For the modest fee of £5,000 (about the same as the annual state pension), part-time employee of the Telegraph Media Group Ltd, Boris Johnson (aka part-time London Mayor) is having a pop at the warmists. 

"I hope I don't need to tell you that we have not experienced a Mediterranean climate – not since they started to tell us to expect it, "he burbles. And at roughly £5 a word, that earns him a cool £130. 

He then gets nearly £200 for complaining that: "we have had some pretty long and miserable winters – including the last one, in which I saw snow settle in London on four separate occasions – and our summer is at risk of becoming a bit of a farce". 

As he develops this lucrative rant, it is clear that our Boris is not impressed with the warmists, and thus does he conclude by imagining, for another £100 or so, "a class action: aggrieved English pool-owners against the global warming prophets and the erroneous meteorologists who have, frankly, been taking the piscine". 

But hey! Isn't this exactly the same Boris was in August 2008 was warning that "floods, heatwaves and drought could cause a virtual collapse of the capital", unless action was taken to address climate change? Now, over a million quid better off from his generous newspaper employer, he has a change of heart. 

Indelicate though the term might be, I think the word "tosser" must have been invented for people such as Boris.