In which the pond discovers the lizard Oz Australian is to climate science what FIFA is to soccer ...

The pond isn't a paper of record, but is always a sucker for a rhetorical question, especially when the answer is that the lying ratfink, allegedly a dual citizen, is both lazy and sneaky.

It's a day late, but let the record show that the wet Amanda Vanstone managed to drizzle on Tony Abbott's parade in Fairfax, and everybody felt the need to pick up the story, even the reptiles of Oz:

Naturally the ABC picked up on the handiwork of its own, and naturally those who prefer to shoot the messenger rather than focus  on the message, dismissed Vanstone as a captive of the in-house ABC leftist stooges. Which means they've never listened to the drivel emanating from Vanstone's version of Counterpoint (click to enlarge)

Never mind, you can listen to Vanstone rabbiting on here - a strong constitution is helpful - and her piece at Fairfax is here, with forced video.

...you can imagine my profound disappointment, bordering on despair, when I see some on "my team" thinking it is OK for a minister alone to take away a citizen's rights – indeed, take away citizenship – in the blink of an eye. No appeal, no judicial process, just a ministerial decision. What were they thinking?

Amen to that but actually Mandy they were thinking McCarythist fascism. Haven't you caught up on the new trend?

But enough already, because that was yesterday's fish and chips wrapping, and because the pond is here, not to celebrate nattering negativity, but to celebrate the ongoing brave and bold forays into science routinely hosted and featured by the reptiles of Oz.

Now the pond can only experience one Maurice Newman in a lifetime, and on the weekend, the pond had its dose of Moorice.

The result, when the pond sat down to watch Particle Fever (official site here), a documentary about the Large Hadron Collider, was a case of severe disconnection from reality that verged on the surreal. The documentary was dumbed down to a disturbing degree but it was refreshing to meet real scientists in their natural habitat, and it was a nice moment when Higgs dabbed his moist eyes.

But still the reptiles keep coming up with their own scientific experts, and what do you know, that blood-sucking leech affixed to the taxpayer's purse, Nick Cater of the Menzies Research Centre is the latest.

Now before we start, you might be wondering about Cater's scientific expertise, and the pond is glad you asked that, because science is a key component of Cater's CV, as outlined by the MRC when it welcomed Cater as the new Executive Director, a man with all the skills needed to spend taxpayers' money.

Look at this impressive list of scientific achievements:

“Nick’s experience as an observer and analyst of public policy, and his profile as an author and commentator on Australian public life will undoubtedly enrich our future activities.” 
Cater is a journalist and author and has been visiting Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. He is a former editor of The Weekend Australian and deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph. He was born and educated in the United Kingdom and began his career at the BBC before moving to Australia in 1989 to join News Corp. 
He edited The Howard Factor (Melbourne University, 2006) and wrote best-seller The Lucky Culture (HarperCollins, 2013) described by Prime Minister Tony Abbott as a: “…beautifully written and perceptive book [that] is a historical essay on Australia’s public culture…it’s a personal reflection by a refugee from Thatcherism, now born-again conservative, observed and analysed with a newspaperman’s thoroughness”. 
Cater is a columnist with The Australian and a regular commentator on political and cultural affairs on radio and television. (here)

Now there's a snark in search of a quark.

Sadly this short form omitted the crucial matter of the degree, but if Cater's wiki here is to be trusted he graduated with an honours degree in sociology in 1980 and then drove laundry vans for a year, and strangely never continued with what could have been honourable employment, and decent, socially useful work.

Instead he ended up blathering on at the lizard Oz, filling the void with much hot air.

So now, suitably prepared, let us brace for the hot air:

Now some might wonder why the pond no longer rises to the bait, and argues chapter and verse with the enormous stupidity on view in this Caterist, nee Newman scientific exegesis.

But what's the point of arguing with a parrot, because that's all Cater is?

Sure, it would be possible to point to a NASA piece dated February 2015 headed NASA Study Shows Global Sea Ice Diminishing, Despite Antarctic Gains. Sure you can point to stories like the ones last month about the Antarctic, including this one, Vast Antarctic ice shelf a few years from disintegration, says Nasa.

But then you cop a Moorice explaining how NASA is just an outpost in the UN's bid to establish a world government and snatch away our freedoms.

Or you get twits like the Cater urging the world to roll up its sleeves and for the ice shelf to disintegrate and the planet otherwise go to rack and ruin.

All that can be done is to trudge personfully through the rest of the meandering mendacity:

There, another job done, another miserable task ticked off, more of the Augean stable a little cleaner, the rock already half way up the hill.

But is it fair, you ask, for the pond to compare the reptiles at the lizard Australian's coverage of climate science to FIFA's bloated, unaccountable, out of touch world of soccer?

Well yes, because it demonstrated the ineffable stupidity of Cater and the complete banality of a mind who can only seize on a metaphor from a game that involves balls, heads and feet colliding, when he might have more usefully brooded about the need for the particles in his brain to collide and produce a few sparks.

Talking of climate science and FIFA shows what a limp brain Caterists have - seize on a headline and trot it out as a faux connection and a comical comparison, and the job's done, little realising that the job is to demonstrate the limited science in any given Caterist piece.

One final tip to the Caterists. One more mention of bien pensants and inner-city dinner parties, and readers will start to wonder why your well-fed carcass, with the incessant smirk, turns up on the ABC at insufferably regular intervals, you bien pensant member of the idle useless chattering classes you. Get thee to a laundry van and do something useful ... because boring ABC viewers into a state of tedium and ennui isn't useful or meaningful work ...

(Below: and still they come, and more Wilcox here).