In which, in lieu of the usual Friday reptile survey, the pond cuts straight to our Henry and a dinkum denialist Groaning by the Dame ...(there is nothing like a Dame) ...

 

Earlier in the week there came a sudden realisation to the pond, when a plastic bucket (Coles, take the credit) fractured and spilled its watery contents on the kitchen floor.

The pond suddenly knew it was in desperate need of the hole in bucket man. 

Fix it dear Henry, just fix it, sounded out in the kitchen, and yet the pond had to wait patiently until Friday for its Henry fix.

In the meantime, distractions flooded in ...

There was the Kimmel affair, celebrated in The Bulwark, Emergency Triad: First, They Came for Jimmy Kimmel, What happens when comedians are held to stricter standards than vice presidents?

There was a great hullabaloo, in the Beast ... Insiders Spill Chilling Reason Jimmy Kimmel’s TV Bosses Caved to MAGA

and in Rolling Stone ... ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ Pulled ‘Indefinitely’ by ABC Over Charlie Kirk Comments, Kimmel was taken off air by ABC and Nexstar after a threat from Trump’s FCC chair. “They were p*ssing themselves all day,” one ABC insider says (*yes, it's come to that in these bourgeois times).

The pond realised with shame that it was spending too long watching the transformation of the United States from late-stage Weimar republic into full-blown reich, ruled over, by - take your pick - either a tin pot dictator atop a banana republic or a mad king intent on outdoing the madness of King George III.

Cancel culture is now rampant, with legacy media executives acting much like the industrialists who smoothed the way for Adolf, anything for a deal, and never mind the consumers.

R.I.P. the First Amendment, Killed by Cowardice and Greed

Jimmy Kimmels cancellation is the latest sign we're witnessing the end of US democracy

Hypocrisy never dies, it jus has no self-awareness...

Irony never dies, you just need a dose of Faux Noise for your daily dose of iron ... (no vitamins):

So what to do?

Perhaps search for "Piracy is back" on Reddit/YouTube, and help yourself to the fruits of Disney and ABC, slim pickings though there might be (warning: always use a VPN and other forms of appropriate prophylaxis).

Truth to tell, there's nothing in the Disney catalogue that as any appeal to the pond - the pond left the Star Wars universe years ago - but it's the principle of the thing.

And if all that fuss wasn't enough, some bloody poet was flinging a bloody useless poem at the pond as another distraction ...

STATE/BANQUET

How it glitters and shines, The Grand Service,
among the rocks and the rubble,
laid out on a breezeblock horseshoe table,
six crystal glasses per setting.
It took eight servants three weeks to polish -
silver coated in a thin layer of gold -
even the concrete dust in the air seems glamourised
and the ruins are decked in the uplifting flags of
democracy.

To start, fillet of Dover sole filled with salmon mousse,
served on a bed of leeks with white wine sauce.
Poached Sandringham venison with truffles to follow,
then Key Lime Pie, and among the wines,
Chateau Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande, 1990.
Yum-yum. Let the trumpets sound on the bombsite
as the great and the good pick their way through,
and a famished child peers through a bullet-hole in a wall.

Dammit, it's not as if it didn't provide low comedy, quality entertainment, in the wretched speechifying, that bruised paw, the glazed looks, and that weird alien flying saucer hat ...

It was no consolation when the latest issue of the LRB turned up in the pond's mailbox, with the front page splash "Why we need Dorothy Parker." (*archive link)

Dammit, Kasia Boddy's offering was already a week old and it was about the real Dorothy Parker... and she drank too much, and sighed into her cups about the stupidity on parade on the planet. (And who wouldn't?)

Even worse the pond had an early morning appointment this day, which would prevent a timely and full examination of the reptiles' Friday offerings.

The pond knew what had to be done.

No distractions, no waywardness, just essence of hole in bucket man, and Henry would placate the pond's urgent needs by immediately fixing everything... (and then if the mood struck, the pond could attend to the rest of the reptile pack later in the day) ...

What's that? 

Zoë Schlanger tried to interrupt by proposing in The Atlantic America Is Living in a Climate-Denial Fantasy, On climate, the U.S. and the rest of the planet are now in “completely separate worlds.”?

