Record temperatures in America, with cities like Oklahoma, recently having experienced 49°C, floods, draught, storms and snow in Johannesburg and yet we all seem to think, or at least a lot of people do, that we are not really experiencing climate change. That is pretty much almost the official policy, for example, for the Republican Party in America, that regard most scientists who allege that there is climate change as being whackos who are all exaggerating the situation.

One cannot help but feel, just having a look at Johannesburg, that snow which used to be a once in 20 or 30 year occurrence, is suddenly becoming far more common – we just had it the other day at our offices, as the picture alongside illustrates and yet it was only 4 or 5 years ago that I got up in the middle of the night in my then house, and made a video of the snow falling then. A once every 20 or 30 year occurrence suddenly seems to be happening every 3 or 4 years, and rather than being an isolated event, is beginning to look like it is becoming more of a pattern – maybe in 10 or 15 years’ time it will snow a little bit in Johannesburg every winter? Temperature extremes are becoming more common, and it is quite clear that the one thing human beings still have no way of controlling, and are unlikely to be able to, is the weather.