James Lovelock, environmentalist and award winning NASA scientist, insists that unless we drastically reduce our carbon emissions and control population we will end up with a hot world, where billions will starve and whole ecosystems collapse.

'Compare the Earth with an iced drink,' he says. 'The drink stays cold until the last of the ice melts ...a great deal of the heat of global heating has gone into warming that huge lump of water, the ocean, and into melting ice.' This could help to explain why temperatures have not yet risen. The danger is that they will rise rapidly once the ice disappears, causing the Earth to flip into a permanently hotter state.

There is some consolation that those of us lucky enough to live in the British Isles, Siberia, Chile, Canada or New Zealand may survive. But how will these countries cope with the influx of climate refugees? Prepare for the fight to get aboard Lifeboat UK…

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