Today is the first day of NaBloPoMo - that's National Blog Posting Month. I've thought about it long and hard, but on balance I've decided to carry on posting anyway.

So, global warming. Now now, you were warned. It can't be smut and innuendo every day you know. And there's good news, of a kind.

We've passed peak oil, you see. Peak oil is the moment when oil production reaches its technological height, shortly before it goes into a steep decline as stocks begin to run out. Oil prices will rise, for two reasons. Firstly, supply will fall, so the laws of supply and demand dictate that prices will rise. This is already happening. Secondly, what oil there is left will become harder and harder to get at.

Which is actually great news, because oil is where most greenhouse gases come from. If corporate fuckwits can't keep burning oil, they might end up saving the planet despite themselves.

Our lifestyles will have to change though. We'll have to give up cars. Yes we will.

They tell us we won't. They tell us we can go over to biofuels - crops, turned into petrol. This won't increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, it's claimed, because all the carbon released by the burning of the fuels is compensated for by the carbon absorbed in the next crop.

There's a problem with this, though. If uncultivated land is turned over to biofuels, then all the carbon stored in the trees and plants on it will be released into the atmosphere. Viewed in these terms, biofuels aren't carbon neutral at all. They would also mean even less wilderness, and come to that I wonder how many acres across Africa, Asia and South America will be turned over to biofuels when they're needed to feed the people that live there.

And now a study argues that biofuel production releases large amounts of nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. You might have hoped that at least would make me be funny, but in fact nitrous oxide is a worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so we'd just be laughing ourselves to death.

So biofuels aren't the answer. There are positive technological initiatives, though. I'll write about them soon.

Not tomorrow though, because I'm going to my Dad's tomorrow, so the blogosphere will have to get on with its special month without me.