More than 150 years ago, scientists discovered what they termed a “greenhouse effect”, demonstrating for the first time that water vapour and carbon dioxide trapped heat. Theoretical concerns were soon raised that we might, through the practice of burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon, have inadvertently been altering our climate since the start of the industrial revolution. In 1938 a British scientist published the first observational study suggesting that human carbon emissions were, indeed, heating the planet. By the late 1950s, the science about global warming was so well established that legendary Hollywood film maker Frank Capra was hired to make a documentary, The Unchained Goddess, intended to educate the public about what then seemed a relatively far-off threat. The film explained that the release by factories and vehicles of some six billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year – a paltry sum by today’s standards – was “unwittingly changing the world’s climate”. In the 1970s scientists working for the oil companies privately confirmed to their employers that their research showed continued fossil fuel burning would dangerously raise global temperatures. The oil companies kept the information tightly under wraps for decades. By 1982 an Exxon team had produced a chart predicting – though again confidentially – the increases in CO2 levels in the atmosphere over time. When the chart came to light in 2019, scientists realised that the team had, in fact, correctly plotted contemporary CO2 levels – at 415 parts per million – in what was then 37 years into the future. The Exxon team had also correctly predicted what effect this would have on global temperatures: a disastrous rise of just below 1ºC. In 1988 Nasa scientist James Hansen testified to the US Senate that he was 99 per cent certain global warming was already under way. His sounding of the alarm sparked for the first time headlines in mainstream media. In response, the fossil fuel industry began aggressively funding “independent” think-tanks to spread disinformation, and create doubt about the established science. In 2026, after more than a century of evidence-based warnings, all those predictions have been fully and catastrophically borne out – with heat records being toppled almost daily across western Europe. Drought and wild fires are the result. And this isn’t even the worst of it. Things are going to get a whole lot hotter, and lot scarier, in the years and decades ahead. Yet here we are, a century on, still hearing variations of the same arguments of denial promoted in the mainstream from the terminally dim-witted and serially dishonest. This is an extract from my latest article Thatcher warned in 1989 of a climate crisis. She did nothing. Nor will her successors. Find a link to the full article in the reply post below ⬇️