THE DARWINISTS BELIEVE IN INTELLIGENT DESIGN, THE CREATIONISTS BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION:

It is not often that reports on climate change highlight the benefits of global warming, as well as the risks.

Yet that is what the 464-page Climate Change Risk Assessment published on Thursday by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs seeks to do.

But it also forecasts several benefits of global warming, including the chance to grow commercial crops more suited to warmer climates, and what it calls the "potentially very large" social and economic benefits of falling demand for winter heating that could add up to more than £1bn a year by the 2050s.

That is probably to be expected in a report supposed to help the government forge policies to help the UK adapt to climate change, said Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham research institute on climate change and the environment at the London School of Economics. "That does require that it recognises opportunities and not just threats."

But it is also true that critics have rounded on some recent climate studies for failing to emphasise potential benefits, he added. Researchers are more aware of such criticism now, he said, "but it's important to recognise that in all these assessments, the potential upsides seem to be fewer and more far between than the potential downsides".

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