Janet Albrechtsen, Sir Paul Nurse, and what smokers need is a Frankenstein ...

(Above: a careful uncaricatured response to Sir Paul Nurse).

Watching Sir Paul Nurse's set of personal concerns being unveiled in Science Under Attack last night - it turned up on SBS when the pond was expecting to watch an incisive insight into the sex lives of the Nazi leadership, followed by an expose of J. Edgar Hoover's love of cross-dressing - it was immediately clear that the leadership of a vast international conspiracy had been uncovered.

It starts with the BBC, of course - that almost goes without saying - for providing the insidious platform, and Sir Paul Nurse himself, and the Royal Society for shamelessly exploiting it.

Oh sure, there was much talk of scientists being sceptical and examining the science on its merits and joining in the public debate and being transparent, and how there were kooks and cranks out there, who refused to accept vaccines might be useful, or that HIV caused AIDS, or that smoking and not yellow teeth caused cancer, and how climate science wasn't a vast international conspiracy of scientists.

Once you get this kind of denialism paraded in your face, it all gets too much. Right towards the end there was a sickening, disturbing moment when Sir Paul trots down into the basement of the Royal Society, and begins a shocking cultish worship of dead scientists and their books, including Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.

No wonder Cardinal Pell, and Tim Blair and Gerard Henderson and Janet Albrechtsen are so willing to expose the snake oil peddled by these cultists and their ancestor worship ... why it was worse than watching Bear Grylls drink the live pulsating blood of a reindeer, or George Pell feast on the blood and body of Christ.

Along the way, poor old James Delingpole copped a pounding, first by being unable to cope with a simple analogy, and then by revealing himself as a "interpreter of interpretations".

Naturally he responded to the show in fine style with the cartoon above, and with Sir Paul Nurse's big boo boo ...

It seems there were a couple of errors in the program, and worse still, these were acknowledged.

Well it's all ancient history now - the show last aired in the UK back in February - but how pleasing to see Sir Paul's request for civilised debate about scientific matters treated with the complete disdain and contempt it deserves. How pleasing to see the BBC and NASA revealed as stooges for a vast international conspiracy ...

Talk about a mad head ward nurse scissorhand or worse still a Frankenstein freak ...

Okay, that's the ye olde mad tea party out of the way.

Now it's time for ye newe mad tea party, with Janet Albrechtsen and Carbon debate has just begun.

What's most beguiling about Albrechtsen is the way the ground shifts every time there's an attempt to find solid rock.

Over the years, Albrechtsen has routinely suggested that climate science has got it wrong, and trotted around with the likes of Ian Plimer to prove the point. The earth's cooling, the earth's warming, but it's natural etc etc.

Naturally a vast inner city conspiracy is involved:

It is a natural part of our rich human nature to imagine the importance of man and to prefer neat answers. But much of the inner city debate is infused with a disconcerting arrogance that we understand everything, that the science of climate change is settled, that man is to blame and that man can and must fix it, regardless of the cost. (here, to quote myself, original link dead).

This is part of what might be called the varying levels of Bart Simpson denialism.

The climate science isn't settled, and the planet isn't warming, or experiencing change. Or if it is experiencing change, then it isn't the fault of carbon dioxide. Or if it is the fault of carbon dioxide, then it's not the fault of humanity chewing through resources, it's natural (the sun, the volcanoes), and if it is the fault of humanity, then there's nothing we can or should do about it, because that would mean joining in the international conspiracy involving scientists and inner city cardigan wearers.

The circular logic is impenetrable and infallible.

Here's where Albrechtsen has reached this week:

... the 500-strong audience who packed into Tattersalls Club last Wednesday was able to listen to Margaret Thatcher's former energy minister and then chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson explain why a carbon tax will not combat global warming.

Well yes, because global warming isn't happening, or if it is happening etc etc etc ...

After all, how can a carbon tax combat something that isn't happening?

A hearty dose of paranoia and conspiracy theory and repression and persecution should always accompany this kind of discussion:

The government, the Greens, climate change scientists and propagandists may wish it otherwise, but there is plenty left to say about a carbon tax and global warming. Speaking of debates, we had one of those rare events in Sydney last week. Rare because it's hard to recall a similar event where the pros and cons of a carbon tax have been so publicly debated. Far better than the government's 18-page spin document, real information was forthcoming when the Spectator Australia magazine and the Institute of Public Affairs conducted an Oxford-style debate where the motion was "a carbon tax is needed to combat global warming".

Uh huh. So let's get down to it:

We may argue about the degree of global warming and the level of human influence, but one thing is beyond question: it is a global phenomenon.

Say what? We may argue about it? That's it? That's all there is?

But if it is happening - not that we're saying it is - but if it, why surely it's a global phenomenon. Yep, weather and climate are global phenomenons.

Now with that kind of scientific insight, no wonder Albrechtsen is up there in the pantheon with Newton and Einstein.

Moving along, it doesn't take long for the antipodean version of the vast international conspiracy to turn up.

It seems no "taxpayer-funded talking heads" were willing to turn up to be ambushed by the Spectator and the Institute of Public Affairs-arranged talking heads - how strange - and as usual the ABC is front and centre in the conspiracy:

Equally disappointing is the refusal by our taxpayer-funded national broadcaster to interview Lawson, an economist and prominent member of the Thatcher government, on its premier political programs, ABC1's Lateline or 7.30 . While Lawson did speak with ABC Radio National's Fran Kelly and the debate will be broadcast on ABC1 at some point, Aunty's main political forums rebuffed Lawson. What are they afraid of?

