In which the pond does 17th century theology with the reptiles ...

Okay, he's not a reptile, he's a reformed reptile, and so the pond welcomes him into the tent …

Never mind that he's a Queenslander, the pond understands, coming as it does from a town once the centre of the universe, but now represented by Barners, and besides, he is in that hall of fame … and he does set the tone for TGIF …

The pond had a sudden vision of all the reptiles doing an Elmer Gantry in the pond's revivalist tent … 

When I was a Murdochian, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, I scribbled as a child, I did EXCLUSIVES as a child: but when I became a man (or perhaps even a complimentary woman), I put away childish Murdochian things.

Hallelujah, but what of the current reptiles? Well the bias is easy to see, and appears scattered across all the front digital page every day, with a sample from this day …

 

To understand the reptile mindset, it should be understood that voting with the Greens has nothing to do with specific votes or specific policies or pertinent issues - it's simply a heresy, and it must therefore be treated on the simplistic level of 'lock her up' or 'burn the greenie witch' or better still, grab her seat back…

But how did religion get into the conversation so early, as it frequently does with the reptiles? Well there's this bizarre sight for starters, as the reptiles go all in on giving the parrot space to defend a fundamentalist bigot …

Well no, Israel the country and Israel the footballer don't battle for the pond.

There are many here amongst us, who think that football is but a joke, and don't give a toss for rugby union - check out the crowd numbers - and who think the parrot is a right royal tosser, who's never been able to come to terms with that toilet incident in London many years ago. That talk of "battles for all Australians" is typical of the crusader lizards, the assumption that everyone shares their views - but again, just look at the circulation numbers, and copies tossed like graffiti or litter into airport terminals ...

And by the way what's with all the white between the story and the picture? Why it reminds the pond of that question they asked on Morning Joe yesterday - how long before all the lizard Oz goes straight into big print to suit the age of the demographic?

Okay, religion has been established as the theme of the day, so come on down Henry 'hole in the bucket' Ergas …

Why do they keep doing it? Why is it always with the theological?

And why that Lobbecke, which strangely enough would once have been seen as a form of heresy, mixing as it does the secular and the saintly? Well the pond suspects that one reason is that our Henry is not even remotely connected to climate science, and being completely clueless, finds much comfort in a theological approach … and then there's that other aspect, previously mentioned by Tony Koch …

Yep, that's our Henry to a T, and yet the pond can remember a time when our Henry's main problem was that he read like a packet of desiccated coconut, dry as the windblown dust outside Moree, inclined to sober-sided scribbling.

And now look at him. Inside the reptile camp and doing the reptile thing.

This is what happens when you keep the company of the reptiles at the lizard Oz - a rag now little more than a laughing stock - for too long, and go full reptile yourself … and then they honour you with a Lobbecke, and you purr and preen with pleasure, because you've been  granted cult status in the reptile crusade ...

And what of the science, and what of a careful consideration of the consequences foreshadowed by climate science? You know, including but not limited to …

It's the hallmark of a certain form of reptile fanaticism not to care about such reports or such issues, but instead to blather on about love of dinkum clean true blue Oz coal, and to think of the damage done as mere detritus on the path to coal-led salvation …

A sure sign that we're in crusader territory is the way that any hint of deviance is hunted out …as yesterday …

Oh dear must he?

You won't find the reptiles talking about the UK …

But that said, Malware is dead to the pond … 

Australia is now ranked in the 62nd spot in the global broadband speed rankings, falling down three spots from last year and well behind similar advanced economies. According to the Ookla Speedtest Global Index, Australia ranks behind Kazakhstan and Cape Verde, but above Jordan, Brazil and Saudi Arabia, with an average download speed of 35.11 Mbps. This is well below the global average download speed of 57.91 Mbps. (AFR here)

And cop Mark Gregory a few days ago scribbling NBN performance problems rise.

Too late Malware. You pandered to the onion muncher about the NBN, and you pandered to the coal-loving denialists when it came to climate science … and now you have your regrets, but the planet can't take regrets to the bank ...

Hmm, how did the pond stray so far from 'hole in the bucket' Henry so quickly? 

Could it have anything to do with the way his observations are, in the main, wretchedly predictable, weak, unresearched, and for such a dodderer shouting at passing clouds, so juvenile?

So tiresome, so predictable, as if any of the lizard Oz readership is sublimely unaware of what Brian Fisher has been up to these past few decades, and so easy the talk of theology and heresy.

The pond is tired of providing links to people explaining Brian Fisher's game, here or here or here … while here even the mutton Dutton did a duck walk ...

On Thursday, the government’s most senior conservative, Peter Dutton, joined Liberal colleagues in arguing the Morrison government should not be in the business of building coal-fired power stations, and he put a question mark over whether taxpayers should support upgrades to existing plants.

Dutton said the government was not opposed to providing support to coal projects, but he was opposed to building them, because money to build that infrastructure would take away opportunities to build new roads and tunnels.

