When some idiot said with an optimistic grin “The Arctic ice cap is melting. When it goes it will open up new shipping routes, new fishing grounds and new oil fields. The Arctic Ocean will become the new Mediterranean with Siberia and Canada as the centres for human culture and civilisation!” I feel nothing is learnt. Behind such comic anecdotes, lies the grim truth that billions of people face a miserable life and death as humanity finds a new equilibrium with the Earth. And to think that there are still people who say 550 ppm of C02 is acceptable. It is calculated by climate scientists that at the speed the arctic permafrost is melting there will be an irreversible climate tipping point, as this predicted Mediterranean weather starts the rapid melting of the Arctic permafrost releasing yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This permafrost holds billions of tons of frozen vegetation and when it thaws, it will rot: releasing more C02 than the tundra above it takes up!

Digest these little gems of hilarity: Greenhouse gas levels are at their highest for 650,000 years. So it's official. Climate change is here: a man-made phenomenon. If you think that means Britain will be growing and exporting oranges and bananas and you will be enjoying Mediterranean food as a matter of course. You will be seriously disappointed. A three degree C increase will mean half the world's wildlife reserves and corals will have gone, the tropical forests will dry up, and perhaps a billion people will starve.

A three degree rise will trigger the melting of the Greenland ice cap, the destabilisation of the Antarctic and irreversible system disruptions"- basically, out-of-control change. In short, three degrees will be another world. No more holidays on the Costa Brava, no seaside jaunts, no short breaks to New York or any of the other world's coastal cities or islands. They will not be there.

The Earth will be turned into a "different planet" because of the continuing increase in man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. We will end up with a different planet. I mean a planet with no ice in the Arctic, and a planet where warming is so large that it's going to have a large effect in terms of sea level rises and the extinction of species." Another is the release of methane from the frozen tundra. Methane gas is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. The continuing rise in carbon dioxide emissions and average global temperatures is on schedule to cause the eventual collapse of the ice sheets on both Greenland and the West Antarctic, with a catastrophic rise in sea levels.

The entire world economy will collapse, there will be mass famine. All this will occur while the rest of the world continues to warm. Europe will not grow enough food because it would be too cold. The rest of the world would have food shortages due to droughts, water shortages, and cropland loss due to heat waves.

You see, in truth, the earth's climate does not nor will it, conveniently comply with the computer models of climate scientists. In just a few years, the climate could suddenly cool or heat worldwide the consequences of which are unfathomable; half the rainfall, severe dust storms whirling across vast areas, lightning strikes igniting giant forest fires and for most mammals, (including our descendants massive population crashes if not extinction!

Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves. By failing to see that the earth regulates its climate and composition, we have blundered into trying to do it ourselves, acting as if we were in charge and in doing this, we condemn ourselves to the worst form of slavery. If we chose to be the stewards of the earth, then we are responsible for keeping the atmosphere, the ocean and the land surface right for life. A task we would find impossible.

If you think that your town or city is intolerably crowded today, you might well want to brace yourself before reading the next sentence. Because they are going to become much more densely populated over the course of this century as millions of people flee the uninhabitable desert that mainland Europe is doomed to turn into.