The real question might be, what are the viewers/listeners bored by?

Or perhaps we should just quote Gerard Henderson:

This was just one of the many improper and unprofessional interventions by British politicians and diplomats in the Australian domestic debate in recent years. Just imagine what the same journalists would have said if, say, George Bush had written to Rudd with gratuitous advice on climate change policy.

Indeed, Gerard. Just imagine what journalists and you would say reading Janet Albrechtsen demanding that the ABC be turned into a platform for a one time British politician and full time denialist! (Sceptics hall of shame!)

Moving right along, in any other discussion of climate change, being an economist would be a surefire route to hell and damnation.

Here's Albrechtsen in Apocalypse Soon? sneering at the esteemed economist Ross Garnaut and his report:

... will the media provide a pulpit for preaching about Garnaut's report, rather than a platform for debate? Listening to the dogmatic certainty of some climate change zealots, you get the distinct impression that the Garnaut Report will be treated as a climate change Bible.

Note the neat flip. Garnaut is part of the zealotry, involved in a kind of biblical crusade, while all the doubting Thomases do is sit on the sidelines and construct a Gospel of Thomas which isn't allowed into the official text.

So what happens when you refuse to indulge in a theological debate, as one did at the Spectator/IPA follies, haplessly teamed with John Hewson and Mark Latham (well at least he didn't cop Mo and Curly)?

When the climate scientist rose to speak in favour of a carbon tax, McNeill told the audience he would not talk about the science. The audience murmured a quiet "huh?". And herein lies the problem. The climate change scientists prefer not to engage dissenters about the science.

What a spoil sport, refusing to indulge in a glib two minute summary and repeat over and over again by rote that which dissenters don't want to hear, or if they hear, hear only so they can cherry pick away ...

Where did he think he was? In the company of faithful true believers, where trying to have a rational discussion with climate science deniers ... or Janet Albrechtsen ... would be a model of scientific discourse?

Denialists? Moi?

Actually, Lawson is not a denier and the emergence of a carbon tax does not end the debate about the science. Science is an ongoing journey of contestable ideas where even dissenting voices should be openly debated.

Not a denier? Perhaps just Full of hot air ... arguing the case for a carbon tax over climate trading!

Yep, scribbled like a true blue lawyer trained, contestable, dissenting member of The Australian's coterie of commentariat debaters ...

Next week, why scientists should indulge in an ongoing journey of contestable ideas where smoking doesn't cause lung cancer is discussed, and where openly dissenting intelligent designers nee creationists have their eminent scientific ideas openly debated one more time, as if Darwin ever settled the science or ended the debate about the theory of evolution ...

Well you know where this is heading.

Climate science is wrong, there is no warming, and if there is, it isn't caused by carbon dioxide, or if it is, humans aren't responsible for the carbon dioxide, and if they are, there's no point in doing anything about it, we should just learn to live with it and pay the damages bill and just go on doing what we love to do, which is loot and pillage the earth, and the devil take the hind most, and anyway the Chinese are to blame, if not the Indians, and never mind we do it more per capita than anyone else, and who cares if the seas get a little acidic ... (hang on, don't close that gate to the gated community right by the golf course just yet, I'm coming, I'm coming).

Meanwhile, let's pause for the one genuine moment of comedy, as reported by Albrechtsen. Apparently Mark Latham was on the side of the debate that was supposed to be arguing for a carbon tax:

He likened the carbon tax to a government trying to tax cigarettes by giving most of the tax dollars back to smokers, compensating the handful of tobacco companies who were required to pay the tax and not requiring many other tobacco companies to pay anything. How, asked Latham, can the Gillard government claim a conviction about global warming when it has an ersatz policy that does nothing to change human behaviour?

Thank the lord they arranged to get a speaker so strongly in favour of a carbon tax!

And the lesson Albrechtsen draws from this tirade in favour of a carbon tax?

These are questions that the government cannot answer. To do so is to destroy their case for a carbon tax.

Indeed. They might even be questions that Tony Abbott can't answer, because to do so would destroy his case for shovelling money down the throats of the big carbon polluters, in the process forgetting the pitiful "carbon smokers" altogether ...

And if nothing else, smoking makes a nice tidy metaphor for the IPA, still waging a splendid war on behalf of the right of smokers to kill themselves, and via passive smoking, kill others:

Many of us may not agree with the habit of smoking, but there are inherent risks in the majority of us consenting to the fiscal and regulatory exploitation of a minority of smokers.

(Nanny State Thriving On Tax Harvested From Smokers).

Yep, the IPA and Janet Albrechtsen and Mark Latham, fighting for the rights of smokers so they don't lose the right to smoking as a metaphor while exploring the science of climate change ...

Hang on, what's that? Did someone mention science? Phew, thank the lord the pond is a science free zone.

And there's silly old Sir Paul Nurse burbling about yellow teeth and lung cancer.

Sheesh, he might have a Nobel prize in something or other, but talk about a Frankenstein ...

(Below: Frankenstein's monster walks and talks ...

... Oh and an oldie but a goodie, which manages to summarise Janet Albrechtsen's argument that doing nothing is best because there's nothing about which something needs to be done).