GENEVA—Saying the time to act has come and gone, a group of researchers from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned Tuesday that any hope for the future of humanity now hinges on the possibility that scientists like themselves are simply making all of this up. “After reviewing our climate models and projections of worldwide CO2 emissions, we have come to the conclusion that the only scenario in which the human race survives is if our thousands upon thousands of meticulous empirical studies on climate change turn out to be something we’ve been lying about all along,” said climate scientist Philip Vanderwall, who stated that unless the entire scientific community has spent the past 50 years falsifying reams of data as part of a coordinated disinformation campaign to sabotage the global economy, the world’s low-lying coastal regions are as good as done for. “The evidence indicates our planet still might stand a chance of averting a complete climate catastrophe as long as my colleagues and I belong to a cabal of charlatans who are secretly paid huge sums of money to trick everyone into believing excess greenhouse gases will precipitate record-breaking natural disasters and worldwide famine. Otherwise, we’re all doomed.” On a personal note, Vanderwall added that he hopes that one day, his grandchildren will discover that he was involved in a massive, nefarious conspiracy spanning every country on the face of the earth, because it is the only thing that can possibly save them.

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