It's million dollar month at the pond ... or at least a pennyworth of Caterists ...

In the spirit of The West Australian, the pond has decided on a million dollar month promotion.

All that's needed to enter is the certifiable hair from a yeti discovered on the south slope of Mount Everest - the pond only requires entrants to supply a DNA test from three reputable labs - with photographs showing the yeti in conversation with a verifiable Martian, and all rights to the story signed over to the pond.

And they say blogging lacks the integrity of mainstream journalism.

Yes, this morning the pond was catching up on last night's Media Watch,  as you can also do by heading off here, but the best bit came with the subsequent story about Fairfax and regional downsizing staff, and sackings, and an assurances that quality wouldn't be affected, which you can see in Fairfax swings the axe again.

And knock the pond down with a feather, after finishing that segment and the patented pond corn flakes and muesli mix, what was the sight that greeted the pond, on shifting over to see the Fairfaxians quality assurance control at work this very same minute, right at the top of the digital page?

Carsy! The pond can't remember playing that game since primary school. What a weird and wacky time it is at Fairfax.

It didn't take long for the Fairfaxians to right the ship:

Still, that sort of wacky, zany humour always puts the pond in a good mood, though it's a pity it came at the expense of a number of people trapped in cars ...

What else?

Well it's old news that Francis was rolled by the Pellists and the rest of the conservatives, and yet barking mad trendies still think he's bringing a fresh approach to the church ... proving that a belief in transubstantiation is a sure sign of delusion ...

And Bronnie was rolled by the bastard love child she produced with John Howard, and by golly it's going to get ugly as she broods ...

And Bruce Hawker has penned a piece for Fairfax bemoaning how the political club missed a chance for true reform of the Labor party, and apparently the following week they'll be publishing a refreshing apology from Genghis Khan regretting his failure to be more inclusive ... though admittedly that'll be of more use and insight than anything Hawker has to say ...

But enough of the light comedy. As always, the pond yearns for the truly thick, or as your average Kiwi would say, thuck as a bruck ...

Now it would be simple enough to stray north of the border, where the tabloid shows how the Daily Terror is just a bread and water show up against the fine art work of the re-born toads:

Ah the good old 'you're just a bunch of gutless headless chooks with a yellow streak a mile wide' Tamworth ploy, preferably with flapping wings and clucking noises ...

Speaking of northern images, how about Gary Johns shedding crocodile tears:

Sitting in his comfortably padded institute inspecting his parliamentary super, Johns probably hasn't noticed that the cost of power has already risen, and it had sweet bugger all to do with hysterical fear mongering about divestment campaigns or the reality that many countries are trying to move away from coal or that China has in effect dumped a carbon tax on Australian coal ...

Then there's the reptiles clamouring for a thriller, a chiller, as the gorillas go at it in Manila - or Brisbane - but what rhymes with that name, except that the town contains a plain insane profane reign worthy of disdain ...

That demand for a punch up and a shirt front in Brissie made it to the front page of the tree killer edition, and it produced an astonishingly complex piece from Phillip Hudson, brooding in depth on the art of diplomacy and the options open to Tony Abbott to achieve a masterstroke by bringing Putin into the light.

Actually if you wasted a click on Hudson's astonishingly short and pathetic effort, what you'd learn most about is the art of click-bait trolling ... down there with the poll itself ... and all the worse because the punchline comes right at the end of the 9 par 10 short sentences outing and had already been seen in the click baiting, trolling splash:

That also means Abbott has raised expectations that he will get something more from Putin than a grumpy photo for the album in the Prime Minister’s Department.

And then?

Well there's no "and then" in reptile macho Abbott worshipping la la land ...

Raised expectations? You expected Hudson to write something of interest?

Meanwhile, Julie Bishop ...

But hey, news that Bishop had button-holed Putin is days old ...

Toujours gai Archy, toujours gai, and on this frivolous day, the pond is looking for a truly stupid man, an elephantine man who can reduce complex matters to ideological blather, and who can blame it all on the ABC on which he routinely appears to the pond's benefit, since it rarely wastes any time watching the ABC any more ...

Yes, please sound trumpets and alarums, it's Caterist Day.

Now sadly the pond can't provide a link to Time for cooler heads to prevail, because all it would lead to is a begging demand for a subscription from the paupers of the press, featuring a low bait and switch offer which would in due course see a reader's credit card nobbled for nothing much but a very expensive large barrel of kool aid.

But could we have an illustration to set the tone?

Yes, the world is relieved to learn once again that climate science is all about the ABC.

It has absolutely nothing to do with NASA (news here) or the Pentagon releasing a report on climate science, Pentagon Signals Security Risks of  Climate Change, (you'll find a link to the report in pdf form here).

Never mind that across the ideological divide the Chinese government is also taking the science seriously - as per The Graudian's China pledges to cut emissions at UN climate summit or the AFR's China shifts stance on climate change.

Never mind that hapless Adam Morton, forced to double by the Fairfaxians as society and science editor, can produce an overview you'd never find in the midst of the Murdochians ...

