Those with an interest in proving that man-made climate change isn’t happening always suggest it’s all to do with computer models as they can be made to prove anything. They state that reality, the facts, the figures don’t show the influence of mankind, and so there’s little to worry about.

Not only do they ignore the actual measurements of temperature, rainfall and sunshine that have been collected for many decades, indeed centuries, in compounds such as the one in Lister Park, but they have also forgotten to look up. They discount the battery of satellites above us that are continually measuring changes in the environment in real time. Indeed, there are plans to launch five more earth science satellites this year.

We tend to forget that the first satellite, Sputnik One, orbited the earth in 1957, that is before two-thirds of the present UK population were born, and now there are more than 1,000 up there, with about half being funded by the United States. The National Aeronautical and Space Agency – NASA – has been particularly busy, and often their satellites include scientific equipment from a range of European countries, including the UK.

Most satellites are used for global telecommunications, radio, television and telephones, and defence, as well as sat navs and spying, but there are more than 30 that concentrate on taking the personal measurements of planet earth. They are the thermometer stuck in the atmospheric armpit. Many have been operating for up to two decades, and it’s these that provide the scientific information that demonstrates the remarkable rate at which climate change is taking place.

The amount of information must be almost overwhelming for thousands of international earth scientists to cope with as the scope and detail is very comprehensive. It includes the ultra-violet energy coming from the sun, the long-wave infra-red energy leaving the planet, the salinity of the oceans and their heat storage. Other satellites measure the interaction between the oceans, the land and the atmosphere, with particular reference to the role played by clouds and aerosols.

A particularly important development is the technology to measure the changes in sea level and what’s happening to glaciers and ice sheets, and this normally involves minute changes in gravity readings, and so in volume. Other satellites pick up messages from 3,000 free-floating, and sinking and rising, Argo floats that allow changes in temperature and salinity to be measured accurately.

So it’s a safe bet that climate scientists know what’s really happening.