As usual, supported by an array of gimmicky graphics, irrelevant anecdotes and film clips from all over the world, what these presenters omitted to say was even more important than what they did. We began with a young lady mathematician explaining how we know that, since 1880, the world has unmistakably warmed. Although she cleverly skated round the increasingly controversial methods by which computers have been used to “adjust”, “infill” or “homogenise” temperature data, few people would disagree with her conclusion that the world has indeed warmed, by around 0.85 degrees. What she left out was that there has been nothing unprecedented about our recent warming. As the world has generally warmed since emerging from the Little Ice Age 200 years ago, two earlier warming phases from natural causes, between 1860 and 1880 and from 1910 to 1940, were just as great as that of the last 30 years – before CO2 levels rose as they have done recently.