The United States and the rest of the planet are now in “completely separate worlds” in terms of legal understanding of climate responsibility, the human-rights attorney Lotte Leicht, who works as the advocacy director of the nonprofit Climate Rights International, told me. “I think almost nothing could have painted a starker picture,” Nikki Reisch, an attorney and the Climate and Energy Program director at the Center for International Environmental Law, agrees.

Outrageous, more mindless exceptionalism, as if the USA had a comprehensive copyright on denialism.

Completely wrong. 

At a minimum Zoë should have written "On climate, the U.S. and the reptiles of the lizard Oz are now in completely separate worlds".

Look how the dear old hive mind was getting its knickers in a compleat knot yesterday with the terrifying world of EVs looming into view, as threatening as all those whale-killing windmills down Goulburn way ...

Come on down, bucket wrangler Henry, and explain it to Zoë ... bring forth your inner Maggie, become a siren Karen singing a denialist song ...

The header, with bonus points for our Henry managing to get "zealotry" into the story as every projecting zealot must do: Climate change: Thatcher saw it but she warned us about zealots, Margaret Thatcher put global warming on the world radar in 1988. But she knew her scientific approach would be hijacked by environmental “zealotry”, and warned against mandatory targets.

The caption for the truly terrifying image: “We must look beyond the fossil fuel era”, Thatcher said, stressing the risks posed by changes in the world’s climate. Picture: AFP

Luckily our Henry was on hand to decipher the runes, ferret through the entrails, read the tea leaves, act as oracle, explain what Maggie really meant. 

Nuke the country to save the planet ...

It is one of history’s many ironies that the leader who put climate change on the map was Margaret Thatcher. Her training in science stimulated her interest in the area; and on top of that, she was strongly supportive of nuclear energy, which was under intense attack after the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
Those issues merged in an address to the Royal Society in September 1988.
“We must look beyond the fossil fuel era”, Thatcher said, stressing the risks posed by changes in the world’s climate.
And the only truly reliable, cost-effective alternative to fossil fuels was “nuclear power, which – despite the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl – remains a safe, proven source of energy if properly managed”.
Barely a year later, Thatcher repeated her warning in a high-profile address to the United Nations General Assembly.
Unless the threat of global warming was addressed, she told a packed auditorium, “change in future is likely to be more fundamental than anything we have known hitherto”.
Thatcher’s call to action played a crucial role in triggering the vast international effort that continues to this day. Yet her scientific background ensured that she was acutely aware of the uncertainties long-term climate forecasting involves.
She therefore advocated great caution in setting mandatory targets.

Most excellent stuff, and without targets, the hive mind can go on its merry way, though it really was a tad spoil sport for some reptile to drag out this snap as a reminder of nuking a country's glory days, The giant protective dome built over the sarcophagus covering the destroyed fourth reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Picture: AFP

Our Henry was in solid form ...

But as the Albanese government launches its latest round of emissions reduction commitments, which come accompanied by vast budgetary outlays, any sign of caution seems to have melted away.
And so too has any appreciation of the relationship between those commitments and the outcomes they are likely to achieve.
Thus, going by the government’s own pronouncements, averting climate change requires swingeing cuts in global emissions.
But with the world’s largest emitters effectively resiling from the process, and few reductions elsewhere, it is entirely unrealistic to believe those cuts will occur – which must raise the question of why Australians should make the onerous sacrifices the commitments entail.
To claim our efforts will lead others, notably the developing countries, to do likewise is unconvincing.
On the contrary, the willingness of countries such as Australia to bear enormous costs for the sake of reducing emissions has merely encouraged developing countries to demand ever larger payments for the paltry efforts they might undertake.
Foolhardy gestures
As a result, the only remaining justification is the one Kevin Rudd famously articulated when he called climate change “the greatest moral challenge of our time”.
Seen in that perspective, reducing emissions is simply the right thing to do, regardless of its probable consequences. Yet that justification cannot withstand careful scrutiny.
It is true that we often commend actions that have a low probability of success – such as the dangers a swimmer might bear in attempting to save a child at imminent risk of drowning. But even in that case there is a difference between heroism and foolhardy gestures that are almost certain to increase the extent of the tragedy.

Stand back, please, give our portentous pundit room. 

