Tag: humour

Anthropogenic climate change is real: pithy post-punk anthem for the Trump generation

A catchy little number, but certainly NSFW when played loud or if singing along in public…

In which a “protest post-punk band” from Oakland, California (since punk happened in the late 70s, a pedant would point out that everything since has been post-punk) called You Can’t Make This Shit Up Amerika expresses a certain pithy frustration with the views of their President. I’d have to say it’s hard to disagree. It would be only fitting if this became the Christmas number one…

How to become a climate change denier (in 4 easy steps)

Cakeburgerdenial

Cartoon drawn by Joshua Cakeburger Drummond as a contribution to the High Water Project, and rooted in bitter experience, I suspect…

Denial Tango 2014

Here’s a new recording by Aussie group Men With Day Jobs of their climate classic The Denial Tango, accompanied by a rather striking video. Men With Day Jobs are Rod Crundwell, Stafford Sanders and Kim Constable (from left to right in the pix in the video) and their new album “Deep in Denial” is due for release early next year.

I’d go with Tony Abbott, It’s just a load of crap

This round-the-world disaster is an evil greedy trap

‘Cause everybody knows the world is flat

I posted the full lyrics back in 2011…

Prat watch #10: the ice age is here!

Forget all that nonsense about “no warming for 16 years”, to be a real sceptic these days you have to insist that the climate’s currently cooling. But why stop there? To show your real commitment to the coolist cause, you have to go BM (Beyond Monckton) and insist that the next ice age is descending on us. And that’s exactly what Britain’s nuttiest weather forecaster, Piers Corbyn, is proclaiming. Britain’s had a bit of snow and a cold start to March, so Piers jumps on his soapbox and cries “The new Mini Ice Age is upon us!”

CorbynIceAge2013

Here’s Piers:

“This is further evidence of the inevitable plunge from now into the new Mini Ice Age we warned of some years ago — The CO2 story is over. It has been pointing the world in the wrong direction for too long. The serious implications of the developing MIA to agriculture and the world economy through the next 25 to 35 years must be addressed.”

● The CO2 story is over
● World cooling is now ‘locked-in’
● Average solar activity way down
● Jet stream often way south
● Jet Stream develops wild waves giving very extreme weather events – hail, thunder, floods etc.

“Locked in”, eh? I rather suspect that the next El Niño will make Mr Corbyn look rather stupid in all but his own eyes. He won’t notice though, because he’ll be busy reinterpreting history (he’s already reinvented solar physics) in the same way as his nearest NZ counterpart, weather astrologer Ken Ring. In the meantime, it’ll be interesting to see who amongst the usual suspects will be happy to support Corbyn’s frothing. Is no idea too wacky for the coolists?

The last climate denier in New Zealand

My entry for the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Manhire Prize for science writing (in the fiction category), made the shortlist but didn’t win. My congratulations to Brian Langham for his story Fourteen [pdf] (and to Renee Liang for her winning non-fiction piece — Epigenetics: navigating our inner seas [pdf]). For the sake of posterity, here’s my little tear-jerker. Some might do well to remember that it is intended as satire.

The last climate denier in New Zealand slapped his battered old panama hat on to his balding head, adjusted the bulky wrap-around sunglasses over his bifocals and stepped out into the hot morning air. He groaned. His car, the last petrol V6 in the city — a classic, his wingèd American chariot made stationary by lack of fuel — slouched under a coat of red dust. Again. Some urchin child of an Aussie refugee had written “wash me, fossil fool” on the back. The letters were ill-formed and childlike. You could say the same for the parents, he thought. Could there be any soil left in Australia, now that so much of it was blowing over the Tasman to coat the city? Come to that, were there any Australians left in Australia? It didn’t seem like it. The rich ones had bribed their way in, bought big properties well inland and built mansions. The poor were huddling in their masses in the abandoned beachfront baches, camping out on the top floors when the spring tides lapped around the gardens, trooping inland with tents when storms brought waves washing through the eroding dunes to pound at their doors.

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