Janet Albrechtsen, and why bother with a scientist when you can call on Lady Thatcher ...

(Above: a well known foreign-born communist agitator intent on an international socialist conspiracy).

There's nothing like the sight of Peter "Short Memory" Garrett ducking and weaving and defending the school chaplain program, and thereby the very best efforts of John Howard, in the face of criticism by the Commonwealth ombudsman, to be reminded that the Tweedledum and Tweedledee theory of politics is alive and well (School chaplains program faces fresh criticism).

Throw in the Malaysian solution, and John Murphy breaking from the back bench and the policy wilderness to urge a referendum on gay marriage (Labor backbencher wants gay marriage referendum), and you have a solid trifecta.

Doug Cameron is quoted as saying he respects Mr. Murphy's opinion but doesn't agree with it, but the pond finds it hard to lather up much by way of respect, at least when Murphy offers this kind of rhetoric:

"The families that I talk to, they want a mother and a father," he said.

"They don't want two fathers and they don't want two mothers.

Actually the pond doesn't want dodo Labor politicians.

Every day, and in every way, New York seems like a better place to live.

But the pond's beat is the commentariat, and who could ignore Janet Albrechtsen's heroic defence of Margaret Thatcher against the ravages of Julia Gillard and Malcolm Turnbull in Julia and Malcolm, would you please stop verballing Mrs Thatcher.

It seems those peas in a pod, those horrendous harridans, big Mal and Julia, have entirely misrepresented Margaret Thatcher on climate change, and in particular failed to pay heed to the views she expressed in her memoirs.

It seems Ms Thatcher's giving the slightest, remotest credence to climate science was all a political ploy:

Thatcher's early views about global warming were intrinsically linked to her rational pursuit of nuclear power to prevent the coalminers unions holding the nation to ransom.

And as soon as she'd achieved these cynical short-term manipulations and abuses, she had a change of heart:

And, as she acknowledges in her memoirs, when the facts about global warming became less certain, so did her own views. But you may not have heard that from Gillard or Turnbull either.

Uh huh. Actually there's something moving, ironic, or perhaps profoundly tragic at the sight of Janet Albrechtsen wallowing in nostalgia and resorting to Thatcher's memoirs (The Downing Street Years 1993 and The Path to Power 1995) as a way of conducting the climate science wars by proxy down the ages.

Albrechtsen proves she's not much of a Thatcherite, by confusing Statecraft, published in 2002, as the "second volume of her memoirs", when but a few moments consulting Dr. Google would have reminded her that it was more a final cri de coeur fundie neo con tract, before the darkness settled and it was announced that Thatcher would be making no more public speeches because of 'ill health' (and you can cop a review of that work by that prime goose Chris Patten here under the header The lady's not discerning).

Never mind the sloppiness.

The result is interminable (wearisomely protracted) blather, as in "an interminable sermon", or as the dictionary offers by way of alternatives, being or seeming to be without an end, endless, tiresomely long, tedious (here).

Thatcher serves as a convenient coat peg, with Albrechtsen using Statecraft to mount a rear guard action for fear, uncertainty and doubt in the matter of climate science, without ever getting down to any troublesome or worrisome specifics.

It's all part of The Australian's war on science, but the challenge for the likes of Deltoid would be to find any actual science, since Albrechtsen prefers generalities to lather up the soap suds. You know, like 'embracing public debate', or being sceptical, or warning of 'global warming alarmists', or wondering where the science went and why it isn't available to leaders, and warning against socialism, and talking of vast international conspiracies:

She said global warming provided a "marvellous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism". Have Gillard or Turnbull mentioned that?

Um actually perhaps big Mal or Julia were being a little discreet, rather than invoking Thatcher-ite paranoid fantasies about world-wide conspiracies of a socialist kind.

After all that begins to sound a little too eerily like a crazed Norwegian gunman:

In a section of his manifesto entitled “Green is the new Red — Stop Enviro-Communism!”, Breivik writes:

“The neo-communist agenda uses politicised science to propagate the global warming scam in order to implement their true agenda; global Marxism.

“You might know them as environmentalists, enviro-communists, eco-Marxists, neo-Communists or eco-fanatics. They all claim they want to save the world from global warming but their true agenda is to contribute to create a world government lead by the UN or in other ways increase the transfer of resources (redistribute resources) from the developed Western world to the third world.

“They are using our trust and faith in science to spread lies and hysteria that will allow Marxists to implement socialist — solutions to a problem that never actually existed.” (The Breivik manifesto and the Monckton connection).

Lord Monckton has also peddled this kind of world conspiracy tosh, and of course believing in it or sprouting it or hinting at it doesn't turn you into a crazed Norwegian gunman. But as noted on these pages before, Albrechtsen herself has peddled this kind of international socialist conspiracy tosh, faithfully recycling the views of Monckton, and even if the black helicopters were absent, the paranoia seems heartfelt.

