One more time with feeling, the royal wedding, climate change in the lizard Oz, and Barners strikes again ...

(Above: the slogan of choice for UK malcontents).

In the run up to the royal wedding, the pond is pleased to bring yet another report on the House of Windsor, this time Jonathan Freedland's Windsor Knot, in The New York Review of Books (and happily outside the paywall).

Friedland leads with a natural - a lavish wedding just at the time the coalition government's austerity measures begin to bite - but then finds more fun with Prince Andrew, his appearance in WikiLeaks, his willingness to host Saif Qaddafi, his peculiar relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and then seventeen year old girl Virginia Roberts, a specialist in 'erotic massages' at the centre of a case involving soliciting an underage girl for prostitution (Prince Andrew and the 17-year-old girl his sex offender friend flew to Britain to meet him):

And that's just for starters. There's Fergie and then there's Chuck, and bewilderment at the way the brand keeps surviving, and an ominous note about how the brand will suffer when the current Queen goes:

This is the bedrock on which the current monarchy stands. While the Queen lives, no republican will be able to shake it. After she is gone, she will leave a gap that her son, her grandson, and his new wife—no matter how charming—will have to struggle to fill.

But not to worry, the antipodes loves a wedding, including the women's magazines intent on defaming the intelligence of all women, and this isn't just another dull royal loon site, and so with a brisk canter and a "view halloo" we trot off to check out the royalty topping excesses of the anonymous editorialist in The Australian.

As always, the subject is science, and with it climate change science, and the anon edit makes a grand show of welcoming the appointment of Ian Chubb as the chief scientist. (Science, politics and certainty).

Amongst the bon mots delivered in the process by the anon edit:

The intersection between politics and science is always complex: politics demands certainty but science is, by its very nature, contestable.

Which perhaps should receive the gherkin of the year award, because politics is by its very nature always contestable. That's why there are elections, which it turns out, happen to be contests, involving contestable opinions, arguments and positions. A politician who demands certainty is by definition a politician doomed to failure ...

For someone to scribble something so profoundly stupid, there must be some undercurrent at work, right?

In the climate change debate, some scientists have become advocates for particular positions, painting worse-case scenarios when robust analysis would have been more valuable. Professor Chubb made it clear on ABC TV's 7.30 on Tuesday night that debating and challenging scientists and their work is part of the way that science should inform policy.

Uh huh, it's just more of the righteous sanctimonious stirring of the mud which has been a feature of the rag's work in the area of climate science. You see, the rag has just been nobly involved in a debate, in much the same way as presenting intelligent design as a valid scientific theory is just part of challenging scientists and their work.

Remember the good old days when Brendan Nelson touted the notion that intelligent design should be taught in science classes. By 'the old days' we mean 2005, and Nelson produced a fine bout of agitated alarm - see Intelligent design not science: experts - and in due course Nelson had to make a strategic retreat, but not the private religious schools still funded by the taxpayer dollar, and still preaching creationism as a valid alternative scientific view of the world.

At Pacific Hills Christian School in Dural intelligent design is taught in science classes. The school's principal, Ted Boyce, said he was not persuaded by the Australian scientists' and teachers' stance and it was appropriate to teach it as an alternative explanation for the origin of humanity.

"We believe it is as valid to do that as to teach evolution. It would be unacademic and unscientific not to do so," Dr Boyce said.

Yep, it's unacademic and unscientific not to preach the Bible in science classes. They too later backed away at a fast rate of knots, as reported in Creationism v science: school on report, but don't imagine these Xian leopards have changed their taxpayer funded creationist teaching spots.

Now where we with The Australian's anon edit?

He (Chubb) will do the nation a service if he succeeds in generating a genuine public conversation about science to replace the polarised debate that has dominated in recent years.

You mean replace the mindless, aggressive, misleading, deliberately perverse coverage of climate science in the Murdoch rags, culminating in The Punch's publicising of a $10,000 prize to prove climate science is real, as genuinely a polarising campaign as we've seen in recent years ... replace years of that nonsense with a genuine public conversation?

Dear sweet absent lord, the anon edit, leader of the most polarised debate in the past decade has the cheek to talk of polarised debate? Whisk me off to the madhatter's tea party Jeeves ...

But okay, let's take the anon edit at his or her word (I know, I know, reading the anon edit is like reading some third rate hack hiding behind a pseudonym in a blog) and see how an unpolarised debate works.

Let's trot off to today's very short effort by Graham Lloyd, Environment editor, and Furphy gives debate needed reality check.

If claims of climate calamity over periods as short as five years can be so wrong, what hope is there of securing widespread public support for expensive action to stop problems predicted to occur in 100 years?

Yep, somehow, and without any science to back him, Lloyd manages to ship the impact and effects of global warming off to a hundred years in the future. Why a hundred years? I really have no idea. Why not fifty? Why not seventy five and a half? What about the devil's number, clicketty clix, sixty six? Come to think of it, is there anything wrong with sixty nine?

Here's how you have your cake and eat it at the same time, or lift yourself up by your boot laces. First you talk of all that's gone wrong:

Observation has always been the ultimate scientific reality check; in this case, the refugee exodus did not happen. Exaggerated claims of sea-level rises, melting ice caps and displaced populations have clearly damaged public confidence in the credibility of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and undermined acceptance of the core scientific concern about unchecked build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere.

And then you revert to the welcome need for discussion of uncertainties:

Belated recognition of this fact has prompted welcome discussion of the uncertainties of climate science among scientific bodies.

And then you hint ever so gently that perhaps there is a mild cause for some minor concern:

The refugee furphy may be another high-profile case of climate change chickens coming home to roost, but it does not mean that all of the scientific concerns are misplaced nor prove that unchecked CO2 emissions are not a problem or that global warming is not real.

But not to worry, expensive action is only needed for problems predicted to occur in a hundred years, so everyone can yammer away to their hearts' content in the meantime, and do bugger all about it. For fear that otherwise they might end up being lumped in with Al Gore ...

It's just another day in the self-justifying, self-righteous world of the Murdoch press, and the wonder is that the pond each day manages to be surprised at how they do it.

Well if you want an alternative view of problems a hundred years in the future, or perhaps fifty, or possibly twenty, why not trot off to NASA, which inter alia reports on such things as warming oceans, shrinking ice sheets, declining Arctic sea ice, glacial retreat, extreme events, and ocean acidification.

These are, according to NASA scientists, happening now, but what would they know, being mere scientists. They need to join in a cheerful conversation with The Australian, instead of leading with such polarising debating points ...

Meanwhile, in our Barners watch, news comes of the Barners' Tony Windsor challenge getting independent state MP Richard Torbay agitated, as he too was eyeing off New England as a plum job.

And Barners has also got WA Senator Alan Eggleston astounded - and upset - for suggesting to Liberals the Liberal position on the constitutional recognition of local government - which might be kosher for Labor and the Nationals, but not for Liberals. (Liberal heat casts haze over Joyce's ambitions). (No correspondence on the use of 'got' please ... I got taught well in Tamworth).

You have to hand it to Barnaby Joist.

Even an elephant in a dunny could point the percy at the porcelain and cause less of a splash on a daily basis. (apologies to Barry McKenzie)

(Below: and now we turn to Bazza for an informed view of the upcoming wedding).