“The polar bears will adapt, but will we?” asked British National Party Councillor Michael Simpkins of the latest monthly meeting of the Chippenham and North Wiltshire Group in Melksham last night.

Cllr Simpkins, who is also the BNP’s prospective parliamentary candidate for the new Chippenham constituency, then went on to pose a number of questions about the whole “climate change” story to which the public want answers.

“If the burning of fossil fuels was really making the polar ice caps recede, why then, are we trying so hard to find ways of getting it out from underneath these so-called shrinking arctic ice floes,” he said.

“One would have thought that if it was doing so much harm to the planet, we would leave it where it was.”

“If sea levels are going to rise, then are they not part of the natural warming and cooling cycle of this planet?” he asked. “How do we know they are the result of man-made CO² emissions?”

Cllr Simpkins said the real question was not “how we can stop natural changes from taking place, but how we will adapt when it happens.

“When the polar bears have adapted to their new surroundings, will mankind end up like King Canute, up to our waists in sea water demanding that the sea retreats, while we know full well that it will not?” he said.