A reptile round-up while on holydays ...

 

When travelling to Canberra, the pond always likes to take the detour to see the artwork at Collector, though unfortunately the pond didn't take any fill lighting to compensate for the back lighting ...

It seems to grow a little sorrier by the decade, but at least they keep the grass cut ... and it is better than Canberra's risible attempts to match Melbourne at public sculpture ...

Oh please, that's so 1970s, or 2009 if you will at the Wayback Machine ...

As for today's offerings, the pond remains on a sort of break, and gaily tripped on by ...

Oh please simplistic Simon offering a reality check (as opposed to his own conflict of interest), and the lizard Oz editorialist already flagging reptile knee capping attempt, and the bouffant one blathering on about the fine emissions print? 

And that was matched by the bromancer getting all atremble and aquiver at ruffling the dragon, while ancient Troy was getting agitated about the Donald?

That reminded the pond of some holyday reading it had been doing ... 

Usually the pond isn't a big Jack Shafer fan, but sometimes cynicism is in order, as in this piece ...

The slow learners at the New York Post and Wall Street Journal editorial pages had a revelation on Friday. As if synchronized to sing the same tune at the same time by their owner, Rupert Murdoch, they cited the proceedings of the Jan. 6 Committee to conclude that Donald Trump had failed to uphold his oath to defend and protect the Constitution.

How could Murdoch, whose editorial pages and Fox News Channel defended Trump for the past six years, have suddenly turned on the former president so viciously? As I, the Jury’s detective Mike Hammer said to love interest Charlotte Manning when she asked the same question as he gut-shot her dead, “It was easy.”

…Although it looks great in headlines, the Murdoch-Trump divorce isn’t the seismic event that some pretend it is. The two masters of demagoguery have had their differences over the years. In 2015, Murdoch was calling Trump a “phony” to his friends and a “fucking idiot,” according to Michael Wolff’s 2018 book Fire and Fury. These insults did not prevent Trump from using Murdoch or Murdoch from using Trump. If Trump runs for president in 2024 and buries the field, there will be plenty of time for Murdoch to do what he traditionally does: Place his bet on the leading pony. Like a pair of powerful gangsters who quarrel over how to divide the spoils, Murdoch and Trump will reconcile if they determine it’s in their mutual interests to reconcile.

How could they possibly do that? It would be easy.

Join the slow learners' club, ancient Troy. When you work for a latter day power hungry Hearst, it's easy.

And the triptych of terrors held no horrors or nightmares for the pond ...

Penbo on the union-bashing case, and that jersey - yes it's all the fault of Hollywood 'leets - and a chance for the pond to cut nattering "Ned" dead, not even offering a little finger for his talk of governing competence, when the previous mob showed how it was done by letting loose on water matters in a most shameful way as a last desperate election day ploy ... why it's almost like barreling along with Barilaro if you want to go in search of governing competence...

After all that, the pond got to thinking. If it wanted a decent serve of climate science denialism, it would hop in its time machine and head back to Monday, though the question then arises: does ancient Major deserve a rehashing, or should the ancient Major simply be hashed?

Actually there are events all over the place, beyond the Major and the Bjorn-again one's ken (is there any other columnist who would feature the Bjorn-again one at the top of his piece? Is an unprecedented hot day entirely precedented in the Major's world?).

Ignoring the California wildfires and the assorted droughts and flooding events, the pond has been fascinated in recent times by the melting of the glaciers ...

Even a staid rag such as USA Today had taken notice ...

Yes, the rag was full of the news ... designed to send the Major into a melt down ...

In the 1980s and 1990s in Greenland, a melt event of this sort never occurred, but starting in the 2000s – especially since 2010 – the melting has been more extensive.

The melt is two times larger than normal, said Xavier Fettweis of the University of Liège. Fettweis, a polar researcher, created a model scientists use, along with satellite data, to study Greenland's changes. 

The melt is among two of the largest melts in the ice sheet history after the 2012 and 2019 melting events; in 2019, the runoff was about 527 billion tons. So far, the total melt is far below 2019 levels, but the situation is more dire over the Svalbard ice caps at the North of Norway, Fettweis said.

