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I came across an old (2005) article by Jeremy Clarkson on global warming, climate change and general thoughts on the weather. Famously cantankerous, contrary and controversial often amusing, and although it seems he sometimes writes deliberately to shock, he does actually make some quite good points. Let loose on the weather and the “earnest-faced young men (who) want us to have carbon credit cards and nut-fuelled boilers” he is in particularly fine form:

They want radical change to combat something over which we might have no control. You see, none of the recent weird weather events is weird. There was a flood in Boscastle 400 years ago. Texas had a white Christmas in 1922. And last year the average global temperatures were only as high as those in 1649, which was long before the invention of the Yorkshire Electricity Board, the Airbus A320 and the Ford Fiesta.

Man's total contribution to global carbon dioxide emissions is just 3 percent, which might be enough to kill the world. But it might not. Nobody knows. And it seems rather silly to spend billions developing cauliflower-powered cars when they might not make any difference, and half the world is starving.

It’s difficult to argue with the fact that the weather in history has always been cyclical, and also that we can not be quite as sure of impending doom as some scientists seem to think we are. As recently as the 1970s, (which is recent by any scale, but by the scale of climate as history it might as well be 30 seconds ago), climate scientist were in tizz because the world was approaching a catastrophic freezing point.

Fair points aside, Clarkson comes into his own when he does begin to deliberately shock:

Of course, there is no doubt that the world is warming up, but let's just stop and think for a moment what the consequences might be. Switzerland loses it's skiing resorts? The beach in Miami is washed away? North Carolina get's knocked over by a hurricane? Anything bothering you yet?

We keep being told that in just 20 years there will be no snow in the Atlas Mountains, but honestly: who cares? And so what if the sea level rises by five inches? I can appreciate that this would be a nuisance if you were Dutch. But you're not, so relax.

….. In fact, in Britain more ferocious and turbulent weather would be a good thing because it was 57°F and drizzling yesterday, and it'll be 57°F and drizzling tomorrow. And yet, despite the sameness, we are the only people on earth who use the prevailing conditions as an icebreaker at parties….

…. Last week, every news channel in Britain cut live every 15 minutes to some dizzy bird in wellies, standing in a puddle, saying the wind was very strong and the sea was very rough. No other nation would do that - not just two weeks after the definition of a rough sea had been rewritten by that tsunami.

An Englishman's home is not his castle. An Englishman's home is, as Bill Bryson once pointed out, a large, grey, Tupperware box. A constant, year-round sea of endless misty greyness. So I would therefore welcome some proper storms and heatwaves and swarms of locusts sweeping down from the heavens every afternoon.

Imagine the joy, when conversations begin to flag, of being able to substitute 'it's turned out nice' for 'I was sucked into space by a tornado this morning'.

And imagine being told on the weather forecast that a glacier had buried Birmingham. Big British weather. Bring it on.

Fair point, well made.