Flash floods in the UK and hurricanes in the US are being blamed on global warming. Spiked's Brendan O'Neill provides a useful reality check:

Dr Mark Saunders, a weather expert at University College London (UCL), says we need to cool down. 'I don't think the weather we have seen is particularly unusual, to be honest. Somewhere in the world you will always get extreme weather events - whether it's a storm, a flood, or a drought. There are always people being affected by extreme weather. There is no study to my knowledge which shows that more people are being affected now, or that more people will be affected by freak weather this year than in previous years.'

And what about the global warming allegations?

Saunders has little time for those who argue that today's extreme weather is caused by global warming - a claim which has been made, not only by green-minded columnists, but in news reports, in passing, as if it were established fact. 'Global warming is definitely a real thing. But I disagree with the claims that global warming is all going to be doom and gloom, and in particular that extreme weather events are going to become more common.' He points out that in 2002, 'severe floods were attributed to global warming; then in 2003 hot and dry summer weather, the opposite of 2002, was attributed to global warming; now torrential rain, the opposite of 2003, is attributed to global warming. It seems that any anomalous weather can be blamed on global warming'.

For Saunders, the extreme weather conditions of the past two weeks are, in many ways 'the norm'. 'I take the view that it's a record if you don't get a record somewhere with regards to the weather. Extreme weather, even record weather, is actually quite common.' What's happened over the past week is that different weather events have been linked together as evidence of something more sinister. 'We are treating weather systems that aren't particularly unusual as if they were highly unusual.'

O'Neill surmises that the "silly season," when not much is happening in the world beyond sport and weather, is probably combining with a culture increasingly afraid of any risk to result in such stories. This theory has a lot to commend it; after all, they don't have shark attacks in the UK.