Whenever we had bean salad, my Dad would always ask “What’s that?” When told what it was, he would say “Don’t tell me what it’s been, tell me what it is now!” That’s a Dad joke. The defining properties of a Dad joke are that it is not funny and that Dad keeps repeating it. In their ongoing war on science The Australian is now committing war crimes by deploying Dad jokes (which I recall were banned by the Geneva Convention in 1949).
Imre Salusinszky, who declared global warming to be dead in January of last year has repeated the same unfunny joke this January:
Last year, other parts of the globe followed suit. According to the World Meteorological Organisation: “The most significant area of below-normal temperatures in 2011 was in northern and central Australia, where temperatures were up to 1C below average in places . . . Other regions to experience below-normal temperatures in 2011 included the western United States and southwestern Canada, and parts of east Asia.”
Or, to quote from the WMO’s immediately preceding paragraph
Surface air temperatures were above the long-term average3 in 2011 over most land areas of the world. The largest departures from average were over Russia, especially in northern Russia where January-October temperatures were about 4°C above average in places. The spring was especially warm in this region with some stations more than 9°C above average for the season, whilst European Russia had another hot summer (the third-hottest on record in Moscow), although not as extreme as that of 2010. The hot summer conditions extended into nearby countries, with Helsinki (Finland) having its hottest summer in nearly 200 years of data, and Armenia setting an all-time national record (43.7°C). January-October 2011 was also 1°C or more above average over large parts of Europe, southwest Asia and northern and central Africa, as well as the southern United States and northern Mexico, most of eastern Canada (especially the northeast), and Greenland. The Central American region is on course to have its hottest year in at least 140 years, while Spain has also had its hottest January-October period on record and several other western European countries approached records. The above-average temperatures in most northern polar regions were associated with the second-lowest Arctic sea ice minimum on record.
Is that glass 96% empty or 4% full? Compare the WMO
At present, 2011′s nominal value ranks as the equal 10th highest on record, and the 13 warmest years have all occurred in the 15 years between 1997 and 2011.
with Salusinszky’s version:
Last year was the sixth coldest since 1997, which shows the catastrophic scenarios of recent times are no longer looming over us.
Salusinszky, I kid you not, used to be a professor of English. I don’t know if his research area was Dad jokes.