In which, groan, there's another groan from Dame Groan, and so no end in sight for the lizard Oz groaning ...

It was touching really. 

There was Adam Morton scribbling away in The Graudian, Labor was in a climate crouch. It now has the chance to stand up to News Corp and put the national interest first

...The evidence of the past couple of weeks is that, wherever it lands, the government should expect fierce resistance. Take News Corp’s national flagship, The Australian. Since parliament returned late last month, it has dedicated significant space to what is basically a campaign against climate action dressed up as news coverage.

Well yes, the reptiles of Oz are a remorselessly defiant climate denialist machine, up there with Homer Simpson in an all you can eat restaurant. 

Look at the two lead items early this morning in the jihadist rag ...

Note the sinister use of the word "agenda" in that lead outing ...

CBOE Australia
Chalmers’ kick up the ASX: bid to lift Labor’s favourite stocks
The move to break up the ASX’s 38-year monopoly will seek to lure billions to boost Labor’s clean energy, housing and tech agendas.
By Matthew Cranston and Geoff Chambers

So the federal government isn't seeking to carry out policies approved by a massive majority at an election, it's looting hapless victims to carry out sinister agendas. Especially, gasp, a clean energy "agenda", because everybody loves dirty energy in reptile la la land.

And then there was this chambering of EV range anxiety ...

DISTANCE DEBATE
Coming up short: what carmakers aren’t telling you about your EV
Road tests reveal the true driving range of Australia’s most popular electric vehicles. Here are the five models which failed to go the advertised distance.
By Geoff Chambers

The dud Chambers fired off a couple of rounds featuring Teslas Y and 3, a Kia EV6, and a Smart EV3, with a terrifying range of short falls. Why most of them were in the 8% range, so who could possibly contemplate getting an EV, when there was a friendly lizard Oz approved gas guzzler to hand?

The upside? The pond was reminded of poor old Uncle Elon and his fall from grace, and Big Balls getting bashed and all that ...

Back to the enhanced range anxiety, and the loons at AAA were quoted by the reptiles as offering this reassuring explanation for the hive mind fuss ...

AAA managing director Michael Bradley said the real-world testing program would help to ­alleviate range anxiety among ­potential EV buyers.

He said the results gave prospective EV buyers an independent indication of real-world battery range to “help them understand which cars perform as advertised and which fall short”.

“As more EVs enter our market, our testing will help consumers understand which new market entrants measure up on battery range. Our program will bring confidence to Australian fleets and families looking to buy an EV,” Mr Bradley said.

He said the testing program, which began in 2023 and is backed by $14m in federal funding, had shown consumers “cannot always rely on a carmaker’s laboratory tests as an indicator of real-world performance”. 

Foolish MD. 

Help to alleviate range anxiety among potential EV buyers?

In your irrelevant, delusional dreams.

The reptiles were entirely about enhancing range anxiety among potential EV buyers as they pursue their sinister, not at all hidden climate science denying agenda.

Why if you left Melbourne on a trip to Wirrega in a BYD Atto 3, so a gigantic graph explained, you'd only get as far as Nhill, and who wants to be stuck in Nhill, perhaps for a night, perhaps for a week, perhaps for a year, with elusive, charming Wirrega always just out of reach, because you, mug punter that you are, dared to buy an EV ...

Meanwhile, the pond will be cruising the Hume without the slightest hint of range anxiety, with only the Tarcutta terminus likely to cause delays. 

As every EV owner knows, range varies on the day, according to conditions, style of driving, yadda yadda, and this form of fear mongering is truly pathetic.

And there are all sorts of data available about actual EV performances, without AAA desperately trying to insist on its ongoing relevance and seeking any publicity it could find (as if the old days might somehow return by lying down with reptiles, when all you get from doing that is a thicket of fleas).

Back with Morton ...

Its approach is not new. The costs of acting and the challenges that come with renewable energy are over-emphasised and exaggerated. The costs of not acting, including the opportunity cost of continuing to back fossil fuels over clean alternatives, are ignored. The level of international action – a valid area for sceptical scrutiny – is painted in the worst possible light. The global climate science consensus is rejected, downplayed or not mentioned.
The implicit message is that cutting greenhouse gas emissions is a weird, leftwing pursuit, rather than a serious and inevitable challenge that needs to be addressed.

