In which the pond notes the new climate denialist dress worn by the Major and the Caterist this week ...

 

The pond is well over a couple of reptile features that aren't a bug, but are baked in ... the first being the incessant preening and feather display wherein a reptile bows down to the wonders of News Corp and berates media rivals ...

What that speaks of is a deep insecurity, possibly a self-hynotic belief or delusion that if you keep saying you're the best, you have the right angle, the right fix, maybe some sucker out there will think you are ... and won't notice the way the fix is in.

The second is ongoing climate science denialism. These days, of course, the outright, blatant lying and distorting of data and refutations of climate scientists' work, as done in the ancient times of Monckton yore, now have to be done a bit more tippy toe, a bit more nuanced, though the point remains the same. 

There's a token nod of the hat in the direction of global warming, perhaps even a token acceptance that things might not be entirely rosy in the planet's garden, even a hint that something might need to be done, and then it's on with the usual bullshit about how nobody else is doing what Australia is doing ...  and in a sense the reptiles are right about that ...

There's no point in arguing with the reptiles when they get in this sort of mood. There's no point in producing alternative data, or poking at their insecurities because then they just roll themselves up into a foetal ball of unhappiness, and keep on keeping on.

Take the Major, please someone take the Major. There's not the slightest evidence that his absence from a newspaper column would be any more disruptive than not having Paul Sheehan around to scribble about magic water ... and yet each day he persists, and each day, Don Quixote style, he tilts at the usual windmills ...

 

 

Oh fucketty fuck, it's the ABC and the Graudian yet again. Hasn't he got anything better to do? Has he tried interviewing a climate scientist or three? How sad the headline writer couldn't fit Nine into the headline, because of course they made it into the text ...

 

No, the beefy Angus isn't right,  the beefy Angus is a fuckwit with a dubious track record on many matters, such as murky company schemes and making up stuff when it comes to Lord Mayors ... and while the pond understands that it's the Major's duty as a correspondent for the Pravda down under hive mind set, doesn't he ever get tired trotting out that 1.3 per cent bullshit each time he gets down with his own patented climate science denialism ...

Others have tackled this problem, as at The Conversation in 2019, with How to answer the argument that Australia's emissions are too small to make a difference ... 

 

And so on and so on, but all it means is that the pond has yet again been a sucker and bitten on the bullshit that somehow Australia can boast about having huuuge piles of coal and gas and can still carry on regardless, and yet somehow manage to do its bit for global warming ... because, in reptile la la land, it's everybody else's fault ...

 

What really gets the pond's goat is when the Major and his ilk deliberately misrepresent a fact checking piece, just to maintain the war on New Zealand, a form of distraction from SloMo and beefy Angus's pitiful performance ...

It was a specious Dame Groan claim that sent the AAP into fact checking mode, and in December 2020 turned out this in The Canberra Times (might be paywall affected) ...

...It should be noted that on a per capita basis Australia's emissions were much higher than New Zealand's.
Australia's net emissions were 90 per cent higher than NZ's in 2018, and gross emissions were 38 per cent higher. Based on OECD figures, NZ had the fifth highest gross emissions per capita in the OECD in 2018, while Australia had the highest emissions per capita.
Australian National University honorary associate professor Hugh Saddler is an expert in greenhouse gas emissions accounting. Dr Saddler said gross emissions were a better way to compare the true emissions of each country and removing the LULUCF emissions from Australia's net emissions provided a comparable figure for NZ's gross figures.
"The gross emissions provide an apples with apples comparison," he said. "It gives a much better representation of the progress each country is making in moving towards a net-zero economy."
Dr Saddler said comparing gross emissions on a per capita basis would also be fairer.
He said the methods used to estimate LULUCF emissions by both countries were robust and subject to a rigorous review process undertaken by experts from other countries.
"I know about this process, because I was for some years one of these experts and took part in reviews of a number of other countries," he said. "I would therefore be astonished if New Zealand was able to undertake 'fancy accounting sidesteps'."
Dr Saddler said because Australia's per capita emissions were much higher than New Zealand's, the larger country would need to reduce its emissions at a much greater rate in order to reach parity.
Australia's emissions profile also made it easier to reduce its emissions, he said. For example only 21 per cent of Australia's electricity came from renewable sources in 2019, whereas New Zealand's electricity was 82 per cent renewable (page 2).
AAP FactCheck found it mostly false to claim Australia's emissions reduced between 2005 and 2018 while NZ's emissions increased.
While Prof Sloan correctly cited Australia's net emissions reduction, New Zealand's emissions also decreased during this period - albeit at a lower rate than for Australia.
New Zealand's net emissions were not misleadingly low due to "fancy accounting sidesteps", as Prof Sloan suggested. Gross figures - which do not account for land use and forestry changes - show New Zealand's emissions reduced three per cent, while Australia's gross total increased by 5.8 per cent over the same period.

