Last week did not go to plan.

I did not get to London in time to ask my question about teaching geography due to flooding on the line at Kirkstall - a truly geographical irony that had some of their Lordships smiling when "my noble friend" Baroness Walmsley stood in for me and told them why I was not there.

I was there on Wednesday to move my 35 amendments on the government's "pay-as-you-throw" plans, the so-called "bin tax".

But for the second week we never reached them. It's clear that if you ask their Lordships to talk about global warming they will talk, and talk, and talk.

One of the debates was about flooding and the need for a more joined-up approach by all the different agencies - the water companies, councils, Environment Agency, Natural England and the rest.

A few weeks after the flooding last summer I went to Hull to and toured some of the areas where people were beginning the long job of getting their homes back to normal.

So I chipped in about the experiences there, which were quite remarkable since neither the river banks nor the sea defences gave way - it was "pluvial" flooding, just the effect of a lot of rain on a very flat city whose drains could not take the water.

There may be more such cases if the weather becomes more extreme, one of the more likely results of the planet heating up.

We're on again tomorrow with the Climate Change Bill. This time we'll definitely get to the Bin Tax stuff because we are next in the lists.

So why am I so determined that we give these proposals a really good scrubbing down? Surely anything that tackles climate change is a good thing, full stop?

Well first, because it's our job to go through new legislation line by line in a way the Commons rarely does. It's the Lords as a "scrutinising and revising chamber"".

And second, if as I suspect the idea of charging people according to how much they throw out is not sensible (far too many problems in principle and practice), imposing these schemes will only bring the very necessary and serious cause of putting greenhouse gases into disrepute.