The recent increase in comments by those who deny that climate change has anything to do with human activity is to be expected. It’s partly explained by the current international discussions at Copenhagen and, in the UK, the efforts of one broadsheet newspaper that is committed to the contrary view and uses non-scientific columnists to push the argument that it’s all a scam. The sceptics have also taken heart from a few hacked e-mails they interpret to suggest that scientists have been fiddling the figures, but the indisputable physics supports the internationally-accepted view of current climate change as predominantly influenced by man.

This view is supported if we actually look at what’s happening in the world outside university science departments and newspaper offices – the facts are undeniable.

This decade has been warmer, on average, than any other in the last 150 years, and every continent has registered the highest-ever recorded temperatures during this period.

These hotter conditions should make wild fires more likely and the result is clear with a six-fold increase in recent years as California, France, Greece, Turkey and Australia can testify.

Climate change models predict that rainfall will also change – there will be more of it, and it will decrease in the sub tropics and increase in higher latitudes – and that is exactly what’s happening.

Such extreme changes are already seen in the decade-long droughts in Australia, the South West United States and in East Africa, while elsewhere flooding is now much more common.

This isn’t surprising with such staggering rainfall totals as 120 inches in two days in Taiwan, 40 inches in a day in Mumbai and recently the 13 inches in 24 hours in Cumbria.

As there has been no recent extra energy output from the sun to cause these climate changes, the only explanation is that gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide block some solar energy from escaping.

It just so happens that these extra gases are mostly the result of human activity, and they are still increasing.