously there’s none quite so grand as Old Etonian the Hon Sir Jonathon Porritt (both a baronet and the son of a Lord), but billionaire’s son (and Old Etonian, natch) Zac Goldsmith is hardly what you’d call a smelly prole; nor is eco-columnist Charles Clover (a Wet – ie an old boy of Tamsy Wamsy’s alma mater Westminster), nor is George Monbiot (who went to Palladian finishing school for the nice but dim Stowe); nor of course is desperately WASP-establishment Climate Fear Promoter Al Gore. Then of course there’s Prince Charles, who, though something of a Hanoverian arriviste still knows enough not to eat the peas off his fish knife or drop too many aitches when he goes to dinner with his upmarket chum Sir Jonathon.

As for the Plane Stupid and Climate Camp lot – it is said that even if you went to a good grammar school, they still rag you for being a despicable  little oik, rather as George Osborne was by the Old Etonians during in his time with the Bullingdon Club. Even their protest banners are made from 100 per cent Egyptian cotton percale sheets from John Lewis (bought at full price, not in the sale).

But back to that private school question. I am currently making enquiries as to how I might best get my own offspring into decent public schools. Not being born to the purple like most members of the modern green movement, I may have to do so via a bursary. But from what I can see of the alumni of our great schools I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s worth it.

Surely, the point of sending your child to private school is give them a better education than they would have had in the state sector. They would emerge, you would hope, with a capacity for original thinking, an ability to look at the world empirically and understand the difference between objective truth and the mere clamour of the times and the ranting of the mob.

But apparently not. There is nothing clever or original or indeed counter-cultural about the modern green movement. They are protesters pushing against an open door. Any fool can go to Jeremy Clarkson’s house dressed in frills and chant drivel. What takes far, far more courage and originality of thought is to look at the world, see how much money is being made from the “climate-change” industry, see how much taxpayers’ money is being wasted in the name of environmental righteousness, see how much of our beautiful countryside is going to be destroyed in the name of ’saving’ it, then to take a stand and enunciate with your impeccable, public school diction: “Enough is jolly well enough! Up with this I will not put!”

ManBearPig: the world’s deadliest threat. Well, if you’re Prince Charles

In the Spectator today, I interview an Australian geology professor called Ian Plimer whose brilliant new book – Heaven And Earth – is rightly being hailed as the one that is going to nail once and for all the crazy myth that man’s contribution to “climate change” is remotely significant, let alone something we should worry about or waste money trying to stop.

As Professor Plimer observes with characteristic Aussie bluntness: “CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is plant food.”

Yet so many of the ruinously expensive policies being formulated on our behalf by everyone from Barack Obama to EU president (and former Maoist) Jose Manuel Barroso to Ed Miliband to (God help us) David Cameron’s Conservatives are based on the scientifically groundless urban myth that human generated CO2 (quite minuscule, anyway, compared with the quantities of greenhouse gases volcanoes belch or even cows fart) is the most dangerous substance on earth.

Prince Charles is fond of telling us that we only have 100 months left to save the earth. (Apparently down to 96 now, or so he claimed in his recent Dimbleby lecture). But I’d say the time we have left to save the world is quite significantly less than that. Not from the perfectly natural process of climate change, of course, but the far far greater threat of climate change alarmism.

Unless those of us with more than half a brain cell unite and act soon, the earth is going to fall prey to  the most destructive, expensive, suicidally pointless taxation and regulation and protectionism in global economic history. We simply cannot afford any longer to allow the likes of the Prince Of Wales, Al Gore, NASA activist James Hansen, Lord Stern and their amen corner in the mainstream media to go on pushing their ludicrous scare story unchallenged.

Right now, out there in the real world, are numerous genuine ecological challenges that urgently need addressing: the decline of fish (thanks European Union fisheries policy!); pollution; diminishing water tables; deforestation; overpopulation; and the great eco-disaster that are bio-fuels. The Quixotic quest to arrest “climate change” – something that has been happening for 4,567 million years regardless of man’s input – is a silly and expensive distraction.

What’s particularly galling about the most outspoken supporters of climate change taxation and regulation is that many of them either are rich enough not to be affected by it or – worse – stand to make vast fortunes as a result of it.

The Prince of Wales is a case in point. When you’re on a salary of £18 million, as he is, you’re probably not going to be bothered overmuch by tiny details such as your gas and electricity bills doubling because of green taxes on carbon emissions. You’re not even going to mind, that much, that if Barack Obama’s new $7.4 trillion cap and trade tax on carbon emissions is introduced the global economic recovery is going to be set by a generation. Indeed, it’s probably very much in the Prince’s interests that we should all be rendered so poor that we can’t even afford to run our cars any more. It will leave Britain’s roads free for Charlie to pootle about as freely as he wishes in his bio-ethanol-powered Aston Martin.