David Penberthy, Miranda Devine, and the rumble in the jungle, part two ...

(Above: the start of the first Australian New Zealand netball test in 1938. And now they've gone and passed a revised ETS scheme before Australia, here).

It's sometimes boring at loon pond, and my own voice is hoarse from all the shouting, so I thought today perhaps a way of generating some excitement would be to stage an ultimate fighting contest between two likely tabloid contenders, David Penberthy and Miranda the Devine (suggestions that the Herald isn't a tabloid are hereby ruled out of order).

Penberthy in You can't immunise against arrogance:

Some years ago at one of those excruciating dinners which really make you hate being middle-aged, we got bailed up by a bombastic couple who chose to bore us senseless by outlining their vehement opposition to immunisation.

Neither of them were scientists but they spoke with an unnerving degree of authority on the vaccination question.

They seemed untroubled by plonking their potentially disease-carrying kids in the middle of a crowded childcare centre, populated by the offspring of families with the sense and humility to defer to those who actually hold medical degrees.

Later the conversation turned to pet ownership and the anti-vaccinators popped their heads up again to say that their poor puppy was scheduled to get his shots.

If only they’d leave their dog at the local ABC Learning Centre. Most parents would be happier if their kid got fleas rather than whooping cough.

Hmm, sounds like he's getting dangerously close to a conspiracy theory about impertinent scribblers:

It seems a special kind of impertinence for people who have absolutely no scientific background to declare that the overwhelming body of scientific and medical knowledge, gathered over the centuries, tested and re-tested not for commercial gain but the good of humanity, should be blithely dismissed out of hand for opinions that have no basis in science, or are embraced only on the scientific fringes.

Miranda the Devine, who has a degree in mathematics from Macquarie University, and spent a year in the CSIRO's textile physics division, before obtaining a masters from Northwestern University in the graduate school of journalism (here), with Climate doomsayers caught out:

Armageddon is not nigh. The planet has been cooling for almost a decade and the fabled climate computer models never predicted that.

And now damning emails leaked from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia have implicated some famous climate scientists in a conspiracy to manipulate data and suppress evidence to exaggerate the case man-made “runaway” global warming is threatening the planet. We see clearly the rotten heart of the propaganda machine that has driven the world to the brink of insanity on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit.

A conspiracy! And not just the world driven to insanity! The Liberal Party of Australia with it!At last damning proof, in those emails and documents recently hacked and leaked into the full to overflowing intertubes.

But wait, Penberthy isn't done, and tries a quick riposte:

As much as I respect colleagues such as Piers Akerman and Andrew Bolt I cannot cop their analysis of the leaked email “scandal” from the University of East Anglia which they and other climate change deniers are now citing as proof that the whole global warming caper is, as Liberal Senator and climate sceptic Nick Minchin might say, some sort of communist plot...

... The emails include a number of statements from prominent climate scientists, some of whom have been advising the UN, in which they question their own research methods, challenge their findings and the assumptions they have made.

One stolen email which has been held up by climate change deniers as the most damning features an admission from American climatologist Kevin Trenberth that scientists cannot quantify the lack of global warming to date.

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t ... our observing system is inadequate,” it reads.

That statement of itself doesn’t suggest to me that this scientist or any of his colleagues are cooking the books to create some imagined climate change artifice.

Rather, it sounds like a very orthodox call for scientific rigour - a statement of professional frustration that more has not been done to devise a more reliable method of measuring and checking the extent of temperature increases.

Other leaked emails show the scientists agonising over the veracity of their results. Which is what you want them to do, not knock things into shape to suit their prejudice, but to demand they face even more scrutiny.

But in the hands of the climate change deniers it’s irrefutable proof that the whole thing is a con and a sham, proof that climate change is some sort of cult or religion (ignoring the fact that climate change deniers are so evangelical about their views that they could readily join the Scientologists in holding tax-free status).

The University of East Anglia beat-up does not alter the fact that almost every scientist on the face of this planet believes that the evidence of climate change is there

Wait a second. There's no conspiracy? Quick, Miranda the Devine has the answer to those kinds of weasel words:

The good thing is people can now see the tactics of the alarmists and their army of bovver boys. You can read the emails online and then you can read the sly attempts to explain away the misdeeds. Despite their feigned reasonableness and world-weary calm over the email scandal, climate alarmists are in a mad fumbling panic. They are exposed as dangerous megalomaniacs, foolish, but with enormous power.

Their power came from the complicity of the media and because it suited a certain type of politician to build a new bureaucracy and pose as an environmental saviour, never having to face up to the consequences of being wrong.

Uh huh. So Penberthy is an alarmist bovver boy. I'll always think of him fondly that way in the future. Penbo the bovver boy. Glad we finally got that settled. Let's see how he bovvers given he's in a mad fumbling panic, a dangerous foolish megalomaniac with enormous power:

...when it comes to the basic questions of science, forgive me for sticking with the guys in the lab coats.

The most vociferous critics of climate change on the conservative side of Australian politics are blokes whose past careers include working as policy wonks, party directors, graziers, lawyers - and one of them was a publican.

These are all noble professions - particularly the last one - but I am not sure what kind of standing it gives them to posture as such confident experts on the most perplexing scientific question of the modern age.

Being a lowly hack, I have no scientific background either obviously. Which is why I will listen to what most scientists say.

For all the continuing scientific arguments, there was something I heard recently on an aeroplane which triggered a much more emotional and awestruck response from the passengers, and one which the party political deniers should remember as they advocate that government stay idle on this question.

It was last Thursday, when the pilot said: “Welcome to Adelaide, where the local time is 8.40pm and the temperature is currently 39 degrees.”

Well Penberthy was of course stirring for comment, and he got it in spades, and so is the Devine, and no doubt she will cop a fair collection of comments too. So it goes, and if you want another opinion, why not head off to the Scientific American for David Biello's Climate change cover-up? You better believe it.

Not that we're stating a view, we're so over the science, these days we just print the controversy in a fair and balanced way, and you decide.

But if you want an explanation of why the Liberal party has gone barking mad, and can tolerate the sight of Kevin "the undertaker" Andrews, aka the personality with the charm of a cheeseboard (thanks to others for these), posing as pretender to the throne of the leader of the opposition, look no further than the likes of Miranda the Devine. For she manages to see a glimmer of hope in the debacle:

It was no surprise Kevin Andrews lost yesterday's vote to call a leadership spill for the Liberal Party. But he made a fair fist of it, getting 42 per cent of the vote, despite being a surprise fringe candidate never previously considered for leadership.

Andrews also made a fair fist of explaining the rationale behind his run, stating the obvious truth that Liberals fare best electorally when combining economic liberalism with social conservatism.

More to the point, the fundamentalists want to take control of the asylum, and rather than heading towards the middle ground where Chairman Rudd has put up his tent, they prefer to go off baying at the moon, and barking at the sun, and sounding like a discontented rabble of extremists. Dare we say it, like Miranda the Devine?

Oops, that sounds like the start of an editorial, when all we wanted was a decent battle, and maybe a tap out from a choke hold.

So there you have it. Penberthy v the Devine. The ultimate grudge match between a caring considered person, and a megalomaniac bovver boy. All we can do is show the fight, and it comes down to a points decision where you get to decide.

(Below: more xkcd here).