No, none of that, the Caterists idea of a rigorous discussion of climate science and issues arising therefrom is Dr Karl having a chat with Tony Delroy on ABC Local, and even worse, Dr Karl dared to question the credentials of the world's greatest climate science, a man who has single-handedly revolutionised the science, but yet a prophet in the wilderness in his lonely tabloid eerie:

A slowing in the rate of global warming, or even a modest ­cooling, should be a welcome ­development. Perhaps we can carry on mining coal after all and help bring electricity to the 300 million Indians squatting in the darkness. Plastic bags could be restored to South Australian supermarket check-outs and the ugly word sustainability could be removed from the lexicon. 
If there’s a downside, however, you can trust the ABC to find it. 
“You’ve got to say that it is, for the climate change deniers, a window of opportunity. There’s a lot of high-profile people out there pushing the line, people like And­rew Bolt are out there every night.” 
Dr Karl snapped back. “Ah, which university is he a professor of climate science at?”

Well indeed, but that's like asking for the scientific credentials of the Caterists, which somehow sees plastic bags dropped into the conversation when they might be better dropped into a conversation on sustainability and best use of resources ...

But being determinedly obtuse is just an incitement to verbal violence in the Caterists, who like to get their science in gobbets from Catalyst.

The pond has an affectionate image of your average Caterist nodding off in front of the telly, glass of port in hand, dry sherry if you prefer, coal fire blazing in the spring snap, slippers warming chilled feet - where is this damned warming they keep promising - and perking up to hear a single comment by the narrator about a pause, before nodding off again and missing the final remark in the show, here:

Dr Kevin Trenberth: The whole of the climate system is really warming - it's just that the warming can be manifested in different ways. 
 Professor Matthew England: For some people, it's very easy for them to get this, but there are other people who are just absolutely obsessed with derailing the basic physics of climate change, and for them this poses a great little story that global warming's paused. I wish they were right but unfortunately they're wrong.

Being Caterists, bears with very few brains, they're content to recycle old saws.

What's most astonishing is the parochial nature of the parade of names: Bob Carter was right, Robyn Williams was wrong, and so was Robert Manne, and as for The Drum, and how poor Nick Minchin was traduced, yet it's clear he's not just an expert on tobacco but a major climate scientist,  and shame Q and A, shame, and wait, here's a few statistics flung about to conclusively prove that the IPCC was, is and will be conclusively wrong about everything, and then this:

If science worked as purely as Francis Bacon suggested it should, by the application of induction and observation, climate science would have moved on by now. Experts, however, are only human. Too many professional reputations have been invested in a fixed idea for it to be simply abandoned. 
The heating has not stopped, we are told, it has simply “paused”. The word bristles with presumption. Despite their appalling track record in the past 20 years, climate scientists still believe they can predict how temperatures will move in the future. 
“The ocean is absorbing huge amounts of heat energy and then will toss it back on us further along,” Dr Karl told Delroy. 
Nobody suggested that temperatures should rise in a straight line, he said. “It’s much more complicated than that … there are so many factors involved, El Nino, La Nina, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, etc, that suggests that you need a 17-year window to able to look past the noise. 
“And here they are saying we’re looking at a nine-year window and it looks sort of not as uppity as before. Well that’s easy, it’s not a 17-year window.” 

And there you have it. Climate science is wrong because the heating has stopped cold dead in its tracks, and there have been no observable changes to the planet in the last decade, not in the caps, not in the acidification of the oceans, not in the temperatures, and never mind 2014 in contention for being the hottest on record, and all because the likes of Dr Karl, NASA, the Pentagon, the Chinese government, and thousands of others have a reputation to protect.

Unlike the Caterists, who are such dumb fucks, they have no reputation to protect at all.

Every so often a bemused pond wonders what's in it for the reptiles. What's the point of the insistent, incessant denialism, the routine featuring of dead heads like the Caterists and business advisor Maurice Newman, who wouldn't recognise science if it bit them on the bum?

Why publish bizarre notions that science will be ruined for centuries simply because scientists want to know how the planet's climate works, and whether it's being threatened by human activities? Do they really think 9 billion people on the surface of the earth will be a 'tread lightly' load?

Do they really think all is well, and all will continue to be well, whatever the signs and portents, not to mention the science?

Well for blithe insouciance, you can't do better than a Caterist.

How insouciant does it get?

 In 1997 Christopher Pearson, sceptic extraordinaire, wrote a column pondering what would happen when the news finally filtered through that greenhouse forecasts had been vastly exaggerated. “Perhaps, having safely neg­otiated the millennium, which is a major cause of all this anxiety, we may collectively surrender to a bout of unqualified optimism,” Pearson wrote. “I doubt it.” 
 There would be fresh catastrophes on offer, Pearson predicted, since “the appetite for catastrophe is now highly developed and mass media delight in pandering to it”.

That's right. The Caterists dig up the corpulent high church Latin-loving Christopher Pearson, a scientific horse's ass when alive, and not much more use in death.

Perhaps Pearson will come down from heaven to provide us with a bout of unqualified optimism about how we're all going to be able to get our share of pie in the sweet bye and bye ... you know, star in his own Amityville show ... but somehow the pond doubts it ...

But he's right about one thing. The massively dumb Murdochian media have a highly developed taste for catastrophe and Photoshop, which is why they're pandering to the blood lust of the mob and demanding a thriller in Brisbane, a chiller from the gorillas that will make Manila seem tame ...

As for the world? Let it burn ...

Toujours gai Archy, toujours gai, there's some good news, and it comes with the return of David Pope. Please Dave, the pond knows you must get tired and run down, but never leave home again without letting the pond know. We started to fret so, and as always a trip to old Pope here could only do so much to settle frayed nerves.

This routine is never going to get old. Jolly Joe might own Shrek but now Arnie owns Mattie: