Information
Satire (Possibly)
It came as a bolt from the blue. An email arrived from a crazy lady. I’d occasionally scribbled some words for a website catering to fellow right-wing nut-jobs and had submitted a piece for the editor’s consideration vis-à-vis publication.
The email from said Devil-ess arrived a couple of hours afterwards. You won’t believe what it contained. She requested, nay, demanded: evidence, to substantiate claims made in my wittering screed, she stating rather severely that my (I’m very sure, of this I am certain) absolutely wonderful piece would no longer be considered for publication unless facts were forthcoming. I was, as you can well imagine, flabbergasted by the mad-woman’s affront, her high-handed nit-pikkery.
Evidence! Evidence [sigh]. Crikey. What the sheesh is evidence? And, who needs it? Not our ‘respectable’ daily news press, that’s for sure. Nevertheless, I acquiesced to the tyrant, responding with the considerable volume of 1,300 bytes of sober non-binary truth, signing it off; ‘Ha. So there!’ (Or, possibly; not).
By way of contrast, I found myself in the same sticky conundrum as our right-wing nut-job inter-web page editor (who shall remain un-named) a couple of weeks ago. Wellington’s daily rag announced on January 10th, 2020 in a front-page headline ‘Climate change takes hold’ that the temperature of 30.3c reached on January 29th, 2019 was ‘the highest temperature in Wellington since records began.” [Cue: a sharp intake of breath].
This revelatory record announcement actually annoyed me. Knowing that particular day’s temperature number was not, in fact, a record at all irritated me all over, to the point of correspondence, into which I foolishly enjoined, asking for (God help me) ‘evidence’ and challenging their ‘record’.
To their immense credit I received a reply from someone describing themselves as a ‘senior journalist’ from said rag, but honestly (you can trust me), it only missed a parrot to complete the hilarious farce. Such was the apologetic.
Beginning with ‘I have an answer’ [to my consternation over their quite obvious bullshittery] senior reporter stated that “since records began” means, as far as they are concerned “1927”, which is exactly not when records began; that particular part of verified meteorological history began sixty-three years before, in 1864…“He’s not dead, he’s just resting, probably pining for the fjords. Norwegian Blue’s do that”.
Continuing on, senior reporter conceded “1895”, “may have been hotter” but, Aha! “Presumably it was measured differently”. Well; perhaps it was. Perhaps the thermometer reading was scaled to the volume of the bucket of water our government meteorologist emptied over his head at the time of measurement. I wasn’t there, so can’t confirm that the good weatherman used the accepted temperature scale and not a calibrated clipping from ‘Shipping News’. Who knows, maybe our ‘senior reporter’ is right.
Next: maybe the 1895 temperature was measured “at a different site”. Entirely possible, I suppose. The temperature recorded for downtown Wellington may have actually, fraudulently, been conveyed from Sivaganga, Southern India, but conceding this possibility would render the entire local temperature record as seriously misbehaved and, therefore, inadmissible to terrifying modern reconstructions and computer-models. That simply wouldn’t do.
There’s more: senior reporter (seriously) suggests that maybe the 1895 measurement was made “with different equipment”. Oh, my giddy Aunt. Good grief. Mr Fahrenheit perfected his Mercury-thermometer in 1752, nevertheless; perhaps temperature measurements were recorded in Wellington, New Zealand 143 years later using a six-inch rule, maybe a sextant, let’s not rule out the possibility of the maximum shade-sweep length of an isoscelised triangulation of Brazilian bananas being used to gauge the temperature. For heaven’ sake, what a ridiculous defence to mount in support of an unverifiable, certifiably false, front-page full-frontal Fib.
‘This parrot is deceased. He is no more. He’s run off ‘is perch to meet ‘is maker. He is a Dead Parrot!’ [Customer bangs rigamortised parrot on counter-top. Parrot-seller looks downward, morosely].
The correspondence descended (or ascended), to some heights (or lows), depending on your viewpoint. But that, people; is the state of the ‘Climate Crisis’ reporting from science so settled it needs no real facts, only inventive alternative suggestions and, certainly, no debate will be entered into. And, just to keep the anonymous but ever-watchful editorial and readership pedants happy, should you closet any (completely sane) reason to distrust my mirthful memoranda:
That’s all, folks. Enjoy your global warming, brought to you by fact-free Stuff with no shame, with no embarrassment, and with no veracity whatsoever, at all.
Who would you rather trust with your facts?
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