Well yes, speaking of traducing leftwing pursuits, and confusing science with "agendas", look over on the extreme far right ...

Of course, there's Dame Groan performing in a way beyond parody, blathering on about the Left's obsession with targets.

The dear old duck, the tragic old biddy, keeps on having thoughts pop into her head, but that's what happens when you're in the hive mind, and the murmuration of the bees keeps making alarming noises...

What else? Well Cadance was ringing the bell on AI, the latest reptile crusade, but Charlie Lewis in Crikey had already offered a fatuous take on that, in Energy use, job risks, fake songs: The staggering cost of AI in numbers, AI is projected to account for 0.5% of worldwide energy use by 2027, more than that used by the entire country of Argentina. (sorry paywall)

A sample:

Number of takes it took Jackie Chan to perfect the “shuttlecock” scene in 1982’s Dragon Lord: Around 2,900
Number of classic Kung Fu films — including Chan’s — being “reimagined” by AI, according to a collection of Chinese studios: Around 100
Number of “songs” generated by AI start-up Boomy: 14.5 million
Number of years it would take to listen to those AI-generated songs (assuming the average pop song length of 3 minutes and 30 seconds): 96.6
Time it took Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel: Roughly four years
Time it took Crikey to generate the following image of the Sistine Chapel, reworked to feature 1980s pop duo The Proclaimers: Roughly four seconds

The deeply offensive, deeply cr*ppy, profoundly sh*tty illustration?

To be fair, to give the machine its due, it's no worse, and possibly better than the AI illustrations now routinely deployed in the hive mind.

The pond reckons that before this day is out the pond will be noting an uncredited lizard Oz illustration that reeks of AI...

Wilcox had a cartoon for the reptiles as they carry out their jihad...

It's a moot point as to whether the hive mind generates "intellectual" property ...

Might as well slip in the infallible Pope of the day as well, what with all sorts of hounds on the loose, thereby helping the pond with its avoidance tactic.

Give the pond anything to avoid the groaning ...

Once again the pond is doing a Tootle, and while off the tracks, a special mention for ...

What don’t celebrity activists get about Tehran’s tyrant?
The glorification of a Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cannot be ignored in a democratic society such as Australia.
By Saba Vasefi

Here's that trick in summary. 

Spot a single image in a large march, and use it to berate the crowd, and ignore the purpose of the march, with a line offering a billy goat butt, "I understand the moral anguish of the demonstrators on the bridge..."

Perhaps then write about the current famine, ethnic cleansing and genocide going down in Gaza than use a stray image to soundly beat the marchers over the head and give them a good thrashing.

Perhaps not assume that they're all complicit in enthusiastic devotion to the mad Mullahs?

Enough already, time to take a final note from Morton ...

...Privately, members of the government are scathing of how the country’s biggest newspaper publisher reports on the climate crisis. They also acknowledge the company is less influential than it used to be. But Canberra is a small place, Australia a limited media market, and old habits are hard to shake. A key question for Albanese and his cabinet colleagues will be whether they are willing to just ignore the company’s one-sided framing and avoid being fooled into believing it represents a mainstream public that it needs to factor in.
Put another way: Labor will need to decide if it has ditched the crouch.
The government is about to receive long-awaited advice from the Climate Change Authority on the 2035 target. It is likely to include a target range, based on what the authority’s board considers ambitious and achievable. It’s been consulting on a cut of 65% to 75% below 2005 levels.
Given where the electorate and future economy sit, there is a strong case for Labor to set a target at the ambitious end of that range and stretch to get there. Some emissions cuts – through better energy efficiency and reducing potent methane leaks at fossil fuel sites – are cost effective and just waiting to be made.
Others would be tougher, requiring the government to acknowledge that local emissions from expanding export coal and gas industries are substantial and can’t be written off forever as someone else’s problem – and that new green industries in hydrogen, steel and other commodities are likely to struggle to flourish until their polluting competitors decline.
An ambitious climate goal would be demanding. But it could also trigger a range of positives. Who knows? If well-handled, they might even include the government being rewarded by the bulk of the population, who have now hinted more than once it is what they want.

Indeed, indeed, old habits are incredibly hard to shake ...

