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"The green campaign against patio heaters is stepping up. Those devices like giant, fiery standard lamps that once you may have seen only outside the few British restaurants bold enough to put tables on the pavement, are spreading, into more and more catering outlets - and into the home. Yet they are anathema to environmentalists because of their profligate emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas responsible for global warming. "It's difficult to conceive of an article that inflicts more gratuitous damage on the environment than a patio heater," says Tony Juniper, executive director of Friends of the Earth. "They just blaze energy out into the open air. Given what we know about climate change, they're just not justifiable." (Independent, 6 August) Mr Juniper's concern about global warming may well be justified, but we can think of a few articles that are more damaging to the environment. Has he heard of the A bomb or the H bomb? RD