(Above: Pastor Danny at work, perhaps on someone infected by climate change devils).
By golly, over at The Punch, Australia's uppercut jab at a conversation, Paul Colgan has stirred up the possums with a very big stick.
The cheeky possum scribbled The holy war on climate change, and dared to note that the loonier parts of the fundie religious spectrum were part of the email campaign designed to unseat Malcolm Turnbull and his support of the ETS.
This sparked a flurry of comments suggesting that The Punch is home to a variety of flashers, trawlers, flamers, and maddies. I particularly loved the comment by the dumb cluck near the head of the queue:
Steve says: 06:48am | 08/12/09
I’m a scientist, but have not paid attention to the climate debate previously. Yesterday, I read some of the stuff at the realclimate and climateaudit.org blogs, which represent opposite sides of the debate. My verdict: The skeptics are much better scientists. Try reading http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/ohioshort.pdf for example, and make up your mind for yourself.
I’m a scientist, but have not paid attention to the climate debate previously. Yesterday, I read some of the stuff at the realclimate and climateaudit.org blogs, which represent opposite sides of the debate. My verdict: The skeptics are much better scientists. Try reading http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/ohioshort.pdf for example, and make up your mind for yourself.
He's a scientist who makes up his mind by reading a couple of blogs? And he hasn't paid attention to the climate debate previously? Oi vey. Tish boom. Some scientist you are, cutting edge.
When challenged, 'Steve' then claimed it was indeed possible to come to a conclusion in just a few hours of reading. Oi vey, tish boom again. Surely this man, this Steve, deserves a place on loon pond as champion thick headed writer of comments. I know, I know, lots of competition, but really it's sterling work, worthy of a place on Tim Blair's blog.
But back to Coglan, who provides a screen cap of Pastor Danny's fine blog work near the head of his piece.
Well of course, but regular readers of loon pond know that Pastor Danny is a creme de la creme loon, a pious person of the highest order of loonacy, and you can go directly to the horse's mouth to listen to the neighing, by clicking here on NCC Update: Monday urgently call Fielding, Xenophon, Coalition MPs/Senators.
What's more, if you have a taste for braying, if you head to the blog right now you can catch alarming news that Christians are being persecuted in Iran (never mind the rest of the population, all under the thumb of religious zealots of a Pastor Danny kind), and a loving reprint of Andrew Bolt from August 14, 2009 on the subject of climate change. (Not to mention Paul Sheehan). Such fine company the loveable rascals find themselves in, along with the forward thinking scientific community of Saudi Arabia.
More of that anon. Meantime, Pastor Danny is wildly excited by the elevation of Tony Abbott, even if the Roman Catholic church might be considered heretical by some fundamentalists. Perhaps it's because Pastor Danny has the same taste for exorcism:
In Melbourne (Hallam) one of the leading Satanists in Australia surrendered her life to the Lord Jesus Christ as a direct result of the national spiritual breakthrough at Mount Ainslie in Canberra on the 17th October. As the Catch The Fire ministry team led by Pastor Daniel prayed for her she was delivered from many demonic spirits over a period of 3 hours. The demonic spirits left her body screaming, shouting and vomiting blood. Please pray for this woman who is not yet fully set free and is in great danger of being attacked by a Satanic cult. At this point unfortunately we cannot give out more info for her safety. (here).
Dear lord. The poor woman. Yep, it's not just scientology that will do you over like a 'roo tail in a camp fire roast.
But let's not give Pastor Danny and Catch The Fire Ministries all the credit for the recent cavortings on the right.
As Coglan goes on to note, there was a well orchestrated campaign by lots of people from the Liberal heartland, all as mad as hell and beavering away at Colgan, most notably by that SA fundamentalist, Senator Cory Bernardi.
Poor Malcolm Turnbull was a pigeon ripe for the plucking, and he's still scoring a hefty swag of divided correspondents for his post Time for some straight talking on climate change.
But the really funny thing, when you come to think about it, is the way that Colgan is astonished that:
Hardline conservative Christians helped orchestrate the flood of correspondence that convinced Liberal MPs to ditch support for Malcolm Turnbull and the emissions trading scheme.
Um, what about hard line Murdoch journalists?
Dearie me, you only have to read our very own favourite Billy Bunter, Piers Akerman, in today's Daily Terror. The fat owl of the remove is on his usual rampage with Doomsayers drowning in a rising tide of deception.
