In a major report last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gave a grave assessment of how man-made global warming was rapidly destroying the Arctic ice cap.

Steadily increasing temperatures had made the pack ice contract by up to 12 per cent between 1979 and 2012, leading to rising sea levels which threatened to swamp coastal regions – not to mention endangering stranded polar bears.

By the middle of the century ‘a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean’ was likely for a large part of the year, the report predicted.

The more climatologists juggle their theories to fit the inconvenient truths, the more the public will question whether these prophesies of global doom are based on genuine science, or guesswork

How interesting then, that the latest analysis of 88million measurements from the European Space Agency’s Cryosat satellite show the northern ice-cap INCREASED by a staggering 41 per cent in 2013 and, despite a modest shortage last year, is bigger than at any time for years.

Of course, the climatologists will come up with explanations – as they did for the fact that global temperatures have barely changed since the year 2000.

They’ll say 2013 was a freak year, that in spite of temporary fluctuations long-term trends remain the same, that cooling ‘episodes’ are as much a feature of climate change as warming and so on.

But the more they juggle their theories to fit the inconvenient truths, the more the public will question whether these prophesies of global doom are based on genuine science, or guesswork.

And they will rightly wonder whether solemnly committing to climate change targets while saddling ordinary people with a raft of spurious green taxes serves any real purpose – other than being an expensive exercise in gesture politics.

The real aid problem

The list of international development projects funded by British aid grows more bizarre – an anti-litter drive in Jordan, a water park in Morocco, a study of coconuts in the Pacific, measuring the carbon footprint of the Dakar rally in Senegal.

Only last month, the Foreign Office revealed it had dished out £300million on schemes including a TV game show in Ethiopia, free productions of Shakespeare in Haiti and fish farming in Madagascar.

Nicknamed 'Sir Cover-Up' for his role in blocking the Chilcot inquiry, Sir Jeremy Heywood is no friend of open government

So Chancellor George Osborne is quite right to launch a root-and-branch review of aid spending to cut waste and ensure funds are directed to the right places.

But unfortunately he will not address the blindingly obvious central problem. Because Britain is now bound by law to lavish a colossal £12billion a year – 0.7 per cent of national income – on foreign aid, the Department for International Development simply can’t find enough worthy projects to spend it on.

With so many areas of British life crying out for cash – cancer drugs, elderly care, affordable housing – isn’t this profligacy just grotesque?

Curbing democracy

Any doubts that the ‘review’ into the workings of the Freedom of Information Act is designed to crush the people’s right to know how they are governed vanished yesterday, when it became clear that the man behind it is none other than Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood.

Nicknamed ‘Sir Cover-Up’ for his role in blocking the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War from seeing vital communications between Tony Blair and George Bush, Sir Jeremy is no friend of open government.

Top civil servants often prefer to have power without accountability, and see the FoI Act – which exposes waste and incompetence in the murky corridors of Whitehall – as a dangerous threat.