It's galling that the pond has to provide a link, while Major Mitchell doesn't bother, it's galling that the pond has bitten yet again at reptile tripe, and it's especially galling that the Major entirely misrepresents the key finding ...

The pond hits peak discontent at having to acknowledge that former Chairman Rudd and Malware, the man who ruined the NBN, have a better case than the Major, and not just because he's a wolfie denialist in bullshit sheep's clothing, and a moron of the first water , it's because the data supports them rather than the Major ... but when has it ever been different?

But what would produce the ultimate pond freak-out? The Major ending on a Bjorn-again note ...

 

Very few people outside the Terror, the Major, News Corp in general and the Bjorn again man himself take Lomborg seriously, but these days he's the new "Lord" Monckton for the reptiles, and they regularly regurgitate his nonsense as if it were gospel. 

The pond understands that in terms of the science, the Major is standing to the back of the crowd and can only hear "blessed are the Bjorn-again cheesemakers", but there's only so much cheese the pond can take ... here, have a couple of cartoons as a breather, they're full of great beefy Angus science ...

And yet the pond was barely back in base to enjoy the cartoons when it had to saddle up and ride out again to greet the Caterist, a man completely clueless about the movement of floodwaters in quarries and yet somehow expecting us to take his feeble, pathetic attempts at climate science seriously ...

 

The stench of hypocrisy emanating from the Caterist is exemplified by that pathetic attempt to use a  woman usually mocked by the reptiles to mock jolly Joe's ambition ...

But before we get going, why not take a look at the AEC 2019-20 associated entity return for the Menzies Research Centre, here.

Now we've been reminded we're dealing with a branch of the Liberal party, with a healthy dose of federal government cash in the paw, we can move on to the denialism ..

.

 

Note that this murmuration of reptiles sees the Caterist and the Major whistling the same tune, talking of Nine media, with the Caterist being terribly witty about the climate cognoscenti, because if there's one thing that unnerves and agitates the Caterist it's a display of intelligence ...

How desperate to things then get? Well in lieu of the cult master, the reptiles offer up a cartoon ...

 

By now all the reptile themes have been given yet another parade, though this time Canada bears the burden. But can New Zealand be far behind, and can the lies about Australia's performance be just around the corner?

 

 

How about observing the fate of the world? Nope, not when you get cash in the paw to toe the federal government line. In other parts of the world, that would be viewed as a corrupting example of the power of money. But this sort of corruption is standard, because how good is Australia? Your honour, the cash in the paw just fell off the back of a truck, and so I felt compelled to be churlish and apply a partisan edge to this topic ...

And so to a Rowe, deemed so sensitive that you had to click on it to access it at his Twitter account here ... 

And yet if Hindu nationalists can follow Modi down assorted rabbit holes, as reported in 2004 in The Times of India here ...

AHMEDABAD: Gandhi is not so great, but Hitler is. Welcome to high school education in Narendra Modi''s Gujarat, where authors of social studies textbooks published by the Gujarat State Board of School Textbooks have found faults with the freedom movement and glorified Fascism and Nazism.
While a Class VIII student is taught ''negative aspects'' of Gandhi''s non-cooperation movement, the Class X social studies textbook has chapters on ''Hitler, the Supremo'' and ''Internal Achievements of Nazism''.
The Class X book presents a frighteningly uncritical picture of Fascism and Nazism. The strong national pride that both these phenomena generated, the efficiency in the bureaucracy and the administration and other ''achievements'' are detailed, but pogroms against Jews and atrocities against trade unionists, migrant labourers, and any section of people who did not fit into Mussolini or Hitler''s definition of rightful citizen don''t find any mention." They committed the gruesome and inhuman act of suffocating 60 lakh Jews in gas chambers" is all the book, authored by a panel, mentions of the holocaust.
The section on ''Ideology of Nazism'' reads: "Hitler lent dignity and prestige to the German government within a short time by establishing a strong administrative set up. He created the vast state of Greater Germany. He adopted the policy of opposition towards the Jewish people and advocated the supremacy of the German race. He adopted a new economic policy and brought prosperity to Germany.
He began efforts for the eradication of unemployment. He started constructing public buildings, providing irrigation facilities, building railways, roads and production of war materials. He made untiring efforts to make Germany self-reliant within one decade. Hitler discarded the Treaty of Versailles by calling it just ''a piece of paper'' and stopped paying the war penalty. He instilled the spirit of adventure in the common people"...

... then they should be able to cope with this, if only in the spirit of adventure in the common people, infected and dying in droves...