In which the pond dallies with News Corp climate denialists yet again ...

No doubt anyone interested in nicely illustrated reporting of the observations of actual scientists on the spot to observe what's happening will have already read that NY Times' story here ...

Sadly that's where intelligence must leave the pond, and instead the pond must turn to the usual climate science denialism which is a daily feature of News Corp...

This time Gary Johns was top of the reptiles of Oz opinion page ...

Now the curious might ask what Johns' credentials are in relation to climate science, and it seems, in no particular order, that his skills include black bashing, a bachelor of economics, a master of farts, time as a careerist politician, followed by a veering off into the woods of right wing extremism ...

Greg Hunters will find details of this attractive package at Johns' short wiki here....

The way that up-market Oz climate denialists go about their business these days is not to state the denialism outright, but instead to create a fug and fog of FUD ...

Is there something weird, wonderful and profoundly perverse about a climate denialist pretending he's on board with the efforts to slay the beast of climate change, said denialist thinking with a snort behind his hand that all this talk of climate change is just bunkum?

Of course, but that's how masters of farts have learned to argue ... though time in a Jesuit seminary might produce much the same result ...

One of the usual tricks of the denialist is to enlist names, such as David McKay, no longer around to conduct a debate ...

While at DECC, David also launched a 2050 “calculator” that enabled anyone to choose between multiple options for achieving the UK’s mandated 80% by 2050 carbon emission reductions. This was then toured around many cities in the UK as a roadshow – I was chair, and David the resident expert. He was witty and confident before audiences – I never saw him stumped by a question, however unlikely. The UK calculator was expanded later into a global calculator, which used the same numbers-based multiple-choice approach to allow anyone to construct their own “pathway” to keeping the planet’s temperature rise below 2C...

Although an atheist by the time he graduated, David was perhaps influenced by his upbringing into remaining a lifelong ascetic, refusing to own a car for most of his life and insisting on turning down the household thermostats of whomever he happened to be visiting (myself included).

Another trick is to sound academic and authoritative in an op cit, ibid sort of way ...

Now this is a classic cherry pick compounded by the failure to provide a link to what is in fact only a click away ...

Here's the abstract ...

In fact Lior's home page here provides a link to the pdf text here,  and in it the academics caution with that with more complex future conditions, with more extremes, it's hard to draw simple conclusions or to develop laws on future building energy design and use.

There were all sorts of uncertainties and limitations noted in the paper, none of which can be found in that one line plucked by Johns and paraded in a fine display of FUD.

The next example replicated the model:

This too could be found online here, with this abstract ...

It concluded ...

It takes a fair amount of skill to get from "most likely remain unchanged by 2050" to Johns' FUD, but that's the art of the FUD master ...

Now the pond could have done exactly the same for the solar section of Johns' piece ...

Rethink our climate response? What, like this, in 2013, as recorded here ...

Ina column this week in The Australian, writer Gary Johns tried to argue that the science of human-caused climate change was “contentious”, that climate change might not be that bad and that we shouldn’t bother to cut down on emissions. The Australian newspaper has a record for favouring climate science denialism and contrarianism above genuine expertise. Columns and coverage like this come along in the pages of the Rupert Murdoch-owned press with such regularity that you might think [blush] that they’ve got some kind of an agenda. Honestly, you could really think that. In the latest column – “Let’s get realistic about reducing carbon emissions” – Johns writes approvingly of a project called the Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) while finding disparaging remarks about the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Johns doesn’t mention that the NIPCC is run by the fossil-fuel funded Heartland Institute in the United States, which advocates free market ideology within which businesses should be allowed to do pretty much whatever they like, such as using the atmosphere as a free waste dump.

In that story, Johns got into trouble for abusing and misusing the words of Professor Richard Muller, but that's the entire point of reptile shamelessness. In the style of the Donald, say the lie, repeat the lie, and it will come true ...

The pond could have followed up all the Johns references in the solar section, but the news that solar energy was likely to turn Sydney into a festering cauldron this coming Friday and Saturday - after sweltering through an all-time record January - the pond thought it might be better off taking it easy, and marvelling that even reptile rags had noticed that things were warming up ...

Meanwhile, the down market low rent Daily Terror also featured a climate denialist doing the usual. Fresh from her stoush with climate denialist Bolter, climate denialist Devine was on the prowl ...

Of course the Devine is too much of a dropkick boofhead head-kicker to waste time on Johns-like FUD. She's just a straight out Trumpist of the old school ...

What to say, except that the Devine achieves her usual level of consummate fuckwittedness. There's no point in attempting a debate. This is chatter on the level of the Donald ...

 

Surely this is one of the most epic pieces of stupidity that's done the rounds, but for the Devine it's merely aspirational.

All the pond would like to do is point out the way that the inner city Murdochian 'leets of Surry Hills spread around Australia courtesy of the monolithic Murdochian brand. Like a plague of cockroaches the Devine even turns up in the NT News ...

That illustration is, in truth, down there with the sort of propaganda that was presented in support of Hitler demonising the Jews. It also brought to mind Stalin's endless, mindless support of Trofim Lysenko ...

Of course the pond isn't the only one to have had the thought ...

That's at the Graudian here, but it's hardly news that the Devine is part of the authoritarian totalitarian Murdochian parade, there being little to pick between Stalinism and fascism and Trumpism ...

In the real world, climate science is a tricky thing, full of uncertainties, ongoing explorations and understandings...

There's nothing like that to be found in the likes of the Devine and Gary Johns ... they prefer either FUD, dressed up with a bit of pseudo-academic referencing as a way of hiding the cherry-picking, or simple-minded Stalinism aimed at simpletons across the nation ...

Well we know how Cory Bernardi and Malcolm Roberts were helped along the path of climate denialism - see the Graudian here - oh yes the Heartland Institute is everywhere - so it seemed best to end mercifully and quickly with a Pope cartoon, and more excellent papery here ...