In which the tyrannoboltersaurus reveals to the pond the truth about the deviant dangerously greenie Chinese Communist Party ... with bonus support from the ineffable 5th Viscount Ridley ...

That's what happens when you get a stupid, vain poodle too silly to realise what a vain, stupid poodle he is.

Yes, like 78,000 and a few others the pond went off to YouTube to see Star Wars Fixed, and it's cleverly done. What's astonishing is that the vain poodle should link to it.

Doesn't he realise what a smirking arsehat it makes him out to be, or does he enjoy being a smirking arsehat so much that it's all so much water off the poodle's fur?

But on to more serious matters.

The pond was tootling about in Sydney last night, listening to the BBC (sometimes known as Al Jazeera, much more rarely known as the actual ABC) when disturbing news came on the air ...

The story is encapsulated in the Beeb headline Climate change: China official warns of huge impact':

Mr Zheng, the head of China's meteorological administration, said warming temperatures exposed his country to a growing "risk of climate change and climate disasters". 
He said temperature rises in China had already been higher than the global average for the past century. 
These are rare admissions from a Chinese official, BBC Asia analyst Michael Bristow says. 
China's leaders have acknowledged the damage from global warming but they usually do not lay out the full scale of the problems. 
Mr Zheng warned of more droughts, rainstorms, and higher temperatures, which would threaten river flows and harvests, as well as major infrastructure projects such as the Three Gorges Dam. He urged China to pursue a lower-carbon future. 
"To face the challenges from past and future climate change, we must respect nature and live in harmony with it," the Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying. 
"We must promote the idea of nature and emphasise climate security.

You can see why the pond was alarmed.

Surely this had to be a Beeb beat up, being full of leftie greenies as it is, so the pond rushed off to the South China Post to see if this really was the news from the mainland, and sure enough Top meteorologist Zheng Guoguan warns of climate change risks to China:

The mainland's top weather official has issued a stark warning on climate change, saying that rising temperatures could have "huge impacts" on the world's most populous country, state media reported on Sunday. 
Global climate change would reduce crop yields, lead to "ecological degradation" and create unstable river flows, Xinhua quoted Zheng Guoguang , chief of China's Meteorological Administration, as saying. "As the world warms, risks of climate change and climate disasters to China could become more grave," Zheng said.

Naturally the pond was still disbelieving, so it raced off to another source here:

Relax, the pond couldn't make head or tail of it, but just wanted to include it as a service for the pond's many readers on the mainland.

Instead we relied on good old Google translate:

By golly the pond felt like signing up to a TAFE course right away ...

Luckily before the pond could get too traumatised, we turned to the world's greatest living climate scientist, the tyrannoboltersaurus, and he immediately explained that in fact the Chinese government was riddled with greenies of the worst greenie kind, and that all this talk of socialism with a capitalist face was just a discreet cover.

It seems that these rabid greenies had swallowed the international climate science conspiracy lock, stock and barrel. They were using climate change as a way of helping the UN introduce world government - apparently there's a manufacturer in Guangdong province with an exclusive contract to supply black helicopters - and once the world government is installed, it's going to rule that the disputed islands are split 50-50, so that China and Japan can settle the matter without loss of face ...

Of course the pond could just have been taking really bad drugs, and was off on a Dali-esque surreal dream, but there was even better news this day, because the Australian government and the reptiles at the lizard Oz were on the case:

Well that's amazing news, and what joy that Sid Maher was assigned the job of writing the press release for the government and Greg Hunt and what's more, getting to call it an exclusive.

Talk about a dream job. You can be both a reptile hack reporter and a government Greg Hunt hack all in one exclusive go ...

But what's that you say? It's an exercise in futility, and a total waste of money and time?

Yes, the reptiles can't help themselves. Oh sure the news might be good as the economy spirals into gloom:

One significant factor is lower demand for electricity, which ­accounts for 33 per cent of Australia’s total carbon emissions and has cut 32 million tonnes from Australian emissions since 2008. This has been driven by solar rooftop panels, the closure of electricity-intensive industries such as aluminium smelters and consumers lowering demand because of higher electricity prices. 
Other factors driving emissions reductions include: worse-than-expected agricultural con­ditions because of drought; lower manufacturing output because of industrial closures; and weaker growth expectations for local coal production because of a fall in international coal prices.

... uh huh, it's looking good ... because the government's driving industry into the ground, and they're being helped out by the solar energy they hate, and by punishing consumers with higher electricity prices, which sounds suspiciously like a carbon tax in drag.

Never mind, trust the reptiles?

Sure can, because immediately beneath Maher pumping up the volume for Greg Hunt came a classic piece from a classic denialist who refuses to call himself a denialist because climate change is happening - it happens all the time - it just doesn't happen to be a problem.

With their unerring nose for sniffing out this sort of stuff, the reptiles went off to sister rag The Wall Street Journal where this sort of denialism happens all the time:

How lucky that Matt Ridley was to hand once again to call out those dangerous Chinese radical greenies and their nonsense.

But truth to tell, the pond really only mentions Matt Ridley because above all the pond should be fun, and can there be any more a preposterous ponce, git and British lord than said Ridley?

If you google his name, you'll come to a blog with this wondrous smackdown summarising a previous Ridley piece put behind the paywall of that other Murdoch rag, The Times:

Now for the links and for the actual assault on Ridley on the two highlighted key points you have to head off to Testing Matt Ridley's Hypotheses About Global Warming. And if you want to know why Bob Ward is so difficult, why not head off to IPCC corrects claim suggesting climate change would be good for the economy - not that this has stopped "Northern Rock" Ridley from parroting exactly the same line in later efforts.

The pond, being devoted to lizard la la land, will simply replicate the rest of Ridley's piece, and the reward is to see how much of the above comedy routine is once again replicated below, as Ridley urges coal, coal, coal (or maybe oil, oil, oil) all the way:

Uh huh. So the IPCC does agree with him!

Now Ridley is much loved by climate denialists - some say he is to England and Rupert Murdoch what the tyrannoboltersaurus is to Australia and Rupert Murdoch - and he routinely turns up in Skeptical Science - for those who can be bothered, they can wade through any number of posts here.

All the pond can do is admire the way the reptiles of Oz applaud Greg Hunt for achieving the impossible dream, while just below us reminding the world of the futility of the policy, because after all climate science is crap.

Oops, the one thing that won't work is a direct action policy funding crony capitalists!

Who let that loon out of the British House of Lords ...?

Meanwhile, seemingly on another planet, Arctic sea ice reaches lowest maximum extent on record.

Now unfortunately Ridley has distracted the pond from the daily task of reptile review, but rest assured for anyone who wants to google around the paywall there are plenty of pleasurable distractions.

How about this one?

So it's not just the pond that's on bad drugs. 

So the Liberal party should do more to recognise the legacy of Malcolm Fraser. 

Hmm, how to do it? How about everyone leave the party like life member Fraser did in 2009? By golly, that'd be fair recognition and paying due honour to the old boy. Abolish the sell-out party, as he wanted ...

And then perhaps haunted by these events, poor old desiccated coconut Henry Ergas dreamed he was back in the 1970s:

And it would be remiss of the pond not to note that finally someone persuaded Abbott to shut up:

Oh dear, and it would have been a splendid opportunity to mention the Nazi party while eating an onion.

Meanwhile, the bland, dull, nothing to see here budget is simmering along nicely.

Time then for a cartoon or two ... fortunately without the poodle, even in a cameo role ...

(Below: and more Moir here).