Jostling cheek by jowl with Morton's piece was this story ... How rising seas are threatening the crucial art of weaving in Samoa, Weaving is central to cultural life in Samoa but climate change is disrupting conditions needed for plants used to make the intricate mats

For generations, women in Samoa have harvested, prepared and woven intricate mats used in ceremonies and village life. The fine mats are the country’s most treasured cultural artefacts but now, they are under threat as the pandanus is starting to show signs of decline.
The pandanus grows on the coastline, yet in Neiafu, and other low-lying parts of Samoa, the impacts of climate change are starting to affect the plant’s growth. Saltwater intrusion, prolonged drought, and accelerating coastal erosion are altering the ecological conditions required for healthy pandanus growth. These environmental changes reduce soil fertility, increase salinity and make it harder for pandanus to thrive in shallow coastal zones.
“Climate change is profoundly impacting coastal communities in Samoa,” says conservationist Alofa Paul.
“Rising sea levels and increased storm intensity are exacerbating these stressors, creating conditions that are increasingly unsuitable for pandanus cultivation. Without intervention, these impacts are projected to intensify in the coming years.”
The women in Neiafu have noticed the changes.
“We can see a slow shift,” says Tutogi Mua, a weaver with the Neiafu women’s committee.

The pond could imagine how little Timmie Bleagh or the Bolter would deal with this ... with a singular lack of compassion or concern ...

I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am ... a human being! I am.... a basket weaver from Samoa

Enough warming up the crowd with hive mind jokes, come on down Dame Groan, harping away like a harridan given only a few lines to chant incessantly, and always willing to turn them into a Greek chorus of doom ...

The header: What’s behind the Left’s obsession with targets?, It keeps popping into my head: targets, targets everywhere, but not a bit of sense in sight. Setting a target is not the same as implementing policy measures. Indeed, setting a target may be a very bad start.

The caption for the uncredited image, which possibly took only three seconds to compile, eh Charlie? The Albanese government is drowning in targets, writes Judith Sloan.

Mention targets and see what the old AI machine can crank out.

There was also the mystical command: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The reptiles reckoned the read at five minutes, and the pond's solution is not to add to the burden by making lengthy notes ...

Like centre-left regimes around the world, the Albanese government loves a target.
There is the emissions reduction target; a target for the proportion of renewable energy in the grid; net zero by 2050; a target for the number of new homes to be built; a target for the number of GP consultations that will be bulk-billed; Closing the Gap targets; and the list goes on.
There was even a target – indeed, a guarantee – that power bills would fall by $275 a year but that target has been quietly dropped.
It keeps popping into my head: targets, targets everywhere, but not a bit of sense in sight.
Let’s be clear: setting a target is not the same as implementing policy measures. Indeed, setting a target may be a very bad start. It smacks of central planning and gives the impression that the government can control outcomes in ways it cannot.
Communist countries have always loved targets. The Soviet Union would include lots of targets in its five-year plans. For many years India, although strictly speaking not a communist country at the time, also was keen on the five-year plan.
But targets have become increasingly popular with democratically elected governments, particularly as a way of winning over voters with ambitious plans to achieve popular outcomes.

Hang on, one note is worth making. 

How disappointing is it for Dame Groan not to go the final yard? 

Sure she got to blathering about the Soviet Union and five year plans, but wasn't that just a lay up, a chance for a slam dunk chance to label the government as deeply Stalinist, or perhaps Hitlerist, what with Adolf's insistence on rolling out autobahns?

Never mind, the reptiles helped out the crusade by introducing another jihadist, the eminent bromancer, fresh from his war on China ... The Australian’s Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan discusses the net-zero debate taking place within the Coalition. “Net zero is just a fantasy, it’s just not reality, and of course, you say that in Australia and you get dismissed,” Mr Sheridan told Sky News Australia. “Global carbon emissions have gone up quite radically between 2020 and 2023. “All centre-right parties around the English-speaking world have abandoned net zero by 2050 as a hard target.

Eek, solar panels littering the landscape, almost as bad as those infernal wind machines killing the whales around Tamworth.

Dame Groan carried on crusading ...

