Word on the street Global Weirding

What it means:Scientists may have made serious breakthroughs in genetics and quantum mechanics, but when it comes to the weather, it seems they are still scratching their heads. Having blamed global warming for strange weather patterns, then shifted the blame to "climate change", experts have come up with a new term that covers all meteorological eventualities: global weirding.

Global weirding is the trendy new term to explain unpredictable weather patterns around the world – it was also the title of a recent BBC Horizon programme that had critics snorting with derision at its very unscientific approach. Sceptics who never believed in global warming or climate change have seized on global weirding as proof that the environmental lobby is getting desperate.

Where it comes from: Ever since that ol' ozone layer started peeling off, the global warming message has been laid on thick. We were warned that chlorofluorocarbons and other greenhouse gasses would render the planet uninhabitable by 2005. But not everyone has been convinced by the theory – some have even referred to it as a conspiracy by an alliance of hippies, pinkos and anti-capitalists. So a new term was invented: climate change. Al Gore pushed this idea in his film, An Inconvenient Truth, but sceptics remained unconvinced. So some clever clogs decided "global weirding" might sound cooler. Right.

How to say it:"I've just proven the existence of global weirding – Ireland had a summer!"