THE emissions fraud at Volkswagen is not just an almighty financial scandal. There are costs to health. As everybody knows, the tampering with Volkswagen’s software to falsify its emissions concerns diesel fuel. The science writer Matt Ridley estimates that as many as 5000 die in Britain every year as a result of inhaling the particulates in diesel emissions. So why are we using such a dangerous substance to fuel our cars? Because for years the Brussels commissars have been obsessed with the fantasy of global warming and so they are determined to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.

In 1997, governments of the EU signed the Kyoto Protocol which committed them to reducing massively the amount of CO2 produced. In 1998, Britain signed an agreement with car manufacturers to cut CO2 emissions by 25 per cent over ten years. The makers of diesel engines were delighted. As Ridley points out: “As subjects of Brussels, we in Britain obediently lowered tax on diesel cars, despite knowing that they produce four times as much nitrogen oxides as petrol engines and twenty times as many particulates – both bad for human lungs.”

All because of their superstitious belief in global warming. But their own figures show there has been no warming for the last eighteen years. The predicted droughts, floods and storms did not increase in either frequency or severity. Moreover, records over the millennia show that climate is constantly changing.

In recent history, there have occurred much bigger climate changes than anything we see now. Parts of the 18th century were much colder than today. Dickens speaks of times when the Thames froze over for weeks on end. In the 9th century, there were vines growing in Greenland. Are we to suppose that the warmth which produced these vines was owing to Vikings driving around in four-by-fours? Greenland is so called because a thousand years ago it was fertile. Since then we have had global cooling. How do you think Hannibal got his elephants over the Alps – with skis and crampons? No, because in his day there was little snow or ice in southern Europe.

Global warming is reckoned to be caused by two gases: methane and carbon dioxide. The fact is that the amount of methane in the atmosphere has actually reduced in recent years and levels of carbon dioxide have remained the same. Carbon dioxide is a gas necessary to sustain life and most of it comes from plants and human exhalations. Warming is good for us: there are far more deaths from cold than from heat and, given the chance, people migrate to warm countries.

Why is there this obsession with global warming? Because it’s a nice little earner for the university laboratories. Governments have been persuaded by the Green lobby that global warming is happening and so they are chucking money at research departments to tell them what they want to know. After the fall of Communism, the Left has adopted pretended care for the environment as a stick with which to beat big business. Global warming is happening, they say, and it’s all the fault of the nasty capitalists. Green is the new Red. Strange how people who say they care for the environment deface it with useless wind farms.

The Government and the BBC will not even discuss climate change. Those who dispute it are shamefully called “deniers” – which is meant to compare them with Holocaust deniers. The former Climate Change Secretary, Ed Davey, says sceptics are dishonest and “wilfully ignorant,” and Prince Charles calls them “headless chickens.”

More science please and end the fraud.