Miranda Devine, Tilda Swinton, and the musings of a really silly marmot ...

(Above: an amusing Tilda Swinton graph, found accompanying Overcome by Heat and Inertia).

According to NASA, 2010 is on course to be the planet’s hottest year since records started in 1880. The current top 10, in descending order, are: 2005, 2007, 2009, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2004, 2001 and 2008.

Hot is the new normal. (Overcome by Heat and Inertia).

The response of US legislators to the issue? To do nothing.

The response of the Australian Labor party? To rope in a hundred and fifty citizens for dope a rope treatment, in the hope that by the fifteenth round exhaustion will set in, and no one will remember what the fight was about.

The response of the Sydney Morning Herald? To publish an article by Miranda the Devine, in which the art of having your cake and eating it too, is honed to perfection.

You see, as well as being the most neurotic and silly columnist in the Herald stable, Devine is firmly in the climate change denialism camp. And please, none of this guff about the word denialism being objectionable, because it links to the holocaust. Being in a state of denial is natural for the likes of the Devine, she's in denial about most things - say Mel Gibson's fundamentalist Catholicism, or the pleasures of bicycling, or the joy of coffee - and climate change is just another chance for her to exercise her perverse denialism.

The trouble is, of course, that the public debate about climate change has been ruled by the chattering classes. Want a short definition of the chattering classes? Tim Blair, Miranda the Devine and Janet Albrechtsen chattering away on the ABC ...

Now here's how the chattering classes have their cake with cream and eat it too, as given an exemplary outing in PM's so sure Bob's your uncle. You see, their cake is the same as it ever was. Climate change isn't a moral issue, certainly not a practical or scientific issue, more like a venial sin, which might get you few days in purgatory, which might be warmish, but nothing like the warmth you get from the fires of hell ...

And any way, as the Bart Simpson defence confirms, it wasn't me and I didn't do it.

In a new book, the Australian paleoclimatologist Professor Bob Carter says emissions trading schemes are a token offering by governments to get green campaigners off their backs, and have been championed by opportunistic financiers as a win-win solution to climate change, even though they do nothing to alter world temperatures. In Climate: The Counter Consensus he also points out the alarmist argument on human-caused climate change has been beset by the sort of ''noble cause corruption'' of science that had the Wood royal commission destroy police careers. The book - the first print run sold out in days - taps into disquiet about the scientific ''consensus'' on climate change in an electorate unlikely to be duped so easily again.

So there you have it. There's your cake, and now you get to eat it all over again. Yes, once again the dog whistler gets her dog whistle in about how this best seller reveals the hidden truth about the scientific consensus, and blathers on about noble cause corruption, as a kind of shorthand which has actually no element of science within its purple distorting prose.

Then you get to eat it all over again, because you can act all pious about real solutions, and berate the Labor party for failing to develop real solutions, for a problem you don't believe exists. Naturally this allows you to play four aces, with a standard red herring of epic proportions:

As the former treasurer Peter Costello said on Thursday night at a Quadrant dinner in Sydney to launch his father in-law Peter Coleman's new book, The Last Intellectuals, while the political class may have given up on an ETS this election, the idea is as strong as ever in the education system.

The last intellectuals? Well we now the Devine won't be in that one. Here's the red herring ploy:

''This argument will come and come again over the next 30 years,'' Costello said. ''But if you really want an ETS and you don't want to wreck the economic fabric, there's an answer staring you in the face … nuclear power … I'd love to see Australia bite the bullet and take that on.'' Fat chance of even a debate about that with the Greens in the passenger seat.

Well of course if you believed climate change was real, then you'd take on the Greens and have a debate about that one - especially if you have the privileged position of a regular column in the Herald - but of course it's just a fatuous aside because the Devine is a climate change denier and she really deep down doesn't see the need for anything like that, not when we can go on burning coal for a thousand years, the estimated running time of the third reich.

Instead we have the usual galumphing towards a smear:

Thus Gillard's policy, like everything else she has done since becoming Prime Minister, is aimed at giving the impression of being all things to all people - respectful and flattering to the ''decency and plain commonsense'' of those with whom she disagrees, while quietly reassuring those who know she is on their side that they'll get everything they want if they just keep mum until after the election.

C.S. Lewis would recognise her ploy of beguiling the masses with endless supplies of Turkish delight, just as her lookalike, actress Tilda Swinton, does as the White Witch, Jadis, who froze Narnia in the Hundred Years Winter.

