One of the things that I’ve noticed about the climate debate is that, whereas sceptics tend to have a sense of humour – and particularly an appreciation of the absurd and the ridiculous – that is something which is much harder to find among warmists. The following trenchant little diatribe was published in the Sunday Times in November 2009, just before Climategate and the Copenhagen climate summit fiasco hit the headlines. I apologise to any sensitive dog-lovers who stumble across this post:
As someone who yearns to live a green, ethical life, I wish these climate change experts would agree u
pon a common strategy. Last week we were told to help the environment by eating dogs, but I scarcely had time to saute a spaniel before Lord Stem announced that we should give up meat altogether.
That’s all very well- but I have three dalmatians and a golden retriever in the freezer, so what am I meant to do? I’m not even sure what bin to put them in. They’ll probably end up as landfill, and that’s not going to help anyone, is it? Lord Stem thinks meat is bad because the animals we eat tend to be extremely flatulent. Well, sure, but has he been out for a curry with John Prescott? One rogan josh and that’s both icecaps gone. The cows, by comparison, are nowt.
Meanwhile, the climate-change lobby has been urged to be a little less sensationalist (“Eat dogs or all the polar bears will die!”) in its apocalyptic warnings, so as to get the message across a little better. And what is the message? Another report, from last week: global temperatures have been dropping since 1998 and are expected to do so fall quite a bit yet. Hold the fricassee of poodle for a while, then, and hold the mung-bean risotto.
Sadly, the original is now behind Rupert Murdoch’s pay wall.
There’s certainly a rich vein of unintentional humour running right through the climate debate. The following is one of my favourite episodes (source here on YouTube), where TV mogul Ted Turner explains why tackling climate change is so vitally important:
And there you have it, in a nutshell. Less people means less stuff, no global warming – and fewer cannibals: QED. Dogs everywhere might feel safer, too.
Ted Turner has 5 children.
Maybe if he kept his hands to himself there’d be more room for the poor polar bears.
Brute: “Ted Turner has 5 children.” As has David Suzuki, while Al Gore is a trailing a little, with only 4. But that’s still perfectly okay, because I’m certain these were all special low-carbon kids, and very different to the usual kind.
Back on the subject of food, the nutrition solution for a planet in the throes of man-made global barbecuing is evidently not beef, not dogs or even other humans – it’s bugs! As this very helpful website tells us:
So there you have it. I’m sure it can only be a matter of time before Dr Pachauri, Al Gore, Prince Charles and all the others enthusiastically switch to a diet of mealworms and Argentine cockroaches, for the sake of the planet, and then we’ll know the situation is serious.