It was only a matter of time before the inevitable happened and I wrote something about climate change, so here it is.

I've been having an interesting email chat with Professor Philip Stott, bio-geographer and bogeyman of many environmentalists. Painted as an arch climate change denier he is indeed sceptical about much of the discussion of and many of the proposed remedies for climate change. But that's not what I'm going to write about. And by the way, he does think that there could be major consequences of pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It will make the oceans more acidic which could trigger any number of environmental disasters.

What got me thinking is that in our discussions I find there is much on which we agree. A bit of a surprise perhaps as I do consider the evidence that human activity is changing our climate to be pretty compelling. I am not a climate scientist so I am not talking from first hand research but I have talked to enough climate scientists who are convinced and their arguments have convinced me. So how come Philip Stott and I agree so often?

Well, there is in my view something else here that is possibly more important than arguing over whether anthropogenic carbon dioxide is heating our planet. Oil is on its way out and while there is a fair bit of coal left, its a dirty, polluting fuel even if you ignore any carbon dioxide released. Though in all fairness there are clean coal technologies on the way. We could turn to burning the vast reserves of methane hydrates buried on the sea floor but that is a difficult resource to get at and could well caused major environmental problems of its own.

So even if you think that climate change is nothing to do with human activity we still need to find alternative energy sources. Personally, I'm in favour of large scale tidal, wave and geothermal power. They will have an environmental impact, massive barrages and lots of deep bore holes cannot be hidden. And yes it will take them a bit of time to produce large amounts of energy but they are not that far off, and a bit of proper investment could see them coming on line relatively soon. Offshore wind might have its place as well. These technologies do not carry the same risks as nuclear, an accident at a nuclear power station is still orders of magnitude more hazardous than one at any other type of power plant. They also don't have anything like the same payback time and can probably be built quicker than a nuclear power station. Our supplies of uranium ore are limited and mining it definitely causes major environmental blight. Oh yes, there are a couple of unresolved issues about dealing with nuclear waste too.

I could be naïve, these alternative technologies may not be able to sate our prodigious energy appetite. But in my job as a science writer I have talked to several level-headed engineers who think there are vast quantities of energy to be tapped, enough to replace fossil fuels.

The scientific debate over climate change will, and should, continue and actually there are virtually no scientists on any side of the debate who do not think that our climate is changing. Its the cause that is under discussion. However, the imperative is that we replace our dependence on rapidly depleting fossil fuels with alternative, viable, long term solutions. This is true for everyone wherever they are in the debate. If you don't think carbon dioxide is changing our climate then you might argue that there is a bit more time to act, but only a bit.