Avtar Sandhu, a former Bechtel engineer who has chosen to become a grape farmer and wine maker in Sonoma County, California, has said that the San Francisco Chronicle story, quoting the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, predicting the effects of global warming on the wine industry in the state, has "portrayed a very doubtful scenario into a catastrophe."

"I am reminded of a cartoon I saw long time ago in the Punch Magazine," writes the creator of Mushal wines. "This is about two cave men sitting inside their cave and there is thunder and lightning outside and they are complaining that the weather has changed ever since they started using bows and arrows."

Sandhu continues: "There is another one about the forecast made when there was heavy horse carriage traffic between New York and Washington, D.C., that there would be 14ft of horse dung on the highway by the year 2000! It never happened. Do you know why? Because we are smart and develop technologies that would obviate such problems.

The future power source will be Nuclear Fusion that provides clean power and hydrogen fuel. If it had not been for the likes of Sierra Club and other similar lawyers we would have had Nuclear Energy fuelling our power plants instead of fossil fuels.

"I have been involved with the design of more than seven very safe nuclear power plants. Had this technology been allowed to proceed, it would have generated sufficient funds for research to fund Nuclear Fusion. These programmes at best have been delayed and not given up. Nuclear Fusion will be the cure.

"I commend President Bush for not signing the Kyoto Protocol. We must develop technology to combat a problem if there is one. Stopping development is not a cure."