In which the lizards of Oz offer up the usual anti-climatic ideology ...

The new bête noire for the reptiles - in the sense of the need to produce at least one new shock horror story du jour - is GetUp!.

Naturally the pond was shocked that the wretches should be funding an investigation into tax avoidance schemes (no need to put an 'alleged' in front of that one), and with such a poignant juxtaposition to news of Malware's office doing a Sam the man stunt ...

But the main focus this day was naturally coal. The reptiles had all senses on high alert because of the threat to coal that might be posed by Finkel and his damned report ...

Now these splashes caused the pond great distress.

While these honourable reptiles - oh such honourable men - had both managed to work ideology into the text - the bouffant one favouring "ideologically driven Labor", and Lloydie making it clear this was "climate change ideology", surely there was a failure of nerve here.

Surely room could have been found for "climate change" theology, and perhaps a casual 'alarmist' or 'warmist' or 'climate change hysteria' could have been thrown into the mix ...

Oh and the raucous Crowe also flew in with a helpful report ...

And so to Lloydie, making it clear where his heart lay ...

Coal! Bad for coal! Won't someone think of the coal? Does no one care about the coal? What about the coal, it isn't fair, all out of coal, and we want our share ...

I'm lying alone with my head on the phone 
Thinking of you till it hurts 
I know you hurt too but what else can we do 
Tormented and torn apart 
Sweet clean coal
I wish I could carry your clean smile in my heart 
For times when my life and the wattage seems so low 
It would make me believe what tomorrow could bring 
When today doesn't really know, doesn't really know 
I'm all out of coal, I'm so lost without you 
I know you were right for heating for so long 
Now I'm all out of coal, what am I without you 
The warmists can't be too late to say that they were so wrong 

Or some such thing. Lloydie wasn't in peak form, he just gurgled a little more and then gave up:

Yes, delay, plenty of time to fudge and befuddle, plenty of time to obfuscate, plenty of time to keep coal in the game, at least until the next major fuckup occurs and people begin to notice ...

Meanwhile, the pecking Crowe was flapping about in the usual coal-obsessed way ...

Coal advocates fear ...

What about coal? Won't someone think of the coal?

There's a little coal waitin' at the counter of the corner shop 

It's been waitin' down there 

Waiting half the day 

We never ever see how clean it is from the top 

It gets pushed around 

Knocked to the ground 

But it gets to its feet and it sings

In the way only clean coal and its reptile lovers know how to sing

What about me 

It isn't fair 

I've had enough now 

I want my share

'Cause coal lovers care 

Can't you see I wanna live and help heat the planet

But you warmists just take more then you give

What's that you say? Won't someone think of the planet? 

Get out of here, you see, the Crowe flew in with an amazing chart...

Oh it looks very presentable and respectable.

But where does the Crowe (and the rest of the reptiles) get their science and their data from?

There he is, at the bottom, Bjorn Lomborg ...

Now Lomborg is always on hand to row his own grant-gathering canoe, so the pond thought it might link to a few comments on that November 2015 "peer-reviewed" paper in the Global Policy journal.

Why not try Lomborg misses the turn?

How about this, here?

And so on ... but then the talk was of ideology, and with the reptiles that's all there ever is ... the ideology, the theology, of coal ...

There are others who took a look at it ...

Here if you want to confirm that Lomborg is garbage the reptiles, or perhaps the cat, dragged in ...

Oh and there's Bjorn Lomborg's New Paper 'Appears To Have No Basis In Fact' ...

Now Lomborg has criticised his critics, but here's the thing. The best you could say about Lomborg is that everything he writes is heavily, and often convincingly, contested.

In a summary of the state of things, the last thing a respectable newspaper would do is insert a bald couple of lines taken from Lomborg, with the reassuring addition that the paper was "peer reviewed," with the implication that this made everything right ...

If they wanted to run with Lomborg's climate denialism dressed as fact, at least they should have noted that his findings were contested ...

But that would hinder the reptiles' work, though it does help explain why they're obsessed with talk of ideology rather than actual science ...

Once the skew, the bias, is noticed, it can be found running through stories which are supposed to be objective summaries of the current situation, as with the cawing Crowe ...

Um, it's a national energy market these days ... what's the situation in relation to Australia's energy supply?

The pond has to hand it to the reptiles ... always willing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and a deal, so that they can pander to the luddites, the onion muncher and coal interests ...but at least they do it with some subtlety.

After all, they only talk of ideology - so much more interesting than actual science - while the Bolter goes on his merry climate denialist way, tossing out 'warmist' like someone tossing glitter at a wedding or a street brawl ...

Oh it's a warmist here, and a warmist there ...

All the lies at half the price? 

And Officeworks advertises on a climate denialist site?

Ah well, is it any wonder that the immortal Pope came up with this cartoon this day, with more infallible papery here ...