AN irony of climate change is the only way of dealing with excessive heat, rising to around 50 degrees Celsius, is by using air conditioning which consumes enormous amounts of electricity, with much of it currently producing carbon dioxide so just making the problem even worse.

Exceptional cold is much less of a problem, as the answer is layers of thermal clothing, heaps of bed clothes, huddling over a fire, and burning wood which only returns the CO2 to the atmosphere that it removed recently as it grew. It’s certainly not as damaging to the climate as fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas, from millions of years ago.

As we nestle in mid latitude islands off the coast of a massive continent we’re unlikely to see such extremes of heat. It’s even possible that changes to the circulation of the warm currents in the North Atlantic may make us colder, though also windier and wetter.

However the CO2 that we produce with our cars, overseas holidays and heat leaking houses will add to the global levels and thoughtful folk should be aware of what they are helping to do to others, even if they are not suffering too much themselves.

Indeed many record high temperature records, worldwide, have been set in the last three years, the warmest globally since records began. For comparison Bradford’s hottest was in 1990, with just over 32C (90F).

How about Ahvaz (Iran) 54C (129F), Turbat (Pakistan) 53C, Palm Springs 50C, Thermal (!) California 49C, Phoenix 48C, (all USA), Montoro (Spain) 47C, Sydney 45C and Shanghai 41C.

There’s a serous health risk when our normal body temperature is over 37C, and we need to remember that heat causes more deaths than all the floods, tornadoes, earthquakes and freezing weather put together.

The answer is remarkably clear – reduce your CO2 output – starting to-day.