In which Lloydie and the featherless Major Mitchell flap about to deliver a Monday dose of flapdoodle ...

And so to why the reptiles really irritate the pond and have produced this blog of misinformation and rampant stupidity ...

What fool would assert that hurricanes are man- or woman- or person-made?

An even bigger question ... what bigger fool would think that sort of non-sequitur opening is the sensible way to start a discussion?

Now sure if your idea of science is to consult witches, warlocks or Hollywood personalities, you might come across someone clueless enough not to know hurricanes have been around for a long time ...

And the specious clap-trap that follows - climate change is not behind these devastating weather patterns - is an equally meretricious piece of clap trap ...

Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs; the sage is ruthless, and treats the people as straw dogs.

That's how you can get a sage to head a column with the straw dog Hurricanes like Irma and Harvey at not caused by climate change ...

Who said they were?

It is of course a form of pathetic distraction. Berate tabloids for talking of celebrity properties, and use that as an excuse for your own pathetic brand of tabloidism ...

Well before proceeding, how about a short-form summary from Scientific American, here:

There, that wasn't hard. No talk of hurricanes having recently been invented ... while the notion that climate change causes hurricanes is dismissed in the opening line for any fool who thinks otherwise, though it would have been handy for a useless fool like Graham Lloyd, in search of a gutter tabloid header ...

And so back to Lloydie, and now it's on with the celebrity chit chat, as the best tabloid writers do ...

And there, at last, after all the tosh and the column filler and the non sequitur nonsense, Lloydie decides to get down with it ...which naturally means reverting to berating climate alarmists and calling on climate denialists ...

Mention of Curry reminded the pond of where we'd reached back in February in The Atlantic's The New Climate Denial Is Like the Old Climate Denial...

Since then of course, thanks be unto Chairman Rupert and the Donald, Pruitt has begun the business of tearing apart the EPA, and various other appointments have speeded up the climate denialism ... what about that magic moment Trump Official Goes Mute When Asked About Climate Change?

Sadly the one guaranteed thing is that the denialists never go mute ... but weasel-word their way around the issue as best they can ...cue Lloydie ...

Ah, that'd be Donald Trump's NOAA...

There's nothing like a graph, is there, but the pond prefers to brood on this sort of NASA news and the latest Trump appointment ...

Well it's still okay to discuss climate, provided any impact is minimised and marginalised and downplayed and given the correct Lloydie obfuscatory patented flapdoodle treatment ...

And there, despite all the weasel words in between, comes the acknowledgment of what the Scientific American summarised in a few pithy words, without the non sequiturs and the celebrity distractions ... things are likely to get a little more intense over the coming years ...

The pond has no idea what makes Lloydie run, or what makes him think he's doing anything other than assisting in the destruction of the planet, and in the end, it's only Donald Trump's America that's currently getting blown away ...but at least the pond has a fair idea of what makes the Major Mitchell tick ...

The Major Mitchell is a suck.

The pond has already drawn attention to the Graudian's The Wall Street Journal's Trump Problem, but it's worth mentioning again, because the Major is a suck in much the same way that the WSJ's editor in chief Gerry Baker is a prime suck.

Sure, in certain areas at certain times, there's nothing wrong with sucking, and true, the Major Mitchell is now a plucked chook sitting on the back bench, bereft of feathers and given to much clucking and crowing, but substitute energy policy and Malware and broadband and any number of other things for Trump, and it gives an idea of the way that cheerleaders Baker and the Major are deeply in love with the same brand of kool aid:

“Instead of clearing the air about the legitimate concerns of editors and reporters about balanced coverage of Trump, Baker led off with a 20-minute scolding about how we were indeed covering Trump correctly, and anybody who disputed that was wrong and wrong-headed,” a recently departed Journal staffer told the Guardian. “That pretty much took the air out of the room. I and most of my colleagues were disgusted by his performance.”

Trump schump frump climate science alarmist bumpf ... it's all part of the reptile stew, though to be fair, those at the Currish Snail and the lizard Oz lost their sense of journalism so long ago, that, in Lloydie style, they're not disgusted by their performance ... they think lickspittle craven cheering on of the onion muncher, and coal, and the cavortings and contortions of the coal-loving Malware constitutes a kind of journalism ...

What's the bet that following on from Lloydie we'll get talk of "moral posturing about climate change" or better still, "climate alarmists"?

