The Terror tackles climate science ...

(Above: their master's voice)


You could have knocked the pond down with a feather.

This very day Daily Terror has gone tree-hugging, hippie, greenie, Nimbin-loving feral:

There is almost no doubt that climate change is occurring, and very little that human activity is a contributor.

Oh sure, they slip in an "almost" and a "very little" to hedge their bets, but it seems the debate is now about what to do about the menace.

It seems the IPCC isn't a United Nations conspiracy:

...the latest projections from the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change on the potential impacts of long-term temperature rises provides valuable data and insights into the areas affected and thus some clues as to what policy settings might most accurately and efficiently address the problem.

Valuable data and insights from the belly of the beast? That international conspiracy to introduce a world government (thanks for the warning Janet Albrechtsen) is now providing clues to policy settings?

What to do, what to do?

The key, therefore, is to facilitate a market-based mechanism which does not punish producers at a delicate time for our economy but rather enhances competition and encourages new technologies that in time can deliver clean and affordable electricity for consumers. 

A market-based mechanism?

What, you mean like a price on carbon?

Oh surely not ...

By this point, the pond was rolling Jaffas down the aisle. Could the anon editorialist top this?

Most important is that all sides of the debate approach the problem in a measured, rational and sensible way. Otherwise what kind of world are we trying to save?

Yep, the rag that has killed many trees demonising climate science and celebrating the thoughts of climate science deniers like Akker Dakker and the Bolter, and who reduced a federal election to the level of Hogan's Heroes is now calling for a measured, rational and sensible debate. (it's all here in the bizarre editorial Cool heads should rule).

Of course it's only because the Terror is claiming an exclusive:

It's not an exclusive of course - it's also been given a run by the reptiles at the lizard Oz, and in the HUN, and the Courier-Mail.

And the original report, as noted by that expert dissembler Graham Lloyd, had raised these matters in relation to Australia:

For Australia, the report says to expect more of the same. Temperature rise predictions mirror the global average. Sea levels will continue to rise faster than the global average in northern areas due in part to ocean currents. Heatwaves are going to last longer and be hotter, big rain storms will become more frequent and more intense. 
While northern Australia will get more rainfall, the south, southwest and Tasmania will continue to get less. A rising concern is the impact of increased acidification of the oceans, a byproduct of greater carbon dioxide absorption.

Back then the Murdochians published the IPCC report replete with the usual lavish coverage raising doubts over the IPCC's methodology, predicted global warming rates, and the IPCC itself, heralded by Lloyd's title for his piece, A climate of contention.

In that piece, Lloyd gave extensive space to rebuttals by Judith Curry and Richard Lindzen and Bjorn Lomborg, the usual lizard Oz favourites.

So what's changed in such a short time?

Well the Terror has done a whiz of a photoshop job showing all the perils, right up there with the NT News doing a piece on crocs:

Awesome collage.

You can click on it or get it in large form attached to Simon Benson's piece Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change draft report warns Australia will be a hot spot as world gets warmer.

Oh Benson goes the nine yards, and links to Nature and a piece about tipping points, and provides a link to a "dire warning" by Thomas Stocker, and amazingly, he even manages to find a link to an in-house opinion piece in favour of climate science by Paul Syvret for The Courier-Mail on 1st October - well you can't go writing this sort of stuff on a daily basis - Climate change denialists standing on thinning ice.

Oh yes, it's shock horror hysteria all the way:

But will anything really change?

Of course not.

The rag and its close cousins will go on spewing out the denialism and bile of the Akker Dakkers, the Bolters and the Bleaghs.

The reptiles at the lizard Oz will keep on printing the dissembling Lloyd and the confused and confusing Lomborg and the mob of denialists they've cultivated over the years.

It's been an enormously successful campaign of distortion, lies and smoke screens, up there with the tobacco industry's efforts in relation to the harm smoking can cause.

It's been so successful that the Daily Terror is a preferred home and safe haven for denialists, as have the rest of the Murdoch rags.

So it's with some profound irony that the pond can report the Terror editorialist and the exclusive Simon Benson are now seen by commenters as being part of the "alarmist" pack:

Why do the alarmist try to scare people with lies? Is it to keep people paying a tax that does not change the temperature? Is it to cause emotional distress that stops people from being able to think? Why do they call carbon dioxide a nas...ty black pollutant, when carbon dioxide is the air that we breath out and what cause photosynthesis in plants? Do they still teach that in schools today or are they dumbing down our child's education to continue to spread their outrageous lies?

Um, dear commenter, according to the rag, the editor, and therefore the rag itself, are now part of the "alarmist" conspiracy, full of outrageous lies.

On and on the comments roll, abusing Benson and the editorialist for working feverishly to peddle lies:

Aren't these the same people who recently released new climate figures showing less temperature rise over the remainder of the 21st century ? Obviously, the climateratti didn't like that info getting out, so have worked feverishly since to give us todays glossy catalogue of catastrophe so their ultimate agenda isn't derailed. The invisible substance traders in Europe continue to use these scare tactics to continue with the wealth distribution of the planet for no gain whatsoever, except that more world bodies coffers will be expanding faster than the average politicians waistline.

There's more, lots more, but the point is clear.

The Murdoch press has so polluted the debate, so poisoned the well, so routinely demonised the science and the IPCC, that any attempt to rectify the balance is like spitting on a bushfire in a bid to put it out.

Whatever the point of this "exclusive" gesture, the Terror and the other rags remain a cesspit of denialism.

Forget the ironies involved.

Should the climate (as opposed to the weather) continue to deteriorate, the gang of editors and fellow travelling journalists responsible for this state of affairs - some would say criminal misdeeds - should be made to stand in the public square and drink reams of Coca Cola, a harmless drink full of carbon dioxide ...

Oh and pelted with tomatoes on the hour ...

(Below: same as it ever was, found here).