The lightbulb

When I read the self-congratulatory article of the climate competitors of this blog who just achieved - thanks to lots of fervent global warming believers in various journals - 500,000 visits much like The Reference Frame (the counter on the right side counts the daily unique visitors), it's hard to avoid the feelings of compassion for them. And a well-known joke about the lightbulb comes to mind if you think about their collective efforts.

Do you know how many climate scientists does it take to exchange a lightbulb? Ten.

Mann and Bradley are afraid that the broken lightbulb may be too hot and want to cool it down by a broken hockey stick. Connolley calculates that they need 1000 bottles of ice to cool it down and Steig makes sure that this calculation becomes a part of the consensus in the ice community. Ammann helps Connolley and Mann to attack the people who say that they should try to turn the lightbulb around.

Schmidt calls the aliens via his friends in NASA who could help them to locate the greenhouse that is apparently making the lightbulb so hot. Rahmstorf adds the general relativistic corrections to the heat contribution of the carbon dioxide to the temperature of the lightbulb. Benestad is present to guarantee that there will be 10 people in the team, exactly as predicted by the climate models.

Archer tries not to exhale so that the concentration of CO₂ inside the lightbulb does not grow too much. Finally, De Garidel writes the grant applications for them to have money to buy a brand new palace in Kyoto, Japan with a new lightbulb in it. He explains that the more members their lightbulb change team will have, the more scientific their approach will become. And the sponsors agree.

Disclaimer: This joke does not apply to all mainstream climate scientists. If you want to read a new intelligent essay by von Storch and Stehr, one that explains that plans for adaptation must replace attempts for moderation (such as Kyoto), visit this page on Prometheus.