Akker Dakker's scientific credentials amount to no more than a scintilla or toenail (let's hope he doesn't trim them regularly and so rob himself of scientific insights), but really he's just one of a trio, which includes solid opening batsmen Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt, who carry on about the fate of the poley bears on a regular basis. To the point in fact of monomaniacal obsessive compulsive tedium.
And let's never forget The Australian, which is of course the high minded bastion of the right of free thinkers to consider the science, without ever actually bothering to spend much time on the actual science, as opposed to fear mongering and the culling of thoughts from loons of the highest, most impeccable water. Not to mention our very favourite headmistress, Dame Slap, aka Janet Albrechtsen.
Yep, if Colgan had only looked in the backyard of News Corp, he'd have found players that made Pastor Danny look like a small time twelfth man for a concrete pitch cricket team, only capable of recycling the thoughts of the likes of Bolt.
Where Pastor Danny might claim a congregation of 5,000, and boast of 3,000 site visitors a month, the likes of Andrew Bolt claims hits of a squillion a second, or at least two million a month.
Heck, I feel like offering the Christians a get out of jail card, up against the rantings of the Murdoch press.
You see, it isn't all one way traffic. That stout hearted valiant warrior against Greens and gays Jim Wallace at the ACL is walking a cautious down the middle. In a recent media release dubbed Climate Change is a Moral Issue, Jim announced the participation of the ACL in a Climate Institute initiative:
Common Belief: Australia’s Faith Communities on Climate Change includes statements from Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Greek Orthodox Church, Baptists, Evangelicals and the Salvation Army as well as non-Christian faiths including Islam, Buddhism, Baha’i, Hindus, Sikhs and Jews. ACL’s statement notes that there is a strong scientific consensus that the climate is changing and that there is ongoing political debate about how to address this, but that it is clear that the consequences will be felt most heavily by those least able to bear them, such as the poorest of the poor in the developing world. It concludes by asking the Australian Government to contribute to global action in order to protect the most vulnerable from the consequences of climate change. (here and here).
The ACL, a devoted lobby group, has in recent times begun to wake up that climate change is a good way to print the controversy, and their very slick magazine Viewpoint, devoted its first issue to publishing two different takes, from Professors Andrew Glikson and Bob Carter (here for the press release, here for the digital version of the magazine).
Yep, put them up against the opinion pages of the Murdoch press, and the ACL begins to look like some kind of fair and balanced organisation which allows you to decide. Unless of course you happen to be gay or green.
Lordy, we live in wondrous times.
Well, being bored with Abbott and climate change and deluded Murdoch hacks, who seem to forget Blair and Bolt are within their stable, but never bored by religion, I thought we could wrap it up by celebrating a revival in Muslim creationism:
Mentioning human evolution led to near riots, and he had to be escorted out. “That’s the one thing that will never be possible to bridge,” he said. “Your lineage is what determines your worth.” (here).
Ah that feels better. Pastor Danny and the Muslim creationists at one.
Come to think of it, Murdoch bloggers Akerman, Blair and Bolt, Pastor Danny and the Saudi Arabia scientists are all at one on climate change.
What a wondrous world it is.
If you want a handy guide to Muslim creationism, this Reuters blog provides an extensive set of links. I know, I know, it's little better than intellectual theft, a despoiling of property rights, but hey, if a Murdoch blog can blame the hard right Christians for doing the dirty work of the Murdoch press, when the Murdoch press regularly and reliably on a daily basis does its own climate change dirty work, why can't we all indulge in a little pot and kettle blacking ... using Kiwi polish of course, Australia's own.
Because here's Coglan's kicker as he talks about various loony forums and their vehement opposition to climate change science and the ETS, with a quote from the Agmates lobbyists:
"The ETS may have been delayed , but be under NO illusions it will be back and most likely the next election will be fought over this issue. NOW is the time to sow the seeds of doubt in the ears of the LABOR pollies."
There’s a lot of talk about it being a long summer for the Liberals. Some on the government side might be facing the same.
Lordy, the pollies don't have to read such exotic online forums, or listen to the warblings of Bernardi. They just have to read up on Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt and the rest of the Murdoch press to get the message loud and clear ...
(Below: oh I know, it was devised by a Scottish-born inventor, the kiwi is a foreign bird, the international conglomerate Sara Lee owns the brand, Russell Crowe was born in New Zealand, and Rupert Murdoch is no longer a dirty digger, but a citizen of the United States of America. Nothing is but what is not.)
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