Having never mentioned them at all in 10 months of blogging, I find myself mentioning B&Q 2 days in a row! The diy experts (clever enough to have bought the url diy.com) have followed up their partnership with the Mayor of London to distribute free low energy lightbulbs by announcing that they will be ordering no more patio heaters, and will stop selling them once their current stock has been sold.

I first wrote about patio heaters in June last year, and about how they have become the rage as smokers are forced outside pubs during all weathers, and need to keep warm. The problem with them is simple - they burn gas, at a huge rate, generating huge amounts of CO2 emissions - the best statistic given is that a patio heater consumes enough energy in an hour to make 400 cups of tea! This is one very unethical fashion item.

Unfortunately, however, there are still 20,000 patio heaters in B&Q stores to be sold - that’s 8 millions cups of tea per hour worth of emissions that will soon be pumped into the atmosphere by pubs and people determined to have drinks outside in midwinter! So, whilst I fully applaud B&Q’s initiative, I have a small suggestion: add 10@ to the price, and use this markup to invest in renewable energy, offsets, solar heating for B&Q stores, or any other solution that will balance out the additional emissions to be generated over the next 5 years.

Yes, I am serious, the smoking ban now coming into force in the UK and many other countries, is having and will have a negative effect on global warming. Specifically, it is likely to be responsible for an increase in co2 emissions. Why? Well, in two words: patio heaters.

I always thought they were a wonderful invention, these lamp-post shaped gas heaters that you find outside pubs and restaurants enabling you to continue eating and drinking outside on cold autumn and even winter evenings. Several friends of mine have installed them in their gardens for the same reason, and suddenly, barbecues are possible at literally any time of the year - especially since all this global warming business means that there’s less rain around.

As of the 1st of July 2007, in case you had forgotten, smoking will be illegal in pubs, bars and restaurants around the UK, specifically in ‘enclosed public spaces’. This means that smokers will be able to continue to smoke when going to the pub, but they will have to be outside. Now pub, bar and restaurant owners, being considerate sort of people, want their customers to be as comfortable as possible when having their fag outside, and so more and more of them are buying patio heaters. That way they won’t get cold and go home early.

Need I go on? Patio heaters burn propane. Patio heaters pour co2 into the atmosphere. One hour of a patio heater is the equivalent of boiling a kettle from cold 80 times… And over the next 12 months, the number of patio heaters in the UK is going to increase dramatically. So my message to any smokers out there is this: by all means keep on smoking, that’s your choice, but when you go to the pub, please take a sweater, a coat, anything that means you can tell the publican to switch off the patio heater.

For more information, take a look at http://www.patioheatersareevil.com - the best named site I have seen for quite a while!