Tim Patrick
This article was originally published on Humorality, on February 22, 2010.
Congress giddy at sudden influx of death taxes
A new report issued by the Lukewarm Futures Institute, a climate research organization based in nice-and-hot Phoenix, Arizona, says that all life on Earth, including the entire human population of over six billion, perished in an unprecedented climate-change disaster approximately fourteen weeks ago. The 483-page report urged immediate governmental action worldwide to ensure that “this type of tragedy will never again put the taxpayer funding of our research at risk.”
“It seems like just yesterday that I was interacting with my coworkers and family members,” said the Institute’s chief scientist Bill Venderhosen, traveling with his wife and colleagues to a climate conference in New York. “To think that they all died in a horrible global-warming incident—pending additional readings from temperature stations worldwide—just breaks my heart.”
News of life’s demise came as a shock to many. For Ralph Ikiru, a truck driver based out of Los Angeles, mass extinction took a personal toll. “Being dead sucks. I didn’t even get to watch the final season of Lost.”
Wilma Renoir, a hair stylist living in a suburb of Detroit, worried about the economic costs of the change. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t read it in the papers. It’s been difficult enough trying to make ends meet with the lousy economy. Now that everyone is dead, including me, it’s going to be much, much harder to keep my salon in business.”
Even politicians who had been kept up to date on issues of global climatology and Midwest cosmetology registered shock. “This is going to set our legislative agenda back decades,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry “Hotstuff” Reid. “Who knows if we will ever again have life that is sufficiently intelligent enough to repeatedly vote us into office.”
Despite the report’s overwhelming evidence as exemplified by the dozens of pages wholly incomprehensible to ordinary journalists, skeptics managed to find fault with the Institute’s conclusions. “I see no indication that all life on Earth has perished, whether by climate change or any other man-made action,” said Sykes Midland of the Give Me a Break Center for Climate Studies. “Just open your eyes and look around at the people, animals, insects, birds, and plants that are alive and well.”
“Anecdotal evidence is not science,” said Mr. Venderhosen in response. “Our report is based on the best available climate data. If deniers like Mr. Midland want to reject the consensus of all scientists of my personal acquaintance, then I foresee a future, perhaps just decades from now, where all life on Planet Earth has come to an end.”
Add comment