Some more dates for your diary.
On Wednesday at 8pm, BBC Radio 4 is going to look at fracking, in the first of a new series that looks at intractable differences and sees where common ground can be found:
Most discussion formats set out to define opposing points of view and offer the listener a choice between them - maximum disagreement, minimum consensus. Agree to Differ is Radio 4's new discussion programme where the aim is to give listeners a completely new way to understand a controversial issue and to decide where they stand. Often when it comes to debates in these contested areas the protagonists spend more time attacking and caricaturing each other than they do addressing the heart of the issue. Agree to Differ will use techniques from mediation and conflict resolution to discover what really divides them - and just as important - if there's anything they can agree on. The mediator is Matthew Taylor the chief executive of the RSA and subjects for this first series will be fracking, vivisection and the future of Jerusalem.
Matthew Taylor has deeply "right-on" views, and indeed had the RSA doing research into individual carbon allowances - what I call "carbon communism" - at one time. Nevertheless I have always had the impression that he favours open debate, so I hold out considerable hopes for this programme.
Then on Friday we have a debate on fracking at the Edinburgh Book Festival (tickets here). This will feature a geologist, Zoe Shipton of the University of Strathclyde, against Richard Dixon of Friends of the Earth. Shipton seems to be thoroughly mainstream, both on global warming and on fracking (she also features in an edition of Life Scientific here). Friends of the Earth need little introduction of course, being one of the most disreputable of the green groups. I'm looking forward to the outrage from the sci-policy people about a scientist being given equal billing with a pressure group.