Today the USPTO issued patent no. 10,000,000. My brother may speculate why they chose this particular one to be the ten millionth patent. But I'm wondering something else. Here's a graph of US patent grants since 1790:
And here's a graph of global temperatures since 1850:
Notice the similarities of the curvatures. Coincidence?
Clearly, the only logical conclusion is that we need to stop patent grants because they're contributing to global warming. I mean climate change. Or whatever the current in-vogue term is.
(Props to our colleague BK for first noticing this, so if you're one of those humorless types, direct your complaints to him.)