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Serious satire
"Humor is a funny way of being serious"
-Thomas Edison
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Tuesday, February 17, 2004
WEATHER NOT "HOT ENOUGH" FOR MELBOURNE MAN
- global warming theory tipped on its head
MELBOURNE:A Melbourne man made history and caused shock waves worldwide when he become the first person to answer the traditional Australian phatic question "hot enough for you?" in the negative.
John Smith, forty-five of Williamstown, was quoted as replying "no, it's not" to the jocular sardonic rhetorical ironic question long a staple of Australian summers.
Seen in the context of a heat wave the Southern Australian city has been suffering (with temperatures reaching as high as forty-seven degrees Celsius) this was a startling reply that has caused widespread panic amidst fear of another ice age.
Federal authorities' desperate efforts to calm these fears have achieved little success.
The meteorological bureau issued a statement saying that "it is indeed 'hot enough''.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard cut short a visit to Washington - returning home to make a televised nationwide prime-time address to the nation where he assured Australians that the weather was "hot enough for me".
Mr. Howard's reassurances went unheeded at stock exchanges worldwide where dinosaur shares plummeted due to fear of another ice age (so detrimental to dinosaurs last time around) and oil prices skyrocketed as governments, companies and consumers hoarded the commodity in anticipation of increased heating requirements.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced that it is to reassess the global warming theory.
EPA Administrator Ian Jones said "the commonly held consensus amongst scientists for the past two decades has been that global warming is indeed occurring and temperatures have been increasing, i.e. that it was 'hot enough', but Mr. Smith's comments would appear to belie this and consequently we are going to have to reassess our theory in light of this".
US President George W Bush put a positive spin on developments saying that they vindicated his decision not to sign the Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming.
The Smith family is no stranger to controversy – Mr. Smiths father John Smith Senior caused a stir in 1970 when he became the first and last person (until Mr. Smith Junior) to ever actually answer the "hot enough for you?" question when he replied "yes, it is".
2:41 pm
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