It's a bright and bushy Monday, and thanks to the Murdochians, the pond is ready to nuke the bludgers ...

It used to be the Sturmabtelung that would roam about in the streets, bashing heads and paving the way for maltreatment of the poor, the weak and the vulnerable ...

These days it's the Sydney Terror paving the way for the likes of head kickers of the Kevin Andrews kind ...

Oh okay, the pond just wanted to get the week underway with a bright and bushy tailed flourish in the direction of the Godwin's Law swear jar ... it's been running low, yet every day it deserves a top up, though it seems the sterling work of some has its own reward:

It's not EXCLUSIVE of course, there it is in the Curried Snail, here, and that paywall breaker, news corpse, also has it here.

Of course, back with the Sydney Terror, scourge of cane toads, it might have been just as relevant to note that the Terror exists mainly to celebrate rugby league ... and the pathology of that mysterious sport is beyond any coherent human analysis ... much like the newspaper itself ...

Here's the rag's natural home and subject matter ...

That's when it's not stiff arming, head butting, eye gouging or coat hangering the vulnerable and the weak ...

Weird, or what, with talk of Gandhi and Bear Grylls all the go ... and so the Sturmabtelung  go about their daily business ... at least until there's a day or night of the long knives ...

Moving right along, the pond was startled to see this bizarre sight in the lizard Oz:

Forget the digital murkiness and the """ ...

Say what? The planet and the children are at stake?

Did the reptiles stop drinking the kool aid over the weekend?

And the opening lines were equally disturbing:

The recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes for sobering reading. The consensus of hundreds of the world’s leading scientists is that continued global emissions of massive quantities of CO2 will likely result in intolerable climate changes if the average surface temperature increases and exceeds about 2C. 
We have less than 20 years to reduce emissions to near zero, or face catastrophic impacts on critically important ecosystems such as rainforests and coral reefs including our Great Barrier Reef.

Oh dear.

Luckily the pond has the batphone handy and put in a call to the world's leading climate scientist, beavering away humbly, modestly and inconspicuously at a blog at the HUN, and this very day he's scribbled Just another day on the globe we're told is warming to hell, helped along by reader Rocky.

Yes, it's just another link to Watts up with that?

Bizarrely, if you read the people who prepare the State of the Cryosphere referenced by the world's greatest climates scientist, courtesy of a denialist site referenced by reader Rocky - sheesh, how many more respectable academic citations will you pedants demand? - you cop this, here:

Most of Antarctica has yet to see dramatic warming. However, the Antarctic Peninsula, which juts out into warmer waters north of Antarctica, has warmed 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1950. A large area of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is also losing mass, probably because of warmer water deep in the ocean near the Antarctic coast. In East Antarctica, no clear trend has emerged, although some stations appear to be cooling slightly. Overall, scientists believe that Antarctica is starting to lose ice, but so far the process has not become as quick or as widespread as in Greenland...

And there's plenty of other reports, like this one, A better year for the cryosphere, but please don't expect the world's greatest climate scientist to bother with petty details, ambivalences, equivocations or actual observations, not when there's laboratory assistant reader Rocky and a denialist site to hand ...

Never mind, while the Bolter, as self-effacing as Clark Kent or luxury billionaire Bruce Wayne, goes about his business, the pond returned to the reptiles at the lizard Oz.

And that's when the pond twigged - you see the story in question is headed Let's go nuclear, for the reef's sake (inside the paywall, for the sake of the reptiles and chairman Rupert), and it has a splendid portrait of all the things in peril, courtesy of Eric Lobbecke, and never mind that the Bolter is on hand to tell you this is all hysteria:

Oh look at the cute creatures. How dare the Bolter lurk in his bat cave pounding his Clark Kent signature key board.

