Playing with fire: We are not just breaking heat records, we are smashing them

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The frequency and intensity of recent wildfires, heatwaves, biblical rain and floods would be virtually impossible without the global heating caused by our burning of fossil fuels, and still carbon emissions continue to rise. Yet as morbidly gripping as scenes of fires in Greece and floods in eastern Canada are, we should be even more alarmed by some of the less dramatically visual symptoms of climate breakdown that we are experiencing this year: the unforeseen heatwaves in the ocean, a dramatic step change in the loss of Antarctic sea ice, and global temperature records set, not by small margins but by huge jumps. The remaining scientific uncertainty as far as climate science goes lies in the concepts of cascading tipping points; the idea that melting ice, wildfires, and methane escaping from the permafrost could trigger further uncontrollable warming with devastating implications for us all. To give just two examples, Grant Shapps must know it is untrue to say that failure to exploit new oil and gas in the North Sea will lead to surging energy prices and when Michael Gove said he had looked at the evidence for the Cumbria Coal mine, to me it seemed clear that he had favoured evidence funded by the coal mining company over much more rigorous, robust and independent counter-evidence provided by top level experts in their fields.