Damian Thompson

Climate change is the subject of a complex debate in which, increasingly, experts disagree with each other. Nearly all of them believe in man-made global warming, but they're not sure how bad the problem is or how to tackle it. Meanwhile, the 'sceptics' are no longer dominated by scientifically illiterate amateurs. Many of them believe in anthropogenic global warming, though they don't think it's happening today. So you'd expect the BBC's 'Environment and Energy Analyst', Roger Harrabin, to proceed with caution. Not so. Here are two tweets he sent out yesterday (links here and here): Quentin Letts is the Daily Mail's parliamentary sketchwriter and theatre critic, celebrated for his sometimes caustic but more often gentle wit.

For the last few months, young American liberals have been writing love letters to a white-haired 73-year-old former mayor from Vermont who supports gun owners and worries about the threat posed by mass immigration to 'American kids'. Only now is it dawning on them that they may have been sending them to the wrong address. The love letters took the form of articles in Salon, Slate and dozens of other, like, really cool websites. The recipient was Bernie Sanders, the only US senator to declare himself a socialist. Which is also really cool, because it must mean he hates the Republicans and the One Per Cent. So what if he was born in 1941? Seniors are a 'minority', right? This man has been a social justice warrior for decades. Awesome!

'The Church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters.' In that one sentence, Cardinal Pell puts his finger on what is wrong with Laudato Si', Pope Francis's encyclical on the environment. In that document, Francis waded into an argument about climate change and took sides. Moreover, he gave the impression that he was speaking for all Catholics when he did so; and, if by any chance he wasn't, errant faithful should fall into line. In an interview in Thursday's Financial Times, the Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy stepped out of line. See above. It was a brave thing to do: Pell's wholesale reform of the Vatican's finances is making him plenty of enemies as it is, and now he's even more vulnerable to attack. Why take the risk?

One of the finest speeches Benedict XVI ever delivered was about sacred music. It is a small masterpiece, in which Benedict recalls his first encounter with Mozart in the liturgy. ‘When the first notes of the Coronation Mass sounded, Heaven virtually opened and the presence of the Lord was experienced very profoundly,’ he said. Benedict robustly defended the performance of the work of great composers at Mass, which he insisted was necessary for the fulfilment of the Second Vatican Council’s wish that ‘the patrimony of sacred music [is] preserved and developed with great care’. Then he asked: what is music? He identified three places from which it flowed.

'Hidden menace of the drivers high on drugs,' says the headline in today's Daily Mail, revealing that – according to police – six out of 10 motorists are failing a new roadside test that can detect use of cannabis or cocaine. If so, that's worrying. But not as worrying as actually being driven by someone who's stoned. Trust me on this. Several times I've found myself in California bowling along the freeway at night, trying not to think about the spliff the driver smoked before turning the ignition key. A single puff induces terror in passengers, since all dope seems to be skunk these days and the Californian strain is wickedly strong. (Again, trust me on this.) It makes the journey 'more fun', it was explained to me.

Ireland, for so long the most overtly Catholic state in Western Europe, has voted for gay marriage by a stupendous margin – 62 per cent. Never before has a country legalised the practice by popular vote. It would be naive to ask: how could this happen? Hatred of the Church is one of the central features of modern Ireland, thanks not only to the paedophile scandals but also to the joyless quasi-Jansenist character of the Irish Church, which was handed complete control of education in the Free State after partition in 1922. (Many of its priests were outstandingly holy and charitable, but you'll get your head bitten off if you suggest that in today's anti-clerical republic.) Anyway, I don't want to focus on Ireland.

The Prince of Wales's 'spider letters' are out today – his letters to government ministers written or annotated in his distinctive spidery hand (see above) have been released under the Freedom of Information Act. Hat tip to James Snell on Twitter for alerting me to this utter garbage from the Guardian's liveblog: What can we tell about Charles’ personality from the small amount of handwritten annotations in the black spider memos? Actually, quite a lot, according to the chairman of the British Institute of Graphologists. Charles’ fluid strokes, joined-up words and slight slant to the left reveal interesting things about his personality and how he will approach his kingship.

Here we go again. What effect do you think watching porn and video games have on young men? Yup, they rewire the brain. It's such a clumsy metaphor – the brain isn't 'wired' in any meaningful sense – that you'd think psychologists and neuroscientists would run a mile from it. Unless, of course they're Baroness Greenfield, who is a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. She was director of the Royal Institution until her post was abolished in 2010, 'amid claims that there was almost no other way to get rid of her' (thank you, Wikipedia).