Now here is something that will raise a few eyebrows…

Prince Charles believes that one of the causes of the conflict in Syria is – wait for it – climate change.

He says that drought and competition for increasingly scarcity resources have played a role in the refugee crisis, and that’s why hundreds of thousands of people have fled the area.

Let me quote the prince.

He said “there’s very good evidence indeed that one of the major reasons for this horror in Syria, funnily enough, is a drought that lasted for about five or six years, and so huge numbers of people had to leave their land.”

I'm not sure quite where he's going with this.

The conflict in Syria was triggered by a public uprising, a desire for democracy. Syria was doing quite nicely at the time, thank you very much. And Isis came about because, among other things, the power vacuum across the border in Iraq. 

The prince is giving a speech as part of the major climate summit in paris in six days time, and historically, he's had a bit of credibility on this subject. But this is a bit of a bolter.

Many would argue that western foreign policy, including British foreign policy, has had a far greater impact on the Middle East. The creation of states in the wake of wars, the caging of Palestinians for more than 60 years, the fractious relationship with Iran, the bush wars on Iraq and the hundreds of thousands of civilians who were killed in those conflicts – and corrupt regimes in the Arab world have failed their own people too, on a catastrophic scale.

Most would argue, I suspect, that those issues have contributed to the position we find ourselves in today, and the rampant Isis ideology is not, as the prince suggests, the result of climate change and a scarcity of resources. Sure, poverty helps fuel conflicts for sure. The poor, the disenfranchised, the dispossessed, some will become radicalised, some gravitate towards extremism, but is climate change the root cause of the conflict in Syria? No. It's not. 

Increasingly, as the prince gets older, he seems to be developing something of a disconnect – unlike his mother, the Queen, he struggles to keep up with the relevant issues of the day. Yes, climate change is a major issue affecting us all, but is it responsible for the Syrian conflict? No. It's not. That’s codswallop.

In Paris next week, Charles will give the keynote speech at the opening of the UN conference on climate change. Lets see how he's received.

He says the pentagon is only now beginning to cotton on to the links between climate change, conflict and terrorism, so if you address climate change, will that bring peace to the Middle East?

Has the prince stumbled across the answer to the burning question of our time?