Thomas Hunter’s piece yesterday, Howard and Turnbull on climate change: 1896 and all that, was comprehensive, but omitted the dates of two informed and educated forecasts about the changing world around us:

1974: The US National Science Foundation predicts that declining world temperatures herald the beginning of “the next glacial age”.

1976: In the bestselling book, The Cooling: Has the Next Ice Age Already Begun?, Lowell Ponte writes, “As Earth cools, as sunlight diminishes, as the range of snow and the length of winter increases, the possibility of a snow blitz grows greater and greater… Ice and snow covers more area today than even a decade ago, and by some indications the cooling has only begun.”

You see, folks, it’s true. The end of the world is nigh. There’s always someone willing to prophesise it. Has been for years. Decades. Centuries. Millennia…