How long will it be before the climate forces us to change?

This time last year, homeowners in Oxfordshire and Berkshire were recovering after storms had brought down power lines and blocked roads. Soon, power cuts were the least of their problems. The Thames flooded. In the south-west, the emergency services evacuated the Somerset Levels, and the sea wall at Dawlish in Devon collapsed — cutting the rail line to Cornwall.

Political Britain burst its banks. Ed Miliband demanded action. David Cameron convened emergency committees. TV reporters brought us urgent reports as water lapped their boots, while newspaper correspondents named the guilty men.

As in twenty20 cricket, you enjoy a quick intense hit with 24/7 news, then move on to the next game. The weather will not be an election issue. We will have the economy, the NHS, fake statistics, and possible permutations of coalition partners more complicated than a Jane Austen heroine’s dance card, but no argument about momentous changes.

Debate is confined to rows about whether deforestation and man-made emissions cause climate change. I believe it is scientifically illiterate to think otherwise. But what I believe is an irrelevance. The causes of climate change are one thing — unless you hold that the climate is not changing, then you should worry about the consequences.

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Ian O’Doherty

Why does Ireland want hairdressers to lecture you about climate change?

At the end of his recently published Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the 17th Century, Geoffrey Parker says of our time that there ‘may perhaps be residual doubts’ about man-made climate change, ‘just as some still deny that smoking tobacco increases the risk of lung cancer, but the historical record leaves no doubt that climate change occurs, and that it can have catastrophic consequences’.

Politicians do not want to talk about consequences because they are so expensive. A briefing paper from the House of Commons library drew up a bill from the available research.