Tilda Swinton? Why suddenly I'm warming to Gillard. Tilda Swinton's got style, and let's face it Narnia would be as dull as ditchwater if it relied on that gormless pathetic lion, and the silly terribly British children. Dear lord how I hated that long suffering righteous pompous supercilious gratuitously offensive and morally superior lion. And come to think of it, Turkish delight is much better than cake to have and to eat.

I'm still thinking of the best role for the Devine - you'd have to rule out cheerful beaver or lumbering bear, and think something more like a faun, bright and perky on the surface, and deeply dumb below.

Certainly C. S. Lewis would recognise her ploy of beguiling the masses with double edged sophistry, pretending she gives a stuff about climate change when she really doesn't believe in at all, and may therefore in the process lead Gaia into a hundred years summer.

Oh yes, stupid rhetorical points are so easy ...

But where was I? Well yes, it's the arrant nonsense of scribblers pretending that they care about climate change policy, and criticising Julia Gillard from the viewpoint of people who actually do care about where the world might be heading. Here's one such firm critic adopting a quite reasonable point of view:

Julia Gillard's new climate policy released yesterday is a marvel to behold. A melange of bewitching hokery-pokery and beguiling flummery, it is designed to get her through the election unscathed, with a tinkling laugh and a confident toss of the red head. Orwell could not have crafted it better. Lo, a new climate change commission to propagandise the people … er, ''explain'' the science of climate change.

Behold, a ''citizens' assembly'' of 150 ''randomly selected'' volunteers to deliberate for a year on whether Australia should have an emissions trading scheme. The chosen ones will be subjected to a ''rigorous process'' to establish consensus, Gillard said. After 12 months of duchessing, subtle bullying and brainwashing, what kind of consensus will materialise? ''If I am wrong, and that group of Australians is not persuaded of the case for change, then that should be a clear warning bell that our community has not been persuaded as deeply as required about the need for transformational change.''

As required by whom? And by what sinister means are we to be more ''deeply'' persuaded?

No mind that we already have a citizens' assembly - a democratically elected Parliament.

Yes, I know, that's Miranda the Devine, pretending that deep down she gives a toss, when in reality she's just a tosser.

She immediately undoes her imitation of criticism from the left by heading off on a Greens conspiracy rant. By golly, if the Greens get the balance of power, never mind climate change, the end of the world is nigh in almost every area:

There's a lot more Brown and the Greens want if Labor wins: mandated zero net greenhouse gas emissions, the effective end of coal-fired power generation, phasing out of coal exports, a ban on new coalmines or power stations, removal of GM crops, and active discouragement of cars. They want a ban on the exploration, mining and export of uranium, and closure of the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, which produces medical isotopes used for cancer treatment. They want to restrict funding of private schools. They want to abolish mandatory detention of asylum seekers, and to expand the definition of refugee to include ''environmental'' or ''sexuality'' refugees. They want to legislate for same-sex marriage, tinker with age of consent laws, establish ''intersex'' as a legal gender, fund gender reassignment, require government to consult lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex people on policy, and provide easier access to abortion. On drugs, they are harm minimisation all the way, with more needle exchange programs and injecting rooms. And be prepared for a barrage of nanny-statism, starting with a ban on junk food advertising.

And all in the first month of government! But hang on, I see the Greens haven't got a policy which will prevent the bulk of hot air currently escaping in to the atmosphere ... banning the blathering of the chattering classes on the ABC. Yep, Tim Blair, Janet Albrechtsen and Miranda the Devine ...

Because you see it's the result of the government blowing in the wind of blather from the likes of Devine that they've invented their current gormless policies on climate change, which have flowed on from three years of gormless inaction and dithering in a most hapless way.

Meanwhile, by outlining Greens policies in such a cogent way, the Devine makes the best case yet for a vote for the Greens ... unless of course like Tony Abbott you're threatened by gay people, or like the Labor party threatened by the thought of what people might say or think or do if you actually worked towards gay marriage ... Or recognise that you might actually talk to gay people about policy. Quelle horreur ...

Meanwhile, on another planet, Is Climate Change Leading To Super Marmots? Silly scientists, don't they realise there's no such thing as climate change. The super marmots are just eating too much. They're having their cake and eating it too ...

But at least it gives me the perfect role for the Devine in the next Narnia film. Can't you just see her as a super marmot? Feasting on Turkish delight ...

(Below: a Rocky Mountain marmot, found in Climate Change creating 'super marmots' that are bigger and more abundant ... another example of Tilda Swinton as scientist?)