Miranda Devine, and how to kick the climate science can down the Satanist street ...

(Above: Miranda Devine. Watch the Devine dance on the head of a pin in relation to climate science in 2010 on Q&A at YouTube here).

While New South Wales writhes under the influence of La Niña, Texas currently languishes under one of the worst droughts in its recorded history.

It's being going on for a year, and the most recent headlines have concerned Texan rice growers missing out on water (For first time, drought keeps thousands of Texas rice farmers from getting irrigation water).

It's also giving migratory birds a hard time (Texas drought twists migrations of many birds).

Naturally enough, there's been speculation about the complications or amplification that climate change might have produced in what the state's climatologist proposes is a one in five hundred or a thousand years event (Warming-enhanced Texas Drought Is Once in 500 or 1,000 Years).

No doubt somewhere in Texas, there's a rough equivalent of Miranda the Devine looking out the window, and wondering what it all means. And making just as much sense as the Devine:

If you ever wanted proof of the collective insanity caused by climate alarmism, just look out the window.

We were told to expect endless drought. Instead, it’s been raining buckets all summer, and the dams are now full to overflowing. (Lies, dam lies and statistics)

Now how to write it up in Texas at the moment?

If you ever wanted proof of the collective insanity caused by climate alarmism, just look out the window.

We were told to expect endless rain as El Nino kicked in while Australia suffered from dought. Instead, it’s been dry as dust all summer, and the rice farmers can't get their rice in the ground, and the birds are in a flap.

The point, I suppose, is the gratuitously stupid reference to climate alarmism, as if climate science by its nature is alarmist, as opposed to observing trends in climate, and trying to make sense of them.

But it's the suggestion that you look out the window that really gets to the pond. Why not look at the horizon line and determine that the world is flat? Why not look at a monkey's uncle and determine there is no missing link?

The Devine, as usual, isn't interested in sense, or in making a scientific argument (see video).

All the Devine is interested in bashing is Bob Carr, who somehow how has become a "deep green" (this caused much chortling at the pond), and idle chatter about deluded greenies demonising dams.

It's always interesting to look at the rhetoric the Devine deploys when making her usual case for dams:

This is what humans have been doing since the dawn of civilisation. But under the yoke of those who want to turn the clock back on civilisation, we now view dams as Satan’s work, and no politician dares risk the wrath of the Greens.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s critics like to accuse him of being rooted in the 1950s, but Greens leader Bob Brown and his acolytes are stuck in pre-history.

We were so busy bowing to the voodoo of mathematical models purporting to predict drastic climate change that our craven political leaders didn’t even contemplate the thought that droughts always break.

Satan and voodoo. Now there's a knock-down, calm, peer reviewed case to suggest climate science is some sort of New Orleans graveyard ritual. Are there zombies involved as well?

But that's the Devine way, to politicise the science, invoke Satan, blather about mathematical models, and not offer a shred of evidence to the contrary.

The Devine scores a couple of political points, one being the standard one about Tim Flannery, the long absent god's great gift to denialists, yammering on about how Australia would be bereft of rain in the future.

And then there's the matter of Bob Carr, the man who over ten years delivered great panem et circenses, and did everything he could to avoid sensible infrastructure planning.

It was Carr who delivered the desalination plant with a great wave of his hand, and from Dubai of all places, as if somehow Sydney was on the path to becoming a desert like Dubai. (Carr makes surprise desalination announcement, Carr backs desalination project).

Carr was tone deaf when it came to infrastructure, but he loved to set up PP projects in a way that ensured the private part could always socialise its losses, and privatise its profits. Call it new Labor of a capitalist kind ... no wonder they helped him out with a gig at Macquarie.

But just because Carr's a gherkin, and Flannery a rhetorical minefield, does that license the kind of tabloid speech that the Devine deploys in relation to climate science?

Collective insanity? Satan's work? Voodoo of mathematical models?

There is a solution of course.

The Devine could just bugger off to Texas, and hunker down in prayer with Governor Perry, and see how that helps sort out the implications of climate science ...

What a wasteland the tabloids are.

Not even a new dam on the Shoalhaven could save us from Devine's parched, poisonous conflation of politics and science ... just look out the window, and you'll see what I mean.

Meanwhile, speaking of Q&A and its relentless desire to feature the conservative commentariat, the pond remains fixated with Janet Albrechtsen's dress sense.

Here's Albrechtsen noted by the pond on Q&A awhile ago:

And here's Janet Albrechtsen featured on last Monday's Q&A:

Notice anything?

Given the hard time the pond's just doled out to Miranda the Devine, no doubt you might be expecting something beyond a fashion analysis involving chokers, Gustav Klimt, goths and Victorian trends, perhaps with a hint of Modigliani.

But in After the Ballot, all she said was "dreadful week for Labor", repeated over and over in infinitely variable ways, rather like Beethoven whipping up the Diabelli variations.

The pond can't wait to not watch Q&A tomorrow night, featuring Mark Steyn and Amanda Vanstone.

What is the point of this program, except to inflame passions, produce much heat and dust, worse than a Texas drought, and feature the likes of Barners, the Devine and Albrechtsen as stirrers.

Can't they do that while in the employ of Murdoch, or in Barners' case, by mounting a stump or blathering on in Parliament.

Sorry, the pond is proud to be fixated on Albrechtsen's dress sense, since when it comes to climate science, she too is bereft of insight. Unless you think Seeing through hoax of the century is a deep insight into climate and climate science ...

Sometimes, life is too short, sometimes trivia must rulez ... and good luck if you live on a sinking Torres Straight Island.