And yes, it's a vision splendid:

By becoming the world’s premier producer and re-processor of nuclear fuel Australia would be leading the world towards reducing carbon emissions and saving our Great Barrier Reef. We would secure long-term, high-quality jobs for Australians and promote the development of the finest advanced manufacturing technology. While the mining and coal booms turn to bust, Australia has the opportunity to establish nuclear industrial parks in geologically and environmentally safe regions that can drive our long-term economic growth. 
Australia had significant capacity for undertaking nuclear research and development in the 1970s that we can revitalise and expand. We have outstanding universities where nuclear science and technology education and innovation can be promoted. We have alliances with nations not yet willing to lead but that will strongly support and welcome an Australian-led initiative. We will need leaders with the vision to see where we must be in the coming decades to save our natural treasures and guarantee Australia’s leadership role in the future knowledge-based energy economy. Only with such a vision and committed leaders can we support the enormous investment such an undertaking will require. 
Business as usual and continued global reliance on fossil fuels will guarantee future generations a hotter planet, with likely devastating environmental and economic consequences for us. 
This country has the potential to become the next energy superpower and lead the world to a carbon-free future where prosperity made possible by abundant, low cost, power is enabled by Australian industry. 
We believe Australians have the wisdom and ambition to do the right thing for the sake of our planet and our children.

Yes, don't you worry about Chernobyl or Fukushima Daiichi or the reptiles only a few hours ago publishing Inpex bullish on LNG as Japan's nuke restart stalls (inside the paywall because LNG news doesn't come cheap), while Forbes published this piece by a renewable energy proponent, How Opposite Energy Policies Turned The Fukushima Disaster Into A Loss For Japan And A Win for Germany.

Bloody renewable energy shill ...

Meanwhile, the pond wanted to know the fine minds that could, in a single line and a wave of the hands, solve all the problems that have been bedevilling a world bedevilled by the odd natural event and by the San Andreas fault line ...

While the mining and coal booms turn to bust, Australia has the opportunity to establish nuclear industrial parks in geologically and environmentally safe regions that can drive our long-term economic growth. 

Oh yes, no doubt that'd be Muckaty Station ...

What's that you say? Only this month NLC and Feds drop plan for nuclear waste dump at Muckaty Station, and Victory for traditional owners over Muckaty Station nuclear waste dump.

And now drum roll please, for those canny academics who realised that the only way you could get the reptiles to take climate change seriously is if it involved nuking renewable energy:

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is director, Global Change Institute, and Eric McFarland is director, Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation, both of which are based at the University of Queensland.


Well look, the pond doesn't like to send anyone away empty handed, so here's a suggestion. Is it possible to imagine a better, more geologically and environmentally safe area for a full scale nuke industry than the reef itself?

Just saying, and the pond will accept a modest ten per cent in royalties for coming up with the plan. Abundant sheltered sea water available, and just the odd harmless cyclone ...

What's that you say, it was originally headed as Let's go nuclear, for reef's sake. Somebody left out the "the" ...? Sounded too much like the pond's kid, Let's go nuclear, for fuck's sake, and fuck the reef ...

Why wasn't it titled Let's not mention renewable energy, for fuck's sake ...

Ah well, it seems that the reptiles are having a bad hair day.

You see, some whimsical sub originally titled Deborah Cobb-Clark's piece as Abbott delivers a 'kick in the pants'.

Someone at the lizard factory must have worked out that this sounded a little too general, seeing as how Abbott has been delivering a kick to the guts, a kick to the head, a kick to the crotch, and all the other body parts, so some reptile was hastily assigned to change the header to read Abbott delivers a 'kick in the pants' to our youth. (behind the paywall because you need a kick to your wallet or purse).

There, so much better.

Who could argue with kicking a youff, as scribbled by a complacent soul working away as director of the Melbourne Institute at the University of Melbourne?

There's not much point actually reading the piece, not when it concludes with this form of monstrous rhetorical stupidity:

This is the conversation we should be having. We owe it to the next generation to ensure that they also have the opportunity and the means to do anything they want.


Anything? Anything at all?

Well they're in line for the reliable disappointment called life.

And inter alia, you cop this sort of risible routine:

In a way it’s hard to see what the fuss is about. While the unemployment rate for youth aged 15 to 24 has climbed since the global financial crisis and now stands at 12.5 per cent — more than double the overall rate of unemployment — it is nowhere near the peaks reached in the recessions of the early 1980s and 90s. And youth unemployment in Australia is low by OECD standards.

Yes, indeed, and the pond looks forward to Deborah Cobb-Clark spending the next six months without any income, or without any recourse to welfare relief. Here's hoping her parents are still around to give her a helping hand ... and then we'll see if she can see what the fuss might be about ...

But wait, this is where the day started, marvelling at the splendid way the Murdoch press could kick the heads of alleged rorters and cheats, all the while with their business plan sustained by an army, a veritable legion of boofheads ...

Which just leaves time for a cartoon, and who else but David Rowe, and more Rowe here ...