More melting was expected, said Scambos, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. "This event is one of many events over the whole summer," he said. "We can expect on the order of 100 billion tons of water going into the ocean. Greenland as a whole is losing a tremendous amount of ice every year now."

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center ice scientist Nathan Kurtz was recently in Greenland to help better calibrate ICESat-2, one of the agency's satellites used to monitor Greenland.

Its data has shown a loss of ice from Greenland of about 200 billion tons a year over the past two decades, Kurtz told USA TODAY. "This loss of ice contributes directly to global sea level rise, which has significant societal impacts," he said.

Lipscomb, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said scientists measure the amount of water melted in units of gigatons per year, or 1 billion tons of water. Before climate change, about 600 gigatons of snowfall were coming in each year and about 300 gigatons were going out in the form of summer melting. 

Now, Greenland's ice sheet is losing nearly 300 gigatons of water each year more than it gains from snowfall, Lipscomb said. "There's still time to avoid catastrophic sea level rise, but every year that greenhouse gas emissions continue at the present rate increases the chances of serious problems down the road." 

In some parts of the world such as Asia, seasonal water supply depend on the timing of the glacier melt.

"If the melt is happening too early, you may not be getting the water when you need it for farming," he said. "And if the glaciers completely melt, then you won't have the glacier melt water source at all. And that's something people worry about for later this century as the warming continues."

And as for those heatwaves, fancy finding this in The Hill ...

Indeed, it was all hunky dory, and the Major was on top of it ...

All that deserves a cartoon or two...

Back to the Major, and the usual click bait video, carefully neutered ...

Oh all that deserves a cartoon, as we're talking of reptile posturing ...

And in the final gobbet, the Major gives the game away by mentioning his notion of a climate scientist.

The pond has been down the Judith Curry road many times before ... she's been at it for a long time, and her DeSmog listing has a hard time keeping up, and who else could write, Trump’s election provided an opportunity for a more rational energy and climate policy, but why is the pond not surprised by the Major and his reading? (careful with that link, there's a glowering photo that looks like a prison mug shot)

And the Major will continue to boost climate science denialists, rogues and ratbags, it's Nature's way of fucking itself ...

Also out and about on the Monday was the Caterist, and that raised an even more important question - is there any point revisiting tired Caterist vomit, exposed for a couple of days to the noon day sun?

Never mind, the pond is holding its nose as it plunges in ...

What's funny here? Well the notion that the Caterist has a sensa huma is a good start. We all know how the reptiles respond to a little satire ... celebrated at Facebook ...

Should the pond deplatform the Caterist, carrying on like a dog fucker? Or perhaps a pork chop? It's a powerful temptation ...

But then there's the sheer comedy of those who celebrate white nationalist Xians while deploring those bloody Puritans ...

Of course there's been no inequality and oppression ... if being three fifths human is written into the Constitution, it must be good and right and applied to Clarence ...

It sort of fits into the game plan that the pond read in the Beast ... (might be paywalled)

To achieve its goal, the right uses a now familiar four-part strategy.

First, Republicans use any means necessary to achieve power and promote their unpopular, extremist, counter-majoritarian agenda.

Second, they create and promote disinformation and lies to frighten their base and Jedi mind-trick them into believing they are being oppressed by the actual victims.

Third, they create a specific villain, target them, and then attack them through scapegoating, smearing, and intimidation.

Fourth, they never apologize or back down once their lie is exposed, but instead, they double down, and in times of doubt, always pivot towards racism and fear-mongering.

Yeah, that sort of fits. The pond could make a good case for the Caterist being irritated he couldn't sue some comedian for calling him a floodwaters quarry fucker ...

Or perhaps abortion will be banned in many states and the new Gilead earnestly sought by the right will come to pass - there's a bundle of laughs to be had at a woman's encounter with a coat hanger - or perhaps the Caterist will be remembered mainly as a fleeting comedy item, and a floodwater quarry fucker ...

And so on the Tuesday came a good Groaning, with heaps of click bait videos to neuter ... but please note the demonic hellfire glow in the opening snap ...

The pond reckons that Dame Groan has a new hero ...

So it's on with how to do climate science denialism, Dame Groan style ... with much pursing of lips and sighs of disapproval ... oh how it's all too hard, because it will lead to chaos, when things are going spiffingly well in Dame Groan's air-conditioned world ...