He's about to deliver an irrefutable coup de grâce to all those silly climate scientists blathering on about the science. For his cant, he's going to play the Kant card ...

In fact, no one more fiercely castigated those gestures than Immanuel Kant, who was surely the sternest of moralists.
Yes, he wrote in The Metaphysics of Morals, cultivating a concern for others is a duty we owe ourselves, because it makes us better people; but the exercise of that concern has to be strictly circumscribed by whether the actions we undertake are reasonably likely to be practically efficacious.
It is, for example, obvious that “when another suffers and, although I cannot help him, I let myself be infected by his pain, then two of us will suffer”. And this, he insists, is completely absurd: “There cannot possibly be a duty to increase the ills in the world.”
But it is even worse than that, for the major effect of the “insulting kind of beneficence” that pursues pointless endeavours is to induce a smug sense of self-satisfaction, undermining the very virtues the cultivation of a genuine concern for others is intended to promote. Inefficacious actions, carried out under the banner of beneficence, pave the road not to glory but to vainglory.

What to do?

Well it's easy, let all those fools who bought seaside properties imagining they were getting great views of the sea watch as their properties slide into the sea.

And if that happens to include a sizeable amount of city life, just call it adaptation ... you know, adapt to living under the waves ...

It'll be fun for all ...

All that suggests the focus should be on adaptation, rather than mitigation. In effect, if we invest in mitigation, and many far larger emitters do not, we will be doubly poorer: as well as the costs of reducing emissions we will have to incur those of adapting to whatever change occurs. In contrast, a cautious policy of adaptation could yield benefits even in the unlikely event that global mitigation had some effect.
But any adaptation strategy needs to be sensible; unfortunately, that set out in the just released National Climate Risk Assessment is not. Entirely unsoiled by any comparisons between the cost of proposed interventions and their benefits, its heavy-handed recommendations are questionable at best, deeply harmful at worst.

At this point the reptiles dropped in a snap of the villains, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen speak to media about climate targets on Thursday. Picture: NewsWire / Flavio Brancaleone, and never mind that they'd already helped gas the planet for the next 70 years ...

Our Henry continued with his rant ...

The suggestion that building codes should be greatly tightened is a case in point.
Despite projecting massive falls in property values, and equally massive increases in insurance premiums, for properties exposed to climate risks, the report blithely assumes – without ever mentioning the assumption, much less demonstrating its validity – that builders and property owners will not have adequate incentives to “climate-proof” their own asset.
Quite why that would be so is a mystery; but even were some regulatory compulsion required, the contention that building codes ought to be geared to extreme outcomes simply does not follow. Rather, given the substantial uncertainty that pervades the forecasts, the goal should be to enhance the housing stock’s ongoing adaptability: that is, to ensure new structures are constructed in a way that increases the ability to adjust as the extent of the uncertainty narrows. To do otherwise risks incurring needless costs, pushing already excessive housing prices further into the stratosphere.
That error and many others are symptomatic of a policy that, having lost any credible purpose, has enveloped itself in increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric, accompanied by increasingly drastic proposals. There is, in that strategy, an element of logic: after all, the greater the threats, the greater the effort that should be made to avert them.
But the strategy is ultimately self-defeating: for having conjured up those fantasies any practical response seems pitifully inadequate, provoking insatiable demands for measures that go further yet.

Those yearning for a mention of Thucydides must show more tolerance.

Our Henry at least offers you a sample of gorgeous George... and "zealotry" made another appearance, as projecting zealots always manage to do, such is their addiction to zealotry ...

Even imitating George Santayana’s fanatic, who “redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim”, cannot suffice; once a competition in self-flagellation gets under way, no strip of flesh can be left unmortified.
Little wonder rational discussion has become impossible, ruling out, for example, a sensible debate about the role of nuclear power. And little wonder too that Thatcher, in her later years, lamented the “zealotry” that had come to mark “the doom-mongers’ favourite subject”.
Far from reflecting the science, that zealotry was, she said, the antithesis of the scientific attitude, which is questioning, undogmatic and empirically rigorous. And if long experience had taught her anything it was this: that “it is impossible to go on behaving sensibly while constantly talking nonsense”. With nonsense once more filling the air, it is high time both the government and the Coalition learnt that lesson.

Some might wonder if there was anything missing.

