Jonathan Leake, the environment, Amazongate, Deltoid, and the whole damn bestiary of Murdochian monstrosities ...

(Above: the source of many leaks).

There's nothing wrong with a little eel bashing - reminds me I must have some unagi on the way to the Sydney Symphony tonight - go Ravel - indelicate sounds of imitation Homer Simpson slobbering - and there's even less wrong with bashing the slippery slithy toves at The Australian. Too much bloody mimsy.

Come to think of it, we could make it a national sport. Do a little bit for your country and bash the Oz, oi, oi, oi.

Un until now, Jonathan Leake was one of those names that flashed past in a blur when I tried to read The Australian on environmental issues.

Yes, yes, I know, that's a contradiction. Like eels needing bicycles.

Now I discover that if you google up his name, you could easily go goggle eyed.

Here he is January 18, 2010, in The Oz, with Chris Hastings, explaining United Nations' blunder on glaciers exposed. In it reveals how the UN peak body on climate change has been dealt another humiliating blow to its credibility.

Here he is on January 25, 2010, all on his own, with United Nations caught out again on climate claims, wherein he explains how the IPCC relied on weak evidence and ignored warnings.

Next up, we flash back to January 11th, 2010, with Sea-level theory cuts no ice, wherein climate science faces a major new controversy after Britain's Met Office "denounced" research from the Copenhagen summit regarding sea levels ...

Beginning to get the picture?

But then you might happen to come to More flaws emerge in climate alarms, dated February 1, 2010, and click through ... to get a 404.

Happily if you look here, you can find a reprint, together with its opening par:

A startling report by the UN climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had no scientific expertise.

Perhaps what he meant to say was that his report was based on an unsubstantiated claim by a Murdoch hack.

Of course finding out all this by googling Leake's name turned out to be tremendously harmful, I now realise, thanks to Jonathan Leake and Richard Woods' tremendously useful report Hidden harm of Google searches:

Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate a similar amount of carbon dioxide to boiling the kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.

While millions of people tap into Google without a thought for the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of carbon dioxide. Boiling a kettle generates about 15g.

Yes, using the services of the arch-enemy of Chairman Rupert is a hideous way of trashing the planet.

But, you ask - it turns out readers are always asking helpful questions to allow helpful answers - how did I get start on this journey of discovery, which allowed me to discover that using Google is a sure way to trash the planet in epic fashion? (Much worse than a cup of tea, or even an Al Gore mansion, or perhaps an around the world air ticket ...)

Well you see, I made the mistake of reading Andrew Crook in Crikey, explaining that Leake had got the bit about the Amazon rainforests totally wrong, and it was now being talked about in hushed terms as "Amazongate".

You can read all about it here in Silence from media on IPCC apology, and the way the local Oz media jumped on the Leake bandwagon - naturally the Dolt was at the head of the pack - but so far have maintained a discreet silence about getting off it - all except the source of the story, the Sunday Times, which provided an apology, which now of course is hidden behind a registration wall!

So you have to head off to to get an open source coverage of the correction/apology, courtesy of The Guardian, and Roy Greenslade: Sunday Times apologises for false climate story in a 'correction'.

Well the good news is that Leake is now safely sheltering behind Chairman Rupert's paywall, out of harm's way and my eyesight, and I guess if you're adult enough to pay for porn, I suppose you're also adult enough to pay for tripe.

Meanwhile, if you want some amusing reading, head off to Deltoid, here, to see the list of bludgers and no hopers who traded off on Leake's story. I rather like Deltoid's nickname for the scandal more than Amazongate.

Leakegate.

Seeing as how every second story on the environment turns into a gate, like email-gate, it's good to see that a "gate" can still go around one more time.

But then if you search the Deltoid site, you discover that Leakegate isn't just one fuck up, it's a way of life. You could frolic for hours through the varying aspects of Leakegate in all its infinite shades and hues, as applied to various deceptive, misleading or simply wrong stories about the environment.

Yes there's hours of fun to be had, and plenty of disinformation and ignorance to be had on the full to overflowing intertubes, but why does the mainstream have to be front and centre leading the charge? Because you see, The Oz, in its relentless search for disinformation, has faithfully reprinted much of Leake's work, but when it comes to disavowing it, seems slow to move, as Crikey has pointed out.

Meanwhile, as a result, I'm terribly worried about The Times paywall.

You see, if you head off there, you get an invitation to log in or register for a free preview, but you have no idea of what's inside, because Chairman Rupert has blocked Google from allowing its articles to appear in search engines (here).

Meanwhile, The Australian is cheerfully breaching the paywall, by publishing such learned treatises from The Times as this one by Ross Clark, Why are the nuts on Knut's case?, which popped up today in the rag.

What's Chairman Rupert going to do about this kind of treachery?

More to the point perhaps, is what is he going to do about a writer who thinks it's ever so engaging to start off a piece saying I am no expert in ursine psychology, and immediately purports to have an expert understanding of ursine psychology, and the joyful pleasures of animals locked in zoos.

But it did give me an idea for a solution. Can someone please lock Ross Clark up in a zoo for a year so that we can have the pleasure of developing expertise in Clarkian psychology? Then we can scribble sentences like this:

OK, Clark is an oddity with no chance of survival if he were released into the wild. But so what? It doesn't make it cruel, because he is never going to be released.

Or how about this on the benefits of zoos for Murdoch hacks?

Far from degenerating into lunacy, many journalists live healthier and far longer lives than they would otherwise have done. And of course zoos save whole tribes of journalists; if there had been zoos to take in the last breeding pairs of scribblers for Adelaide's The News we would still have the species now.

Far from denouncing zoos, we should be valuing them as little pockets of civilisation where Murdoch hacks can thrive even if they begin to fail in the hell hole that is the wild.

Come to think of it, this could be the entire solution for Leake, the environment, and The Australian. Lock the entire menagerie in zoos all over the world, so people can come and poke and prod and marvel at the beasts within ...

Why it'd be even better than a paywall, and well worth the expense ...

At which point, surely it's time to celebrate Jorge Luis Borges Book of Imaginary Beings, and also T. H. White's The Book of Beasts, which you can find here and in Google books here.

Here's a dragon and a viper worthy of a medievalist or a Murdochian bestiary.