Tim Wilson, comedy stylings from the IPA, and a quick scientific question to see if you're up to writing on science for The Australian ...

(Above: ah the 'Gong, perfect one day, almost unique the next, and an infallible guide to the myth of climate change. Please study carefully as there is a scientific question at the end of this piece).

Extraordinary news. NASA could have saved themselves a heap of money, if only they'd taken the trouble to appreciate the deep profundity and wisdom of The Australian's anonymous editorialist.

Lordy lordy, there's the Sydney Morning Herald running with Polar ice melt raising sea levels rapidly: study, and a quick search will take you to NASA Finds Polar Ice Adding More To Rising Seas.

Oh there's handy graphs and nifty statistics and further links, and it all seems terribly scientific, but really if only they'd read the anonymous editorialist, they'd realise how the scientific method truly works:

In November 2009, we published pictures of Wollongong's North Beach taken 50 years apart, and which seemed to back the view that nature is "up and down, it comes and goes in cycles". (here)

There you go, a quick trip to the newspaper library, and it's all done and dusted. Murdoch science done dirt cheap ...

Hang on, as part of my new scientific method, I feel a poem coming on:

I saw the worst minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the sun king's streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

dumbheaded dipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the sea level dynamo in the midnight edition's photos of the 'Gong ...

Sorry Allen, but really, there's some mighty fine science in that little burst, right up there with Dorothea Mackellar.

Meanwhile, if you want more laughs, why not try Climate change cage match: Abbott debates Abbott. Well played Crikey, and fancy that, a little further along, actually providing a link to some actual science, cautious, hedged, but with a little more to offer than a couple of photos of the beach down at the 'Gong.

If you click on Academy of Science: are human activities causing climate change? you can even score a pdf of the report, and argue away to your heart's content about how things are going to get better and better when oil starts to run down, the population hits nine billion around the middle of the century, and the strain on resources really starts to crank up ...

Well I'll be gone, but sorry Martin Luther King, valiant defender of white conservative Americans, the mad are full of passionate intensity and it looks as if the centre is unlikely to hold, so I'm leaving my armaments for the young, because it's likely enough they'll come in handy (oh sorry, you think the planet's going to live in blissful peace for the next fifty years in ways it hasn't managed for two thousand? Go for it ...)

Well enough of that, and complacent Australians.

Let's head off to read another complacent Australian, and who better than Tim Wilson with his comedy stylings in Carbon Bob: Can he fix it?, with bonus baked beans farting joke well worthy of Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles ...

Actually the subbie's baked beans picture farting joke is the only thing going in Tim's epic satirical piece, but never mind, on we go ...

For reasons entirely obscure, though no doubt extremely clever sounding in his own mind, Wilson - a so-called director of climate change policy for the Institute of Public Affairs - delivers a day in the life of environmentally progressive Bob:

Bob’s a model citizen and busy man trying to save the world from the hundreds of big bad carbon polluters required by law to report their environmental vandalism to the government.

Amongst the bon mots to follow? It seems Bob is a Fairfax man who prefers baked beans to lentil stew:

He resents the fact that he needs to read The Daily Telegraph and The Australian (News Australia Holdings Pty Ltd: 128,100t CO2) to see how the enemies of the future are justifying the raping of the planet. But it’s all part of Bob’s job.

Yes, and it's part of Tim's job to show how cretinism and simpleton prejudices can go hand in hand. How about this one?

Bob doesn’t like tea so he sips from a Diet Coke (Coca Cola Amatil: 185,396t CO2) from his big leathery, Australian-made chair.

And the regularly hazed non-vegan staff member eats his cold cuts (Nippon Meat Packers: 113,257t CO2) from another local store (Aldi Stores: 172,987t CO2) in the dunce’s corner.

Doesn't like tea so he sips the chemicals in Diet Coke? And out of hours he's a schizophrenic?

And they haze non-vegans, rather than having a therapy session for them? I guess there's nothing like a vegan joke to get the circulation working in the morning. Do go on:

But being environmentally conscious Bob prefers a soy yoghurt (Parmalat Australia Ltd: 103,390t CO2) and tap water (Melbourne Water Corporation: 420,035t CO2).

Uh huh. So this schizophrenic Bob drinks diet coke and soy yoghurt. Who else does he and his followers favour?

Some dedicated volunteers drop by to discuss a forthcoming protest march against big polluters and order Domino’s vegetarian pizza (Competitive Foods Australia: 142,187t CO2) before then they realise there’s a 24 hour ‘restaurant’ serving fish burgers downstairs and go there (McDonald’s Australia: 131,862t CO2) as they leave Bob’s room for the night.

Uh huh, that'd be fundamentalist conservative Christian inspired Tom Monaghan's Domino's pizza, laden with a sickening amount of cheese to boot. While the vegan friendly volunteers sneak off to McDonald's.

Um Tim, you do know they drove the McDonald's out of Newtown, don't you? The nearest McDonald's now lurks on Parramatta Road in Stanmore so the bogans can drop by before heading way out west to escape the soy sippers ....

You see Tim, the idea of satire and irony is that you have some remote idea of the object deserving of satire. There's nothing like a corporate vegan hippie as a figure of fun but a diet coke swilling, McDonald's attending, Domino cheese loving corporate hippie is the most bizarre, surreal figment of the imagination we've seen in recent times ... so out there that only a surrealist up there with Salvador Dali could imagine they're being funny. But do go on:

Bob gives an inspiring address about the importance of cutting global carbon emissions to a standing ovation from the supportive university faculty members (University of Melbourne: 135,493t CO2) also in attendance.