It also happens to fit exactly into the pattern that sees science and scientists reviled as part of a conspiracy to undermine the truths dearly held by conservatives, a heroic tradition which began long before Galileo copped it from the church, and Darwin copped it from the church, and Einstein copped it from the McCarthyites, and will no doubt continue into the future, since none are so blind as those who want to treat science as a sounding board for politics or theology ...

But the big question is why Albrechtsen has now been forced to revert to Lady Thatcher, and in the process abjured one time favourite Christopher Monckton?

Sad to say the Viscount's antipodean tour has futtered and sputtered and is spent, and all we know now is that Debrett's suggest that in conversation a Viscount should be referred to as a Lord. But heck, we always throw in the written form too, since a lord is a lord is a lord and as sweet smelling as any rose ...

Worst of all, not a peep nor a mention from Albrechtsen celebrating the Viscount's enlightenment tour. She seems content instead to wander down glory road, and wallow in the past, and celebrate how that eminent scientist Lady Thatcher laid waste the essence of global science back in 2002.

You have to wonder if Albrechtsen is going a tad soft, wreathed in a nostalgic glow and yearning (James, make sure the fill light has a yellow filter) for the good old days when rascals like Al Gore could be given a few stout-hearted blows and the job was done.

These days you have to head over to Menzies House, happy sponsors of the Monckton Follies Tour Down Under, for truly feral madness, and we can find no better case of pot and kettle and pot claiming white is black than in this little outburst in All Climate Sceptics are like Breivik: The Progressive Left.

Yep, there are the usual references, to Charlie Manson believing in climate science, and to people who think there might be something to climate science being painted as having Mao, Che and Stalin as their idols.

Oh there's a fine flurry of group think and smear chatter and then this:

Politicians like Julia Gillard who won’t even extend the courtesy to meet the President of the Czech Republic who happens to think the climate science is bunk. They have politicised the science and they wonder why there is now so much blowback from the general public who can smell a scam a mile away.

Truly, this is a profoundly post-ironic piece of ironism which makes post-modernism seem like the work of Lear's fool.

Only at Menzies House could you find such splendid ironism in its full, completely inane form. To be able to juxtapose "climate science is bunk" with "they have politicised the science" is so artful it must serve as a warning to Janet Albrechtsen that she needs to step up to the plate, or the young pups will do her down.

It's not enough now to talk of global socialist conspiracies. You must also mention that thousands of scientists involved in the vast international conspiracy to install the United Nations supreme government, as warned of by that prescient socialist George Orwell, have as their heroes Mao, Che and Stalin ...

Or something like that.

It surely makes big Mal's calm, considered plea for actual attention to the actual science seem like the deluded ravings of someone incapable of considering the new world of abuse:

... this war on science and on scientists which is being conducted is much worse than the case of person who ignores his doctor’s advice and follows the advice of his friend down the pub, drawing on the life experience of the fortunate Uncle Ernie.

Because the consequences of getting our response to climate change wrong will not likely be felt too severely by us, or at least not most of us, but will be felt painfully and cruelly by the generations ahead of us. And the people in the world who will suffer the most cruelly will be the poorest and the people who have contributed the least to the problem. There is an enormous injustice here. When people try and suggest to you that climate change is not a moral issue, they are wrong. It is an intensely moral issue raising grave moral issues.

Those of us who do not believe the CSIRO is part of an international Green conspiracy to undermine Western civilisation or do not believe that leading scientists like Will Steffen are subversives should not be afraid to speak out, and loudly, on behalf of our scientists and our science. We must not allow ourselves to be deluded on this issue. (you can find the rest of big Mal's eminently moderate and therefore despicable speech here).

Well you won't find much attention to actual scientists or science at Janet Albrechtsen - not when she can disinter the views of the eminent scientist Margaret Thatcher as convincing proof - of what we can't be quite sure - and you'll find even less of it at Menzies House, where when in doubt you reach for Charlie Manson, Stalin, Che, Mao, and for all we know, big Mal himself as convincing evidence the black helicopters are coming ...

So what have we learned today, apart from how to call a Viscount a Lord?

Yep, it's the scientists who've politicised the debate ...

Need we remind you in the immortal words of John E. Rankin of the mighty state of Mississippi that Einstein was a "foreign-born agitator" who sought "to further the spread of Communism throughout the world" (Albert Einstein's political views).

Yep, as a result, E=MC² has been revealed as a monstrous socialist conspiracy.

There, you can go about your business, thanking the absent lord for Janet Albrechtsen, Margart Thatcher, The Australian and its war on science, Lord Monckton and Menzies House ...

Feel better, somehow less ideological, more scientific?

(Below: a cartoon).