As Britain adjusted to lockdown in March last year, many were still dealing with the impact of devastating floods — made vivid with a photograph of a house in Ironbridge, Shropshire, under several metres of water, a ladder leading up to the skylight as a makeshift means of escape.
The floods were the result of the quick succession of storms Ciara and Dennis, after an exceptionally wet autumn. Elsewhere in 2020 there were apocalyptic wildfires in America, deadly monsoon flooding in China and what could be the hottest temperature ever reliably recorded — of 54.4C in Death Valley, California.
Climate change has caused close to a doubling of natural disasters in the past 20 years, according to a United Nations report, which berated world