Who can forget the promise by New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern to build 100,000 new affordable homes within a decade under the KiwiBuild scheme?
In the end a tiny fraction of this number was built and Ardern was forced to walk back from the target. Even so she remained New Zealand’s prime minister for more than five years until her resignation.
Let me concentrate here on Australia’s federal climate targets.
Under the Paris Agreement to which Australia is a signatory, every five years we must submit our nationally determined contribution, with each subsequent pledge more ambitious than the previous one. In Australia’s case, our NDC is set out in the Climate Change Act 2022.
Many countries have not bothered to embed their NDCs in legislation and there are no effective penalties for a failure to meet the stipulated targets.
It’s worth examining Australia’s emissions figures to see what our chances are of meeting our 2030 targets. We have pledged to reduce emissions by 43 per cent by 2030 from the base year of 2005. In that early year, our overall emissions were 613 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Last year the figure was 440, but most of that reduction was because of the early inclusion of “land use change and forestry”. In the past few years, and excluding the Covid period, emissions have been essentially flat.
Notwithstanding, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water continues to claim the 2030 emissions target of 352 million tonnes of CO2-e still can be met. By including the expanded Capacity Investment Scheme (which heavily subsidises investment in renewable energy and storage) and the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard, the department expects Australia to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 42.6 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

Ah, the new vehicle efficiency standard. 

See anti-EV campaign above, as the reptiles introduced another AV distraction, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has returned to the Garma Festival in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, announcing a new partnership to drive economic development in Indigenous communities. The festival is a place for song, dance, and culture, but also a place for the serious business of Indigenous politics. On his fourth trip to Garma since taking office, Mr Albanese announced a new economic partnership with the Coalition of Peak Indigenous Organisations. “This builds on our commitment to the Closing the Gap agreement, to its call for a new way of doing business and to the principle of shared decision making,” Mr Albanese said.

What's that got to do with the groaning, or EVs or whatever?

Never mind, back with the groaner, on with the jihad...

Let’s face it, this is simply an optimistic guess. When climate guru Ross Garnaut claims there is no chance that the 2030 emissions reduction target will be met, we need to sit up and listen. He is not alone in this opinion. Additionally, the target of 82 per cent renewable energy penetration of the grid by 2030 will be missed by a significant amount.
Given the high degree of uncertainty about whether the 2030 target will be met, one might expect a fair degree of caution to be applied when considering the target for 2035. All the hyperbolic statements in the world, particularly by UN climate change executive Simon Stiell, a former property developer from Grenada, do not assist the process.
According to Stiell, Australia must prevent the overheating of the planet, otherwise we may have to look forward to fruit and vegetables being a once-a-year treat. Give us all a break here and let’s not forget that Australia contributes just more than 1 per cent of global emissions.
In Stiell’s opinion, “for Australia specifically, there’s an incredible opportunity to demonstrate what ambition looks like, to take full advantage of all of its natural resources in the green energy space, and to accelerate its transition away from its dependence on fossil fuels to new green technologies. The science is calling for a collective effort for all countries to cut emissions by 60 per cent by 2035.”
Demonstrating that he fails to understand the terms of the Paris Agreement, which covers only scope one and two emissions, Stiell suggests that Australia should restrict its exports of natural gas and coal: “Yes, exporting carbon emissions also needs to be addressed.” (Including scope three emissions would involve significant double counting.)
This is the environment into which Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen shortly will announce the 2035 NDC. This announcement was expected to happen before the election and it’s hard not to think that the deferral was due to political considerations. Bowen is being assisted by the Climate Change Authority, chaired by former Liberal politician Matt Kean.
Bowen is being egged on to announce a much higher target for 2035. Climate Council chairwoman Carol Schwartz has written, without evidence, that “targets work; strong targets work even better”. She says: “With momentum built over the past three years and the electoral wind at its back, the Albanese government can now set the strongest possible target, backed by clear policy and plans, to bring Australians together behind a shared purpose.”

As a reminder of the many villains, the infidels involved in all this, the reptiles provided a snap of rat fink, double crossing, fellow travelling Matt Kean

Dame Slap then finished up her latest jeremiad, one of so many they all blur in the pond's mind into an endless snake dance, wriggling its way to the horison... and yes, dismal, eternally disappointing EVs briefly feature ...

