In which Maley produces remarkable climate science malevolence ...

The cagey reptiles have lately taken to dropping in little essays on pet themes late in the day, no doubt to provide a little click bait with some handsome trolling, and to avoid, elude and frustrate the pond, and so the pond almost missed this piece by the remarkable Maley ...

In his Clark Kent persona, Maley passes as the national security editor for the lizard Oz, which means his usual turf is cops carrying machine guns, border chiefs waiting judgment, terror cash, jihadi wannabes and so on ...

Yet for some reason he and other reptiles decided the time was right for a meditation on the onion muncher, a kind of mea culpa for having pandered to a climate denialist ...

The result more than satisfies Alice's insatiable lust for the curiouser ...

Uh huh. Curious.

It didn't take long for the mask to be ripped away. It's just another stage in the strategic retreat. Out of the onion muncher wreckage Maley manages to retrieve a "thoughtful speech that deserved to be taken seriously."

Oh FFS.

The pond has been through the various stages of reptile climate denialism many times, and it seems this cartoon now badly needs updating ...

We need another panel which might read...

OK, there is climate change, a small portion of it might even be person made, but if a climate denialist gives a speech that sends climate denialist Bolter into raptures, it's a "thoughtful speech that deserves to be taken seriously."

To give comfort to the denialists, Maley goes through all kinds of verbal contortions ...

Just roll that one around on the tongue: "the theory of how greenhouse gases warm the earth is plausible."

What a futtock.

Plausible?

Who let him out of science class? Won't someone send him Greg Hunting here?

A greenhouse gas (abbrev. GHG) is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. Without greenhouse gases, the average temperature of Earth's surface would be about −18 °C (0 °F),[2] rather than the present average of 15 °C (59 °F).  In the Solar System, the atmospheres of Venus, Mars and Titan also contain gases that cause a greenhouse effect.

If you think the theory of gravity has some level of certainty, try a little thought experiment, like stripping the earth of its greenhouse gases, and then see how plausible you feel.

The question isn't about the plausibility of greenhouse gases, the question revolves around human activities and the impact of anthropogenic carbon dioxide ... and that includes the reptiles' religious fervour for coal ...

And after this doozy, Maley decides to let the onion muncher off his climate denialism and his obscurantism ...

Who knows, maybe even the Bolter isn't a climate denialist, though the rapturous way he greeted the onion muncher's denialist speech was something to see ...

Maley can't say the onion muncher is a climate denialist? Continue to let the children suffer ...

Refusing to state the bleeding obvious is just another way that the malicious, malevolent Maley goes the fudge ...

Climate deniers? The pond is saying that the onion muncher is one. 

He's passed through many forms on climate science, but now he's back to the original caterpillar that announced his profound insight to a bunch of farmers back in 2009 ...

Perhaps "climate science is crap" is a bit too subtle and nuanced an argument for Maley.

The reptiles published at lavish length the onion muncher's latest bout of climate denialism ... here's a decent denialist-laden excerpt ...

It seems clear cut - the denialism - though back in 2014 David Pope put it another way ..

And now with a hop and a skip and a jump, we may move past the climate denialism, courtesy Maley, to take the onion muncher seriously ...

Indeed, indeed, what if we fuck the planet and ruin the lives of millions? Who cared about the Great Barrier Reef anyway?

Well, there's always a sucker for this sort of equivocating half-baked, fudging sort of climate denialism of the Lomborgian kind, dressed up as reasoned and rational debating points, asking awkward questions that would send the climate lobby into a bout of volcanic goat-worshipping religiosity ...

Right on cue, Leigh Sales from their ABC thought it was the right time for a tweet in support of the malevolent Maley ...

The pond really does sometimes despair of their ABC ... but Sales managed to set the twitterati off in a way that the trolling reptiles hadn't managed ...

The pond was happy ... it could slip in a few cartoons from Pope, showing just how long the reptiles had kept the climate denialism kicking along in terms of policy discussions ...

There were any number of other twittering comments ...

Indeed, indeed, and the pond has a goodly supply of old Pope ...

And still the tweets flowed like shale oil around dinosaurs ...

Indeed, indeed.

After all that, it's a close run thing as to who emerged looking the silliest ... Maley or Sales ... but the pond settled for the advice to eat an onion and everything would look different ...

Never mind, Maley has done sterling work for the lizard Oz ... and he scored one all-day sucker, and now we've reached another stage in the long reptile march ...

The pond suggests Maley or one of the head honcho reptiles approach Pope - more nicely BBQ'd papal offerings here - and ask him if they could just alter this cartoon a little and use it for the masthead. 

It wouldn't take much  changing... instead of "Australie", it only has to say "The Australian", a much easier makeover than "Their silly tweeting ABC" ...