Bookie William Hill took a £100 bet at those odds from Piers Corbyn, an astrophysicist at Imperial College, London, and outspoken long-range weather forecaster, who thinks that this will happen.

Corbyn recently wrote to Parliament saying, “Global warming is over and Global Warming Theory has failed. There is no evidence that CO2 drives world temperatures or any consequent climate change, and it is time the government acknowledged this”.

His thoughts are in stark contrast to the Met Office’s predictions that 2009 will be one of the warmest five years on record.  Professor Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, said, “The fact that 2009, like 2008, will not break records does not mean that global warming has gone away.”

However, an increasingly loud body of scientific opinion is arguing that the world is in fact cooling, and that the relatively recent changes in the earth’s temperature are caused by sun spots rather than human activity.
American Spectator made hay with the recent inability of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to come up with a successor to the Kyoto treaty in Poznan, Poland, during its December conference.

Global warming denials in the USA
To be honest, it seems most of the anti-global warming arguments come from the US – and given the state of their economy, it’s hardly surprising.

The world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gases is simply in no fit state to take on an inefficient carmaking industry, which lives and breathes carbon emissions and is propped up politically for the sake of saving face internationally.

It’s no surprise that there are plenty of vested interests shouting that the country’s gorging itself on fossil fuels isn’t screwing up the rest of the planet.

That said, George W Bush and his cronies are heading out of office in a week, and Democrat Barack Obama coming in. I think it’s fair to say that most people who expect Obama to walk on water will be disappointed, but he’s still likely to accept that global warming is a) man-made, and b) a very real danger.

Gordon Brown is likely to cosy up to Obama far more than he did Bush, and so I think it’s fairly unlikely that he’ll stand up in Parliament and say global warming doesn’t exist. I won’t be rushing for the 10/1 odds just yet.

I think it’s about as unlikely as a long-range weather forecaster getting a prediction right.

The increase in bets on Miliband came after yesterday’s Guardian published an article written by the Foreign Secretary which was widely interpreted to be him jockeying for position ahead of a challenge against Brown’s leadership of the Labour Party.

Hill’s spokesman Rupert Adams said, “Every bet accepted in the last twelve hours has been for David Miliband and he has leapt to the front of our betting, leapfrogging both Alan Johnson and Jack Straw.

“This is a very significant move and there can be little doubt that punters now expect David Miliband to be Gordon Brown’s Brutus.”

Whether punters are right to equate Miliband’s article – coded attack though it may be – with his coronation as Labour leader is another matter.

The Telegraph’s David Hughes points out that, “As Michael Heseltine would tell him, he who wields the dagger rarely inherits the crown,” referring to the 1990 political assassination of Margaret Thatcher by ‘Tarzan’ which instigated a Conservative leadership contest. Heseltine was expected to replace Thatcher at the top of the Tory party but ultimately lost out to John Major.

The comparison with Brutus doesn’t really pass muster, although it does add an air of suitably melodramatic classicism to the reaction to Miliband’s article. Brutus was a close friend of Julius Caesar before helping to murder him, while Miliband and Brown have been at daggers since the height of Tony Blair’s premiership.

But political punters might want to note that Brutus, like Heseltine, never got the top job either.

The current government’s unpopularity with the country is illustrated by the fact Hills have cut the odds on the Tories winning 375 or more seats at the next election from 5/1 to 5/2.

David Cameron’s Conservative Party is 1/4 favourite to win the next General Election outright, with Labour being quoted at 11/4 – their longest odds since winning power in 1997.

The bookies make Labour joint favourites with the Scottish National Party to win the Glasgow East by-election, but are having to search for a candidate to stand in what should be one of their safest seats in Scotland.

The bad news for the Labour Party is worse for Gordon Brown personally, as shown in Hills’ other political betting markets. The former Chancellor of the Exchequer has been shortened from 3/1 to 11/10 to leave office during 2008, and is also 5/6 not to lead Labour into the next General Election.