Our resource-ransacked and chemically-shattered blue globe’s greatest minds are ever-busy contemplating a solution to the CO₂ problem – that doesn’t involve the financial castration of fossil fuel developers and investors and their swooning fanboys.

So, ceasing the extraction and incineration of hydrocarbons is out of the question – then, how about this novelty: burying wood.

‘Wood vaulting’ is the process of secreting wood in the ground to prevent the release of C0₂ as the evil natural product decomposes. According to the article, entombment could “potentially store more than 12 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year and decrease global warming by more than a third of a degree Celsius”.

Though companies that like the idea of building big machines to suck up the crap we’ve released into the air will be disappointed to see their paydays recede into the distance, the article makes it sound like this might be one crazy scheme that has legs. Then again, maybe not.

Meanwhile, the generally ignored Climate Change Committee (CCC) has written a letter to the government, telling it to jolly well prepare for some pretty spicy weather as a consequence of global temperatures rising 2C by 2050.

Astonishingly, the CCC warns that the country “has not adapted” in preparation for a very likely hell-tide of supercharged, abnormal climatical conditions. That surprised me. Did it surprise you too?

What else? Oh yeah – greenhouse gases levels increased by a record amount in 2024.

The World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) latest daunting report reveals that “the globally averaged surface concentrations for carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) reached unprecedented highs in 2024, with CO₂ at 423.9±0.2 ppm, CH₄ at 1942±2 ppb and N₂O at 338.0±0.1 ppb”.

Apparently speaking for the benefit of anybody who’s recently woken from a 50-year sleep, Ko Barrett, the WMO’s deputy secretary general, said: “The heat trapped by CO₂ and other greenhouse gases is turbo-charging our climate and leading to more extreme weather” – before adding, presumably jokingly, that “reducing emissions is therefore essential not just for our climate but also for our economic security and community well-being.” Nice one, Ko, very droll.

Finally – because I’m genuinely too dispirited to carry on – carbon emissions fan Donald Trump is putting pressure on smaller countries to vote against proposed new rules that would make shipping firms pay for their toxic outpourings.

They don’t take too kindly to that kind of thing down at that there White House, so they don’t, and US officials have been respectfully reminding some of the International Maritime Organization’s 176 member states that accidents do happen (“such as the obliteration of your economies by us”).

So, that’ll do, that’ll do. Maybe next week there will be an unprecedented outbreak of good news.