“We’ve got taxpayers’ money to spend, the question is whether the federal government should be building a coal-fired power station. I don’t agree with that. I don’t think we should be,” Dutton said.

While saying the government was not opposed to assisting coal, Dutton also indicated he wasn’t in favour of assisting projects with upgrades. “You’ve got power stations now that will be asking for taxpayers’ money, to upgrade.

“The question is whether people want to pay more taxes or whether you are going to use taxpayer money, instead of building that new road or that tunnel.”

Naturally he had to dress it up with talk of roads or tunnels. Climate science, moi?

But back to Henry, and more to the point, what the fuck has Richard Allestree got to do with climate science in the new millennium? Three fifths of fuck all, but it's where our hole in the bucket man is happy. He's not comfortable talking the actual science, he'd prefer to be stuck back in the 17th century, rolling like a pig in mud in theological texts and blathering on about a vindictive age.

But if we're going to do theology, is there a more vindictive mob to be found that the mob that gathers daily at the lizard Oz?

Hallelujah, but just for the moment the pond can't give up childish things or our Henry ...

Yep, not a word about the foreseeable consequences predicted by climate science, indeed not a word about the state of things. It wouldn't have been hard for our Henry to find …

That New Yorker story is as good as anyone to quote …

It's rare that you get to see, in sharp focus, opposite world views fighting for the planet’s future at the same time, but it happened on Monday. First came the summary findings of a fifteen-hundred-page United Nations report on biodiversity—that is, on everything that isn’t us. And it was as depressing a document as humans have ever produced. We find ourselves, the scientists who wrote it said, in the early days of an auto-da-fé that is consuming a staggering percentage of creation. Humans have destroyed many of the habitats on which the rest of nature depends and caused the temperature of the earth to rise; as a result, “around 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades, unless action is taken.” The report serves as a kind of pre-obituary for all of the creatures now on the way out—the current global rate of extinction is estimated as “already at least tens to hundreds of times higher than it has averaged over the past 10 million years.”

One would think that would be reason enough for us to act. The idea that a million chains of being could be snapped in our short time on Earth should, perhaps, hit us with at least the emotional force of the fire in the eaves of Notre-Dame. But the researchers who produced the U.N. report are (sensibly) unwilling to stake the fight on our morality; they appeal primarily to the self-interest of the one species in control, providing reminders that a diverse natural world makes our lives possible. From the pollinators and the organic matter in soil that helps crops grow to the mangrove swamps that shield us from storms, “nature’s contributions to people are vital for human existence,” the authors write, and these resources are being depleted…

And then ...

...Mike Pompeo was at a meeting of the Arctic Council in Rovaniemi, Finland. And there, as representatives from the seven other member states and six indigenous organizations warned about the rapid melting of Arctic sea ice, Pompeo, instead, exulted. “The Arctic is at the forefront of opportunity and abundance,” he said. “It houses thirteen per cent of the world’s undiscovered oil, thirty per cent of its undiscovered gas, an abundance of uranium, rare-earth minerals, gold, diamonds, and millions of square miles of untapped resources, fisheries galore.” In fact, he said, it can’t melt fast enough. “Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade. This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as twenty days.” That is to say, the fact that one of the world’s largest physical features is in chaotic flux is, in fact, good news, because we’ll soon be able to ship stuff from China three weeks faster.

I have never met an earth scientist who isn’t profoundly frightened by what is happening in the Arctic. As the fastest warming part of the planet, it offers a terrifying preview of what’s coming. Its white ice once deflected most of the sun’s incoming rays back out to space; now the blue water that’s replaced it absorbs the incoming solar radiation, amping up global warming. Meanwhile, the melting permafrost produces clouds of methane, itself a potent greenhouse gas. The newly open Arctic Ocean alters weather patterns, catching the jet stream in a way that makes for prolonged drought or flooding at lower latitudes. The rapid melting of Greenland’s great ice sheetseems to threaten the continued operation of the great ocean currents that warm northern Europe. And on and on—of all the scary spectacles on our Earth, none tops a fast-thawing north. But not to Pompeo, who looks to the Arctic and sees oil, gas, gold, and diamonds. It’s as if Gollum were Secretary of State.

And now back to our Henry doing his own imitation of Gollum in a final gobbet …

It is easy to ignore reality?

Yep, that's our Gollum, his scribbling an endless blather about theology, while around him the world comes home to roost. We'll see if our Henry ever has the good grace to make climate science welcome.

Oh why is the pond always delusional? It was warned at the very beginning, before it set off to explore 17th century theology and mindset with our Henry …

Actually the journalists are to blame too. 

They're all on the same ship, and they are all crusaders, and that's why the pond always turns to the infallible Pope for cheerful thoughts about extinctions, with more papal encyclicals available here …

And since somehow Pompeo doing Gollum came up, how about Sauron himself and his helpers, thanks to Rowe, with more Rowe here …