A RECENT 2015 New Yorker desk calendar cartoon had a bunch of obese bathers floating in the ocean while slurping ice creams and sucking on sodas.
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Perhaps eventually making them displace even more water as the caption underneath read: "Rising sea levels — an alternative theory."
It's a fitting enough spoof over the on-going hysteria involving continually upgraded doom-laden theories and dire pie-in-the-sky modelling - the global warming industry's stock in trade.
A warm-up, dare we say it, for the upcoming Paris climate change talks.
Even Pope Francis has weirdly hopped on the bandwagon of anti-capitalist neo-Marxist environmental populism, although not to the point of pointing out that historic Catholic rules on contraception, or lack of them, may have caused some pollution and over-population.
Meanwhile, the New Yorker's drawing is truly a caricature of some of the wackier "scientific" forecasts and predictions made by presumed experts as they stare nervously over their shoulders for fear of losing lucrative grants.
You can see where the funded boffins' problems lie: the more weather conditions remain stubbornly unchanging, the more dramatic predictions have to be made to scare the tripe out of us so we consider a low-carbon future involving crouching around in grass huts and eating handfuls of mung beans while capitalism collapses around us.
Oh yes, plus all those wild and crazy guesstimates of a future that includes "dangerous" and so-far unrealised rising sea levels based on Gaia knows what.
Much closer to home, climatic alarmists feel it necessary to not so much highlight the danger of a bunch of weight-challenged persons leaping into the surf as suggest that unless we lower temperatures by a projected two degrees (a downgrade from a projected four degrees), we'll live in a place you wouldn't really like that much.
Factor in here the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology's semi-scary prediction that "Hobart will feel like Port Lincoln, in South Australia, by 2090".
Oh yes, and half-way to 2090, these weather watchers reckon we'll be living in a place that "will feel similar to Geelong", with a 2050 rainfall drop by 1 per cent and a very specific 1.8 per cent temperature increase.
Can the gentle reader see where all this is heading?
Yep, the problem is that, after a recent run of Tassie frosts, most of us would look forward to the island warming up a bit, notwithstanding forecaster's dire subliminal suggestions that we would hate to live in the equivalent of rust belt towns such as Port Lincoln and Geelong.
Now, if scientists warned that we may have to thaw out in Port Douglas, rather than Port Lincoln, or Geraldton, instead of Geelong, as we recline under palm trees while sipping umbrella-topped drinks and harvesting our backyard pineapples, hmm, wouldn't that be tough?
Tasmanians would don the sunnies and shorts and break out the suntan oil while yelling "bring it on."
The scary global warming beast has to be fed, including a Hobart media commentator's bizarre claim last week that the city's recent Dark Mofo mid-winter nude swim was this year more comfortable because of climate change.
One reliable source close to us reported "the water was as freezing as ever."
Now it's time to float(!) another theory to deal with threatened rising sea levels caused by dreaded global warming — switch on those idle multi-million dollar de-salination plants built when end-of-the-world modellers, including Tim Flannery, warned how rainfalls would drastically decline - which hasn't happened.
Sucking up all that salt water should not only keep sea levels down but also make a great New Yorker cartoon.