He just hopes he was convincing while he wipes sweat from his brow (SCA Tissue Australia Pty Limited: 226,592t CO2) because the lights were bright and the room was hot because the air-conditioning was a little too low (Origin Energy: 1.926 million t CO2).

Uh huh. An academic and a tissue and an air-conditioning joke. But if the subbies can do a farting joke, surely you could have managed a crapper/toilet paper joke? The material's sucking big time Tim, you need a lift ...

The day ends where it started – in a hotel room where he boots up his notebook (IBM A/NZ Holdings: 99,927t CO2) and sends some emails, including one about a direct mail (Australian Postal Corporation: 309,999t CO2) to his supporters.

What, you mean Bob uses a tool of the satanic anti-Christ and not a Mac? Where's the iPad? Or couldn't you find the stats for it? How about a suicide joke about the deaths in the Chinese plant?

Okay, it's been a long and winding road, but can we get to the punch line? Oh no Tim not the McDonald's fish burgers and Domino's pizza, beloved of NRL footballers, we've done that one already. Punchline puh-lease:

Finally Bob’s alone and can go to bed after a productive day realising he’s part of the greenhouse gas solution, while the big bad polluters remain the problem.

Thank you, thank you, for ending it. What a merciful release, and now we know what passes for humour at the IPA. Or perhaps amongst accountants because Tim boasts that he's a "trained carbon accountant". Oh and he's also "director, intellectual property and free trade unit" for the IPA mob. They like to multi-task at the IPA while sipping on diet coke ...

Can we suggest you stick to the carbon accountancy Tim, there's a future in that. Or perhaps keep brooding over dodgy figures relating to intellectual property (another win for Crikey in Bernard Keane's Data download: lies, damned lies and piracy reports).

As for the humour, leave it to a sublime satirist like Mel Brooks. Or perhaps if you want to lift your nose out of the fart and the vegan jokes, Jon Stewart. Or Steven Colbert ...

Truth to tell, I've often wondered why Hollywood comedy has tended to be dominated by the liberal elites, and why conservative attempts at comedy - witness Joel Surnow's The 1/2 Hour News Hour - have proven to be spectacular duds (Conservative Comedy Show: So bad it's hilarious). And that's before we get on to the decline and fall of Dennis Miller, and the comedy stylings of Glenn Beck, now so bizarre that the conspiracy theories have completely swamped the rodeo clown routines.

But Tim's effort gives more than a hint.

You see Tim comedy relies on character, and strangely enough on credibility. You can set up a straw man, a progressive Bob, but if the man's a complete and unconvincing fabrication, full of contradictions dragged in to suit the statistics available, it simply isn't funny.

We're all flawed and aware of our innate contradictions, but a man who can jump from a lentil stew to baked beans in the morning is simply silly. And if he favours Fairfax over News Corp why on earth would he start his day with a Nestle coffee? Who on earth, let alone Elizabeth Farrelly, would ever willingly drink a Nestle coffee, unless being tortured by swinish North Koreans?

And Tim - may I call you Tim since we're now deep in our comedy workshop - you go on compounding the stupidities and inconsistencies of your straw man. You see Tim you have to know and love the victim before the satire begins to stick, and by the end of it all, progressive Bob begins to sound a lot like you. No doubt that's why progressive Bob prefers Bega cheese and arrowroot biscuits, the food of dull-minded, simpleton accountants ... who do their shopping at Coles in Woden ...

And if progressive Bob is going to bung on a do, why on would he select a Fosters sourced pinot gris, when there's a delicious pinot gris by Paracombe fresh from the Adelaide Hills, and who on earth would mingle such a delicious drop with frozen chicken bites from Baiada?

Bogan chicken with pinot gris? You see Tim, to do over snobbery, you need a little of the snob about you ...

Tim, Tim, it has to be said. 5.2 million t CO of bullshit from you has produced a mere .o1t CO2 of sense, but what's worse, it simply wasn't funny.

Which means I've wasted another hour or two of my life on comedy stylings from the IPA.

Why not go back to explaining how smoking is good for your health?

Satire or sense, alas! Can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel? —Alexander Pope on satire

And while we're at it, a few more words from Pope:

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,

And without sneering teach the rest to sneer;

Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,

Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;

Alike reserv'd to blame, or to commend,

A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend....

....There are, to whom my satire seems too bold;

Scarce to wise Peter complaisant enough,

And something said of Chartres much too rough

....Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet

To run amuck and tilt at all I meet.

And just to round it out, how about:

It is a pretty mocking of the life. — Shakespeare
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own. —Jonathan Swift

Ah Swift the master.

Read some Swift Tim. You'll never match him - nobody can - but it might stop you making a fool of yourself in public in the future ...

Now off to scoff down some baked beans, and have a happy day farting away ...

(Below: and now for that science test. Please look at the photo below and estimate the variation in sea level clearly on view. Drum roll, answer please.

You guessed 0 mm because the snaps seem to back the view that nature is "up and down, it comes and goes in cycles"? Congratulations, you're now fully qualified to write about science for The Australian).