This column isn’t just for the nasty things in life. That’s why, this morning, while we’re still a bit monged from Latitude and constructing our next proper blog post, we should like to pay tribute to the wondrous, divine, gorgeous and clearly enormously perceptive and bright mezzo soprano Christine Rice. Why? Because of what she said the other day on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour in an interview with Jenni Murray. (H/T Fay Kelly-Tuncay; Biased BBC)

Murray asked Rice about her early career as a scientist researching “global warming.” Rice replied:

I was amazed really by the inadequacy of what we had, because we’re talking about climate change which is over tens of thousands of years as opposed to the twenty years of data that we had. So in a way we were putting out a lot of ideas and not really having concrete scientific research to support it, and I suppose at that point I did lose a little bit of my spark, thinking well I could propose an idea and I could probably draft a thesis that would support it and yet I wouldn’t really convince myself necessarily.

At this point Murray moved the conversation swiftly on. Can’t have that kind of contrarian nonsense sullying the BBC airwaves, can we now?