Boris Johnson has slammed scientists who predicted that climate change would cause long hot summers in Britain, saying their mistaken forecast is "outrageous" and that he can imagine a world where litigation is taken by "aggrieved English pool-owners against the global warming prophets."
In a characteristically florid rant, Boris Johnson's column for the Telegraph begins with a barely-disguised dig at Heathrow's traffic as his plane is forced to circle the busy airport and "spew thousands of tons of CO2 into the upper air."
Looking down whilst waiting to land, he reflects on the curiously large numbers of swimming pools in English gardens. He sympathises with the plight of the pool-owners, arguing their installation was perfectly understandable in the wake of the "long roasting summers" forecast by meteorologists.
He writes: "For more than 20 years now, we have been told that this country was going to get hotter and hotter and hotter, and that global warming was going to change our climate in a fundamental way.
"That’s what they said: the BBC, and all the respectable meteorologists – and I reckon there were tens of thousands of people who took these prophecies entirely seriously.
"I hope I don’t need to tell you that we have not experienced a Mediterranean climate... On the contrary, we have had some pretty long and miserable winters.. and our summer is at risk of becoming a bit of a farce."
Boris Johnson rants about the miserable weather Britain is enduring
After leading scientists and meteorologists gathered at the Met Office last week to discuss the UK's unusual weather patterns in recent years, Johnson rages at their prediction that the next decade looks likely to bring wet soggy summers.
Met Office scientists predicted that the natural warming of the Atlantic jet stream coupled with higher levels of greenhouse gases means that summers will be wet for a decade.
Blustering at the weather with altogether British bombast, Boris labels their prediction "outrageous" adding: "I am generally against the compensation culture, but in my mind’s eye I see a class action: aggrieved English pool-owners against the global warming prophets and the erroneous meteorologists who have, frankly, been taking the piscine."
The Mayor of London appears to have missed Sunday's editorial in the Guardian, which also considers the Met Office meeting last week.
However the piece argues that while weather observes long term trends, and that maritime climate's are often chaotic.
"Some things, however, remain clear: the evidence Britain is a warmer place than it used to be. The United Kingdom is on average about 1C warmer now than it was in 1970."