After a lively week of public debate over global warming and whether it's man made or part of nature's grand cyclical plan, I thought I'd be a good citizen and work out my own carbon footprint...

Attacking the task I naturally powered up the PC and immediately felt a twinge of guilt as I'd now be causing a power station to emit more carbon so that I could record this calculation, not to mention the carbon emitted in order to produce my PC in the firt place. Then of course there's all the CO2 that has been unleashed into the atmosphere as a result of all the software engineers sitting in front of their PCs writing several generations of operating system and application software that enable me to post this blog. And you the reader are guilty too - sitting in front of your PC reading this.

So, I booted down the PC and picked up a pen and sheet of paper in order to work out just how much I'm responsible for the planet's demise. Wait a minute though, how many trees were felled in the South American rain forests to enable me to have something to write on? How many barrels of oil were used in converting the tree into paper and transporting it to my office, how much CO2 was created in producing the bleaches and dies that whiten the paper....I could go on incriminating myself forever and ever. Dang!

In the end it seems that even attempting to calculate my carbon footprint hastens the melting of the ice caps and therefore it's greener not to! I'm off to find a cave...Pardon me for living.