This goes back to the time when the Met Office was headed by that fanatical evangelist for global warming, Sir John Houghton, the man who did more than anyone to set up the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, of course, no one has shared his enthusiasm more than the BBC, which for years has been one of the Met Office’s most fervent allies in propagandising for the cause. Last Monday this provoked incredulous laughter, when the Today programme’s Justin Webb speculated that one reason for the Met Office losing its contract might have been that it was so “vocal about climate change”, on which Mr Webb normally follows the BBC party line just as faithfully as any of his colleagues.