Weatherman Harry, exiled to the Hebrides, detects something rotten in the very English greenhouse of his boss, "Thunderhead Ted." Harry's Scottish mathematician friend Duffy, living in France, thinks it's a decaying red herring. Duffy's Danish colleague Mark, working at the particle physics laboratory CERN, straddling France and Switzerland, hints at putrefaction from cosmic rays. Irish anthropologist Kate in Siberia links it to the thawing of her mammoth. But commonsense internet-using Susan puts the blame on her fat-headed brother. Mud, mammoths and intergalactic cosmic rays form the background to this contemporary tale of global warming, in which Kate, Harry, Duffy and Mark team up internationally to confront Thunderhead Ted with an alternative to the widely-believed "greenhouse gas" hypothesis. They meet with severe opposition, for Thunderhead Ted sits on the British Government's scientific advisory council and the greenhouse gas hypothesis is deeply entrenched. The reputations of its advocates are at stake as well as the credibility of the politicians who have acted upon their advice. Considerable sums have been invested, international conferences convened, the Kyoto Protocol has been ratified, and legislation to tax carbon dioxide emissions is being enacted: all this in the belief that climate change is the result of greenhouse gases. But is it true? Although a work of fiction, this romance is based on verifiable scientific evidence, which indicates that the greenhouse gas hypothesis may well turn out to be the greatest red herring of our time