The likely outcome is that the Albanese government will indeed set a highly ambitious target for 2035, which will attract praise from its left-wing supporters and climate activists.
But the key question will remain: how is such a target to be met, particularly in the context of rapidly growing population with continuing high rates of net immigration?
It is already clear the government’s green hydrogen strategy, which is also part of the plans of the Australian Energy Market Operator, is a bust. Even if things were to change, there is no chance that green hydrogen will be anything other than a niche play in 2035.
The take-up of electric vehicles is unlikely to come close to meeting the government’s targets – there’s that word again – and reducing emissions in agriculture is highly problematic. In several countries, agriculture is not even included in the calculation of emissions. New Zealand excludes agriculture from its commitment to Paris.
To be sure, the likely closure of some heavy emitters here, such as aluminium smelters, as well as the closure of coal-fired power plants will have the effect of lowering emissions. But deindustrialisation is a dismal way of achieving what is a completely arbitrary target. It also flies in the face of the implicit pledge of the government’s Future Made in Australia scheme.
The bottom line is that setting a target is not policy and simply stating a figure and a date doesn’t guarantee anything.
Governments are best advised to concentrate on the fundamentals that drive the trends that matter rather than plucking figures out of thin air.

As a reminder of what it's like in the hive mind, below the dire groaning came this:

More Coverage

The stories that kept punters inside the hive mind had headers beyond the valley of caricature ...

Net-zero target is the emperor with no clothes

Revive the Libs? Step one, give up the net-zero ‘target mania’

Ley faces pressure to dump net zero targets

What did Morton say?

Privately, members of the government are scathing of how the country’s biggest newspaper publisher reports on the climate crisis. They also acknowledge the company is less influential than it used to be. But Canberra is a small place, Australia a limited media market, and old habits are hard to shake.

The fact is, if you step into the hive mind, you need to make sure you're wearing Hazmat protection.

And so to conclude with another Tootle, one mentioned by several correspondents, as if the pond needed any urging.

This is where following King Donald and his minions gets you ... per the NY Times, Kennedy Cancels Nearly $500 Million in mRNA Vaccine Contracts, That kind of shot was first used during the Covid-19 pandemic, but the health secretary has been sharply critical of the technology. (that's an archive link)

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has canceled nearly $500 million of grants and contracts for developing mRNA vaccines, the Department of Health and Human Services announced on Tuesday.
It is the latest blow to research on this technology. In May, the Department of Health and Human Services revoked a nearly $600 million contract to the drugmaker Moderna to develop a vaccine against bird flu.
The new cancellations dismayed scientists, many of whom regard mRNA shots as the best option for protecting Americans in a pandemic.
“This is a bad day for science,” said Scott Hensley, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania who has been working to develop an mRNA vaccine against influenza.
The health department said in its release that the cancellations affected 22 projects managed by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA.
With this move, the department is “undermining our ability to rapidly counter future biological threats,” said Rick Bright, a flu expert who was ousted as chief of BARDA during the first Trump administration and resigned from a lesser position in protest.
“We’re weakening our frontline defense against fast‑moving pathogens — a huge strategic failure that will be measured in lives lost during times of crisis,” he added.
First used during the Covid-19 pandemic by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, mRNA shots instruct the body to produce a fragment of a virus, which then sets off the body’s immune response.
Unlike traditional vaccines, which can take years to develop and test, mRNA shots can be made within months and quickly altered as the virus changes.
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Mr. Kennedy has been sharply critical of the technology. In a video posted on social media on Tuesday, he claimed incorrectly that mRNA vaccines do not protect against respiratory illnesses like Covid and the flu, that they drive viruses to evolve and that a single mutation in a virus renders the vaccine ineffective.
“As the pandemic showed us, mRNA vaccines don’t perform well against viruses that infect the upper respiratory tract,” he says in the video.
“By issuing this wildly incorrect statement, the secretary is demonstrating his commitment to his long-held goal of sowing doubts about all vaccines,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health.
“Had we not used these lifesaving mRNA vaccines to protect against severe illness, we would have had millions of more Covid deaths,” she said.

And so on and on, vaccine denialism, climate science denialism, the tariff wars, and beam the pond up Scotty, or at least take the pond to TT...