Indeed, indeed ...

And yet there's still more groaning, and click bait videos, a sure sign of reptile silver lining ...

If the pond might be so bold, it has been looking at plucky England, and wondered why so many of them wanted to flee to the perfidious, deviant French, only to get stuck in Dover ... and as well as cunning ploys to keep the lads and lasses exploring the Moors, Andrew Rawsnley offered a good trussing in the Graudian ...

The signature pledge of her campaign is that she can magic up £30bn of instant tax cuts by putting the cost on borrowing. Mrs Thatcher would not applaud this; she would be aghast at the frivolity of such fantasy economics. The Iron Lady didn’t believe in unfunded and inflation-fuelling giveaways. She would be horrified by the notion of piling on more national debt when the government is already making record interest payments on its borrowing. Trussism isn’t Thatcherism. What she’s peddling is cakeism. In that sense too, she is the true heir of the outgoing prime minister.

She is the anointed one of the Johnsonites. Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries are her noisiest cheerleaders. The Johnson-backing media has wielded its hatchets in a brutal effort to destroy her competitors. This is in part because she stayed in his cabinet to the shabby end and in part because the Brextremists think she will be their puppet. “She is the adoptive child of the ERG [European Research Group] and all the other batshit groups on the right of the party,” says one Tory MP who would describe himself as a man of the right. Some think Mr Johnson wants her to succeed him not just because he hates Mr Sunak, but because he believes Ms Truss will protect him and his secrets. Mr Cummings has a conspiracy theory, which sounds so wacky it could be true, that Mr Johnson reckons there’s a good chance she will blow up at Number 10, opening the door for him to return.

He is the only prime minister of modern times to have been fired by his own MPs for being unfit to hold the office. In those circumstances, and paying attention to what the public think, you might expect the Conservative party to choose a successor who is as little like him as possible. Apparently not. If the polling of the intentions of the tiny selectorate is accurate, the Tory party is embracing someone with many strikingly similar characteristics. The last thing Britain wants or needs is a Boris Johnson Mark 2, but there is nothing Britain can do to stop Tory activists handing the keys of Number 10 to another wild blond opportunist whose primary talent is the spinning of fairytales.

Go Tories, go cakeism, go the Groaning, and here's another cartoon celebrating Dame Groan's hero ...

... though it possibly should have been one celebrating plucky England ...

And so to another short groaning, and click bait video,  with Dame Groan turning on her own kind ...

There's no doubt about it ... the Groaner is solid ... and knows how to send out the zzzzz's ...

And so to a last burst of groaning ...

Not just a warm inner glow ... there's always that warm outer glow that Dame Groan loves ...

At this point, the pond is long over length and would usually give the game away ... but really what could the pond do but link to that story in The New Yorker,  Living through India's next level heat wave ... what a pity the Major and the Groaner would miss it, yet it's currently outside the paywall, or maybe not, whatever, it's a wretched read featuring much suffering ... 

And so on to providing evidence that the pond was up to date, that this was being done by the pond on the actual Wednesday, with the holyday soon to come to an end, by turning to Dame Slap for a damn good slapping ... 

Why should the pond care about length? It's on holydays and it sort of misses the reptiles ...

... and besides, those damned pesky, difficult, awkward blacks are always handy for a damned hard slapping ...

At some point, Dame Slap will rail at the dangerous 'leets, from her eyrie on planet Janet, but the pond thinks it has found where these 'leets like to park ...

Damn you croquet club 'leets, damn you to hell ... but back to the black bashing ... because Dame Slap and white voters are so put upon ...

Luckily of course Dame Groan is an originalist, and all the Constitution said was that black bashing was a noble sport ... and laws governing the sport might be made if white voters had an inclination to so instruct their members, and speaking of members, the pond must confess that it only ran with Dame Slap so it could catch up with a few infallible Popes ...

Now back to the originalist, being as original as Ginni Thomas in a white nationalist Q fever dream ...

At last a glimmer, a shred, a glimmer of self-awareness, from an impolite, ignorant and ideological Dame Slap shouting at the world from her planet Janet eyrie ... quoting a film no doubt full of pesky, difficult blacks attempting a land claim ...and that just leaves time for an earlier infallible Pope and a couple of immortal Rowes ...