THERE were two headlines that grabbed my attention in the JEP on 23 May. Firstly, World News – ‘Millions of deaths linked to climate change since 1970’ and secondly columnist Stephen Le Quesne – ‘We need to be having the conversation and making tough decisions on climate’.

To be really truthful, the first of these statements should read ‘Millions of deaths linked to climate not climate change’. Millions of people have been dying from climate-related disasters since time began and a cursory Google search by any of your readers for ‘Deaths from natural disasters 1900 to 2020’ would instantly reveal that deaths worldwide attributed to drought, flood, storm, forest fire and any other metric you care to choose have declined substantially during the past 120 years. This despite the fact that the world’s population has increased from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 7.8 billion in 2020.

If the natural world were getting more dangerous you would expect the death rate to have increased by a massive amount.

This is not the case, it has fallen to its lowest level for 100 years.

I am always amused that untrustworthy scientists and media climate alarmists always start their data sets in the 1970s when the world was at the end of a cooling period from its high point in the 1930s.

Back in the 70s the experts of the day were forecasting a new Ice Age with news outlets showing illustrations of New York covered by glaciers. These are the same news outlets that now promote the global warming theory and show illustrations of New York under water. The former hasn’t happened yet and guess what, neither has the latter.

As far as ‘Having a conversation about climate’ the fact is none of the doom merchants like Stephen Le Quesne really want to discuss the subject, they just want to tell us how to live our lives while patting themselves on the back for being so virtuous.

The net-zero agenda is the most ill-conceived and destructive piece of dogma ever foisted upon the taxpaying public and anyone, especially politicians, who thinks human beings can control the climate and, therefore, the weather by reducing or increasing the small amounts of a trace gas in the atmosphere should have a conversation with themselves. The climate has and will change without any help from mankind. As my French teacher used to say ‘plus ça change plus la même chose’.

32 Clos des Ormes, St Lawrence.