In which conservative columnist Gerard Henderson endorses the leaders of United States and Canadian trade unions ...

(Above: yes, and never shoot the stool pigeon either).

As a special treat, the pond recommends attending to James Curran's exceptional denunciation of the significance of the full to overflowing intertubes, as featured in Counterpoint's The Internet: Prophecy and Reality.

Along with it comes a special commendation to Paul Comrie-Thomson, who, without flinching -immediately after the good professor's anti-tubes tirade - explained that his conclusions were available by podcast or streaming online by visiting the Counterpoint website.

This really is most problematic, and the pond proposes that you telegram the good professor to demand a copy of his talk, delivered expeditiously by carrier pigeon to the antipodes.

There's way too much idle talk of fast communication and distribution of information on the world wide web when in reality the noble carrier pigeon has never been displaced as a vehicle for change ...

Or perhaps you could just settle for listening to Patrick Cook, who month by month becomes more crazed in his ranting. And to think he was once a satirical cartoonist. What on earth would his old persona make of his new incarnation as a zealot and ideologue of the ripest, richest kind, as he too lines up to warn that everything is lost as a result of the Bolt affair?

Never mind, today is our favourite day, when Gerard "prattling Polonius" Henderson comes out to frolic, and lordy lordy, does he whip up a prattle in Unions choose masters over members in carbon tax.

He opens right away with a challenge:

Now, here's a test. Name one leading trade union figure in the US or Canada who is calling for a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme (including the cap-and-trade version). Just one.

Being perverse the pond thought this might make a splendid header. Conservative columnist Gerard Henderson endorses leading US and Canadian trade union leadership ...

In reality of course in the United States in recent years trade unions have been so pummelled, abused and disregarded and turned into the enemy ruining the country that it's hard to get a squeak out of them about anything ...

But being a mug punter, we immediately took up the challenge, and what do you know, we discovered there was a vast international conspiracy to introduce cap and trade by stealth, as climate alarmist US states partner with foreign governments to produced booming cap and trade schemes at a regional and state level. (here).

Shocked and disturbed to the very core, the pond trotted off to the Blue Green Alliance to learn that there was in fact a national strategic partnership between labor unions and environmental organisations dedicated to a green economy, and worst, most horrendous of all, a policy statement proposing the application of an economy wide cap and trade system.

And who are these ruffians, these reprobates? Well there's the United Steelworkers and the American Federation of Teachers and the Amalgamated Transit Union, and so on and so forth (listed here), and dammit there's a whole page listing the workers in the alliance here.

Dammit, there's more beavers beavering away than you'd need to get a hat factory ticking over with pelts ... Pick a name, any name will do, pick a union, any union will do ..

Along the way we stumbled across Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiatives, and a mob called Carbon Capitalists who were quick to make a quick buck out of market-driven solutions for a bright green world, and we could have done the same for Canada, but at this point we were tired.

An epic bout of five minutes of googling and names and companies and strategies and policy platforms and unions and communities tumbling around, all concerned about climate science and a green planet, and suddenly we wondered what planet Henderson might be on.

The fact is that no prominent member of any North American union is advocating such policy. Nor has action on climate change been embraced by the employee organisations' key bodies - the American AFL-CIO and the Canadian Labour Congress.

Uh huh. That'd be the AFL-CIO that back in 2009 said this:

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says the bill, as currently marked up, “makes significant, job-creating investments, while attempting to minimize impacts on existing workers.”

The AFL-CIO supports cap-and-trade legislation that takes a balanced approach towards an economy wide-program and prevents foreign competitors from getting advantages over American companies. (here).

Well a lot of tea party water has flown over the union bridges since then, and in 2010 the talk was of a just transition to a green economy , but even in March 2011 the AFL-CIO blog was denying the climate deniers and referring readers across to the Blue Green Alliance (here).

The thing is of course that the United States has had a wretched, heat laden, wildfire stricken summer, and people are paying attention not just to the weather, but to the climate, but you wouldn't have the first clue about any of this if you kept your reading to the cherry picking likes of Henderson.

It is a favourite tactic, when intent on formenting a sense of fear and disadvantage and distrust to play off one party against another, and so Henderson spends the rest of his column in an entirely predictable way explaining why nothing is being done, nothing can be done, nothing should be done, no one in the United States or Canada is doing anything, nor will they ever do anything, and why is Australia being a world leader, as if somehow Europe and its assorted trading schemes have suddenly ceased to exist.

And then of course, having done this troop through the wilderness comes a warning of impending catastrophe:

Last week the governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, warned that the world could be facing its worst-ever financial crisis. This is hardly a time for Australia to be a world leader in implementing a carbon tax. Warburton understands the potential job losses involved in such a risk strategy. His position seems to be understood by trade union leaders in the US and Canada - but not in Australia.

Yep the worst-ever financial crisis of all time.

Do nothing, sit in your bunkers, quivering and quaking. We're all going to be unemployed, we're all going to be rooned, we'll be out shooting rabbits soon enough like they did in the great depression (well at least those of us who kept our guns in our own cold dead hands and out of the grasping hands of conservatives like John Howard).

This is the kind of rhetoric you find coming from the wilder shores of climate science true believers. The apocalyptic reason for action (or inaction as the Henderson case may be) is because we're all doomed, and in fifty years time the waters may be lapping around Penrith, creating a handy beach for survivors bunkered in the Blue Mountains.

On any average day, Henderson would be out savaging these wild-eyed prophets for their fear and doom mongering, yet he cheerfully deploys the same strategies when it comes to discussing a carbon tax.

The trouble for Henderson and his commentariat kind is that distorting and putting a spin on information is no longer as easy as it once was.

A statement made in passing - about the position of trade union leaders in the United States and Canada - can't then be picked up as a piece of four be two, and used to beat the heads of Australian unions.

Not when it's so reprehensibly misinformed and so wilfully distorting the reality of what is happening on the ground in those two countries (yes you can nod off to sleep either reading Henderson or Some Responses to the Challenge of Climate Change by North American Labour, in pdf form). And amusingly, if you do the google, Henderson's column bobs up right alongside all the other bits and pieces you'll discover showing he hasn't bothered to do his own bit of googling before issuing his rhetorical challenge ...

One way or another, this surfeit of information brings us back to James Curran, and the useless role the full to overflowing intertubes plays in our lives.

Clearly Curran is right, because Gerard Henderson nobly demonstrates that the news arriving by carrier pigeon about climate change is more than enough to write an up to date column ...

(Below: dammit, we just love carrier pigeons. Here's a few shots of carrier pigeon carriers in the first world war. More here, but remember, don't rely on the intertubes, get a carrier pigeon to carry the pictures, they're quicker and more reliable).