WILL THE SUN SAVE US?

While France and Spain burn and a mammoth El Niño builds in the tropical Pacific, it beggars belief that some climate deniers insist upon telling us that our world is set to get colder

As we look around us at the prodigious wildfires driving mass evacuations in France and Spain, at the brown, scorched, croplands of the UK, and towards the mammoth El Niño building in the tropical Pacific, it beggars belief that some climate deniers insist upon telling us that a new ice age is on the way. But such is the case.

The idea that a return of the ice is imminent has history. Back in the early 1970s, there was a flurry of concern – at least amongst elements of the popular media – that a new ice age was on the way. This was amplified, at the time, by Nigel Calder, the British popular science writer and broadcaster, who warned that ‘the threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind’.