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Nigel Lawson, the former cabinet minister who’s popularly believed to be half-responsible for Nigella Lawson’s tits, is once again courting controversy.

His most recent book An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, he claims to be losing no sleep over such issues as the greenhouse effect, peak oil production, rising sea-levels or the alarming size of his more-famous daughter’s arse. He thinks that they’re all, as it were, full of shit.

The Times published an interview with the man, prompting some to condemn the newspaper for giving credence to such foul, evil statements as these from the ex-Chancellor. Climate change is, in the words of the snivelling peacenik who tried to conduct the interview, ‘generally accepted as a pressing reality’.

Never mind that no unproven scientific theory has been given such whole-hearted support by the general public since, well, eugenics (they stopped offering degrees in that fairly quickly.) If it’s generally accepted, then that’s conclusive enough for me.

I can’t think of a better empirical test of a former energy minister’s opinions than someone else pointing out that there’s a guy he met who spoke to a dude who sits on the beach with a tape-measure, trying to figure out why sometimes the sea-level is a bit higher, and sometimes it’s a bit lower.

As with all the best legends, nobody you speak to has any evidence that mankind has twenty years to live – but they all know a guy who was actually fuckin’ there man, dig it?

It’s the sheer grit and determination of those trying to save the planet that proves that they’re right.

And, anyway, for every dude sitting on the beach with a tape-measure who says we’re all going to drown, there’s another dude sitting in Antarctica with a tape-measure saying that we won’t.

The ice on the Antarctic is actually getting thicker. And what has the average sea level rise been over the last 40 years? Less than two sodding millimeters.

There is similar disagreement between the cousins of those with the tape-measures.

People in towns who’ve dedicated their lives to reading a thermometer say it’s getting warmer because the numbers keep going up.

Those who aren’t in towns but have nevertheless managed to scrounge a thermometer say that the numbers are staying the same, that the numbers have stayed the same since their great grandfather started looking at thermometers, and that they’re very, very bored indeed, and can they come down now please?

But whatever the facts surrounding these new weather opportunities that will or will not be made available to us, it does seem a shame that an individual can be deemed daft as a brush and a danger to society for saying that he is, by and large, not kept awake at night by things over which he has no control.

Now, if he’s kept awake by the so-called debate about streaky vs back bacon, I for one can respect the man and his priorities. Unless of course he opts for back bacon, in which case he’s potty and they should take the front of his brain out through his nose.