In which Lady Macbeth and dinkum clean Oz coal haunt the reptiles ...

The reptiles were so disturbed and distressed by the alleged Chinese ban on "coal" that they had to fudge the wording and talk airily of "exports", anything to stop the sweet dinkum black stuff from being tarnished by a black ban …

And they kept up the talk of "exports" in the digital edition, even though it was apparently a "provocative strike at our top export earner", whatever that might be … perhaps the live trade in kangaroos … and naturally the bromancer was on hand to berate Beijing ...

A similar thing happened with the Terror's farewell to Julie Bishop. Apparently the first front page took its cue from a Devine header …

Well yes, there is more to that story because by the time the pond became sentient, all references to 'Lady Macbeth' had been deleted, and there was talk of the Devine having been sanitised, impossible to imagine though that is … and so the front page was just a snide reference to heels … because there's nothing like discussing footwear to elevate political discussions …

Oh look, coal was there too …

The lizards of Oz almost achieved the same level of excellent coverage with their splash …how the reptiles love a flash of leg ...

It should have read "Bishop's place is in the home", but the pond can forgive the minor typo, because it understands how distressed the reptiles must be at not being able to scribble in the future about Bishop's manner of dress, so typical of reptile political coverage … everybody will recall that provocative story "John Howard leaves politics in the most stunning suit" …replete with a snap of naughty flash of enticing ankle.

Still, a reptile's job is to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. While others might have thought Bishop's resignation says something about SloMo and the role of women in the Liberal party and the general Paladin fucked state of affairs, it was left to the bouffant one to win the pond's "Black Knight of the Week" award …

The bouffant one was more modest in his illustration, avoiding a flash of leg, or clicking heels ...

This was wise because he didn't want distractions as he turned what was something of a loss of a long-time senior Liberal into something of a victory ...

Yes, the loss of an uppity, difficult Lady Macbeth with asbestos tendencies meant nothing, comrade Bill was routed, and there would be no more jokes of the Rowe kind, even if Rowe kept on joking here …

If that didn't win the "Black Knight of the Week" award, then the pond might as well not bother with the gong at all …

And now back to climate science and coal and the whole damned thing, and here the pond faced a difficult choice. The 357k woman was parroting what she'd read in the paper …

But the pond had already looked at Fisher - it's gunna cost ya - and searched around desperately for a substitute. Everyone knows a parrot is no use in a coal mine, you need a canary ...

The Speccie mob were a dead loss, with Giles rabbiting on about modern art and neo-Marxism and all the usual, producing only one gem - wherein Giles revealed a deep love for dictatorships, and Soviet State art, instead of all that dreadful modernism …

Indeed, indeed, and next week Giles will hopefully scribble his approval of Nazi aesthetics and their disapproval of decadent Weimar republic art and all that modernist guff - damn you George Groz - perhaps with the helpful explanation that modern art and the modernist movement was an act of aesthetic violence by Jews against the German spirit (Greg Hunters go here) …

Damn you Chagall and your floaty things, but the pond couldn't linger because Henry "hole in the bucket" Ergas was calling …

But why prefer the doddering pedant to the doddering Giles?

Well our Henry posed a keen challenge, up there with the best crosswords … see how many times climate science is mentioned as having some possible perspective and insight to offer on the future of the world ...

Nope, the closest we get is the "premise that coalmining is undesirable", and the sense that dinkum clean Oz coal is being persecuted unfairly from Chinese ports to foolish local judges …

Will Henry mention actual climate science in the next gobbet?

Nope, damn, this is a tricky crossword puzzle.

There's plenty of emissions in that gobbet but strangely our Henry danced around the miscreant judge's unlearned findings …

The judge concluded that an open-cut coal mine "would be in the wrong place at the wrong time". "Wrong place because an open-cut coal mine in this scenic and cultural landscape, proximate to many people's homes and farms, will cause significant planning, amenity, visual and social impacts," he said. "Wrong time because the greenhouse gas emissions of the coal mine and its coal product will increase global total concentrations of [those gases] at a time when what is now urgently needed, in order to meet generally agreed climate targets, is a rapid and deep decrease in [those] emissions. "These dire consequences should be avoided." (Nine rag here)

But our Henry has still got a gobbet to go, and could still win out by mocking the talk of dire consequences, while exposing climate science as fake, faux science, the fake news that all Trumpians understand it is…

Nope, just mindless blather about British justice, it being apparent that our Henry is still having some trouble adjusting to being a colonial …

Meanwhile, in another country on a different planet …

Chief Justice Preston included in his reasoning the fact that there must be a carbon budget – a total amount of emissions that can be released – if targets under the Paris Climate Agreement are to be met. And even if the proposed mine was relatively small, it wasn't enough for a company to calculate the direct emissions that come from scraping out 100-million-year-old coal – the fugitive methane, the pollution generated by the digging and transport, and so on; the actual burning of that fuel, wherever it occurred in the world, also had to be taken into account. "The difference between this case and other coal mine planning appeals [such as those against the Adani project in Queensland] is that the court has accepted that scope 3 emissions from the burning of the mine's coal in other countries should be taken into account in determining environmental impacts," says Sarah Barker, a special counsel dealing with environmental, social and governance risks, adding the emphasis.  

As one lawyer put it, Gloucester Resources mounted "a curious argument" that total emissions would be hard to determine: "Is it 'decorative coal' they are digging up, with no anticipation it will be burned?" 

Baker and McKenzie partner Martijn Wilder told clients: "The decision does not necessarily mean the end of any new coal mine approvals in NSW, because it was highly specific to the particular facts of this application." Still, "a proponent of any new mine in NSW would be well advised to arrange offsets for anticipated greenhouse gas emissions prior to seeking approval for the project. As a commercial matter, there may be questions as to how obtaining these offsets could affect the profitability of the endeavour," Wilder says.

Ah, if only they'd realise that climate science is a fraud and a hoax, it would all be so much better for the common good, and the reptiles could continue their love affair with dinkum clean coal until the end of time, or at least the twelfth of never … why as Giles himself knows, if only we'd kept the Soviet regime going, there'd be good art and coal in abundance ...

After all there's an enormous amount of competition on the world stage, and we must be competitive …