Peter Sherwood receives a not very merry Christmas call
Another call from my uncle Bill in outback Australia. I greeted him with merry Christmas. “Don’t merry Christmas me, mate. I’ve had a bad day,” was his reply. I mistakenly followed up with ‘tis the season to be jolly. Then he let rip:
This bloke down the pub says he’s a climate scientist. Like a weatherman on TV, I said. “No, that’s a meteorologist, one of many climate disciplines.” Before I could ask what a discipline is, he started on a rant. “The climate is changing fast and it’s getting hotter.” Well, I said, it’s always been hotter here, hotter than Brisbane anyway. “The cause is anthropogenic.” Anthrowhat? “Humans burning fossil fuels, oil and coal, trapping heat in the atmosphere.” So what? Heat rises. I learned that at school. “CO2 stays stuck and heats the land and oceans.”
If that wasn’t silly enough, he started on about animals farting! “They produce vast amounts of methane which is 28 times worse than CO2.” You’re kidding, right? “Sheep and cattle, making hundreds of thousands of tons of the stuff. Australia alone has 25 million cattle and 30 million sheep.” What had this idiot been drinking? “The warming of the planet is a dangerous exponential cycle.” What, say? “It means the hotter it gets, the hotter it gets. Glaciers are melting, causing sea levels to rise.”
I played along to humour him. “Worse, the permafrost is under threat of melting.” OK, so what’s a bit of melted frost? “Hey, 18 million square kilometres, two and a half times the size of Australia. Been frozen for 700,000 years. Do you know what’s under that?” Gold was the wrong answer. Then he got angr y. “Methane! Trillions of tons of it!” Come on mate, you just told me it comes from far ting sheep. He was getting impatient.
But Australia is clean, right? “Wrong. We’re delusional. We flog billions of tons of filthy coal to China and India, and duh! Air has no international borders; the pollution circulates.” He had a point, at least until his next crackpot statement. “Expect it to get wetter and drier.” This bloke’s a scientist?! Geez, I left school age 12 and even I know it can’t be wet and dry at the same time.
The clown persisted. “Huge atmospheric rivers are forming, dumping more rain in one place than it sees in many years.” Rivers in the bloody air. I should have stayed home. “It’s estimated one of these monsters could be 27 times bigger than Mrs Sippy.” Who the hell is that?! “Expect more floods and droughts.” There he goes again, wet and dry together.
“It will be extreme.” I reminded him we hadn’t seen rain here for a decade and that’s pretty extreme. He was getting irritated with me making him wrong all the time. Trying to cool him down, I asked if he were an optimist or a pessimist. “An optimist, but only because I’d otherwise be out of a job. Between you and me, I agree with the late, great theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking: ‘We will destroy ourselves through greed and ignorance.’” I told him I hope it’s not tonight. I’ve got a leg of farting Xmas lamb in the oven.