Tag Archives: the-scientist

As your boiler breaks down, your pipes freeze, your car won’t start, your Ocado delivery fails to arrive, your train is cancelled, your neck is broken after slipping on black ice and you lie in an emergency ward waiting for a doctor to turn up only to learn that they’re all off today because of the weather, you might be forgiven for thinking that all this has something to do with global cooling, changes in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and the decline in sunspot activity perhaps auguring a new Maunder minimum. But you couldn’t be more wrong. “It’s all actually a sign that man made global warming is very much a live issue and that there’s more of it happening than ever,” says a top scientist, who holds the British record for securing grant-funding for global warming research projects so he must know what he’s talking about. “Look at the Met office,” the scientist goes on. “They’ve just told us that 2010 is the hottest year since records began in 1850 and even though the stupid Central England Temperature record tells us something quite different and even though the year hasn’t actually finished yet they must know what they’re talking about and they definitely can’t have fiddled the data because the Met office is part of the government and they wouldn’t lie or get things wrong which is why that barbecue summer was such a scorcher.” The big problem is, the scientist said, is that the public are really stupid. They think just because Dr David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit said in the Independent in 2000 that soon there’d be no snow because of global warming, when what he actually meant was that soon there’d be lots of snow and that this would be “proof” of global warming. The interviewer just missed out the word “proof” that’s all because journalists are lazy that way. Then the scientist issued a cut-out-and-keep guide of Signs That Show Man Made Global Warming Is Definitely Still Happening And That Cancun Won’t Be An Almighty Flop. 1. Warm weather 2. Cold weather 3. In-between weather. 4. Dark skies at night 5. Light skies in the morning 6. An unpleasant moist/damp/wet sensation when it rains 7. Ice appearing when the temperature drops below zero 8. Clouds rolling across sky in all sorts of funny shapes, some days like cotton wool, other days in streaks, and on some days not there at all. 9. Ursine subarboreal toilet activity 10. Strong new evidence of ultramontane sympathies at the Vatican added by: rodstradamus