It takes some cheek when it's a fair bet that the changing climate has contributed to the intensity of the ravaging of the US, and the ravaging is currently unfolding, but that's the way the reptiles roll ...

And there you go, the Major quoting Lloydie, as the cosy coterie of kool aid drinkers sniff each other's bums and check out their navels for matching fluff ...

If anybody failed to notice all the uxorial love of coal exuding from every paragraph - the pond has already celebrated the perverts and their coal-fucking ways - that line about Australia having no meaningful role to play is a classic sign of the climate denialist in action ...

Never no mind that on a per capita basis the way that Australia is one of the world's biggest and most indulgent emitters, a country that others look to as hypocritical, and for all the talk of signing up to Paris, still extremely reluctant to change its ways ...

None of this matters in the world of Major Mitchell, blathering on about climate alarmism ...

The pond has already mentioned that piece in The Atlantic. It ended this way ...

The recent shift in conservative rhetoric exploits legitimate scientific uncertainty that most scientists agree is irrelevant to crafting responsible climate policy. Despite overwhelming evidence, many conservatives are still willing to ignore scientific consensus and stall political action. But offering evidence that this rhetoric is out of step with science may not, in fact, matter when it comes to public perception. When the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology published a press release on February 5, alleging that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) “manipulated climate records,” scientists and journalists rushed to correct the statement and demonstrate how it was based on faulty information. But the damage was already done; uncertainty about NOAA and their data are now a part of the public dialogue around climate change.

Yep, and the squawking Major Mitchell plays his part in the dialogue.

Along the way, the column also noted this:

In his recent confirmation hearings, Rex Tillerson, ex-CEO of ExxonMobil and newly-minted U.S. Secretary of State, carefully avoided making any of the links that ExxonMobil’s own scientists had made by the early 1980s between fossil fuels, rising greenhouse gases, and the ability of those gases to affect climate “in potentially destructive ways.” When asked to explain his “personal view” of climate change by Senator Tom Udall, Tillerson would say only that “after 20 years as an engineer and a scientist,” he had concluded “the risk of climate change does exist,” and “the consequences could be serious enough that action should be taken.” Senator Bob Corker, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then pointedly asked, “Do you believe that human activity, based on science, is contributing?” Tillerson dodged again, saying only, “The increase in greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is having an effect. Our ability to predict that effect is very limited.” 

Tillerson can make statements like these because climate research is ongoing, and climate models are inherently imprecise. According to Schmidt, “To say that science isn’t settled on things people are still researching is totally irrelevant. Does the earth orbit the sun? There’s no substantial ambiguity about the answer to that question, despite the fact that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of scientists working on gravity. There are lots of interesting things about gravity, it’s just that that is not one of them. There are lots of interesting things about climate change, and adaptation, and interactions between air pollution and clouds, but they’re just not relevant to the question, which is: Is what’s going on related to humans? And the answer is: Yes, it is.” 

When Tillerson was pushed by Senator Tim Kaine to admit ExxonMobil’s “history with the issue of climate change,” including the oil giant’s well-documented practice of funding work to discredit climate science and delay political action, he stonewalled until Kaine finally asked, “Are you not answering because you don’t know, or because you don’t want to?” To which Tillerson replied, “A little of both.” 

There has been a flurry of recent Republican efforts to stall action on climate policy, including a pair of bills just introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives. Bill H.R. 861, introduced by Representative Matt Gaetz, proposes “to terminate the EPA.” This bill may not even get a vote, but as The New York Times reported earlier this week, Pruitt “has a blueprint to repeal climate change rules, cut staffing levels, close regional offices and permanently weaken the agency’s regulatory authority.”

Since then of course, Pruitt has diligently gone about his administrative business and accomplished much, while here the never-ending work of the climate denialists in the lizard Oz - with Major Mitchell loving Lloydie and Lloydie loving Lomborg - continues apace ...

It was Rowe who explained to the pond that this all came about from a kinky desire to have a fuck with coal, so that it might continue to fuck the planet ... the sort of weird infatuation that can only end with a Fatal Attraction  ... though perhaps the pond should pitch Lloydie and the Major as the title, in honour of the likes of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and Thelma and Louise ... (the pond loves the explanation so much, it had to run it again, but it can also be found here).

Or perhaps the kinky sex involves getting out the whip and giving the skeleton a good fucking? Who knows, but Pat can be found on a Monday here ...

And just for luck, here's another ...