Well yes, while our henry blathered on about "the scientific attitude", rather than the scientific method, there was a singular absence of actual science.

But that's the way it's always been in the hive mind. Why risk any rigorous empiricism when you can cant on endlessly about Kant ...

Sorry, despite the many temptations of the brain worm man, the pond can't get involved in the latest fuss about other forms of science going missing ...

... nor can the pond bring in gun addiction ...

And for good reason, because Dame Groan was out and about yesterday, and she makes for a splendid early morning bonus ...

The pond can already hear the groaning about the groaning.

Hasn't the pond already done climate science denialism enough?

But that's to miss the entire point of the murmuration of reptiles in the hive mind. 

Endless repetition, and fluff-gathering in each other's navels ensures that no light from the outside world enters the discussion.

You see now Zoë?

"On climate, the U.S. and the reptiles of the lizard Oz are in completely separate worlds".

The header for the mindless mantra: Net-zero target of 62-70pc by 2035 will be costly and ineffective, We’ve heard on high rotation the myth that the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action. Australia contributes about 1 per cent of global emissions – nothing we do will affect the climate one jot.

The caption for the chief villains, and never mind that they've dedicated the country to gassing the planet for the next 70 years: Anthony Albanese and Energy Minister Chris Bowen. Picture: Gaye Gerard

The pond concedes that one groaning is much the same as another, and over the years, the groans have blurred into a massive groan, but that's the entire point.

Setting a national emissions reduction target is akin to making a New Year’s resolution. Many of us do it – lose weight, drink less – and some of us get numerical. Lose 10kg, only one bottle of wine per week and the like.
The sad reality is that most New Year’s resolutions are not met but, hey, there’s always next year.
I’ve always thought there was something deeply suspicious about a government setting a national emissions target like the 62-70 per cent range announced on Thursday. Even for a centrally planned economy, this is a big ask, but for a market-based one, it looks like a strange beast indeed.
To be sure, the government can regulate, ban, tax and spend to achieve certain outcomes in the carbon space. But as we will see when we get to 2030, the 43 per cent reduction from 2005 will be missed by “that much”. It’s a simple case of arithmetic.
The annual emissions reductions would have to triple from what has been achieved thus far to make that magic figure. In other words, it ain’t going to happen. The transition of the grid is going much more slowly than expected – and costing a great deal more – and EV take-up is sluggish. (Hybrid demand, by contrast, has been going like the clappers.)
So, what should we make of the pledge of Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen to commit Australia to reducing our carbon emissions by between 62 and 70 per cent by 2035?
Let’s face it, he thinks he’s on a roll with the Coalition at sixes and sevens on the matter.
He wants to curry favour with the left, so a biggish number is called for – you never know, he could be PM one day. But he doesn’t want to make it so big that the economic players who are responsible for delivering the target dismiss the figure from day one. The range idea – which Labor heavily criticised when the Coalition ran with one in the 2010s – is a compromise.

At this point the reptiles interrupted with an AV distraction, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced Australia’s 2035 emissions reduction target following a federal cabinet meeting on Thursday. The Albanese government announced its “ambitious” 2035 emissions reduction target of between 62 and 70 per cent from 2005 levels.

The pond hesitates to suggest that anyone should head off to sites such as The Conversation for alternatives ...

The entire point of the hive mind is to stay terrified, and in a state of dire fear, buried deep in the hive mind ...

You certainly don't want to head off to the keen Keane in Crikey ...

Stick with Dame Groan, she'll see you and the planet right ...

It’s important to correctly interpret the response of business to this announcement. Many CEOs will be seeking special deals and government funding. Best not to upset those in charge here, as we head further down the path of crony capitalism.
A critical issue will be the mechanisms needed to achieve this announced target. Of course, Bowen will be off somewhere else by 2035, perhaps holding down some important international climate role. But he is unlikely to fall into the trap of legislating this target; he did so for the 2030 one essentially to wedge the Coalition. (The Coalition voted against that bill.)

Why she's such a caring old biddy, she'll hit you with a listicle. 

The pond does so love a listicle, almost as good as being hit with Ian Durie's rhythm stick ...

So, here’s the list:

• Even more subsidies for renewable energy and batteries;
• An extension of the Safeguard Mechanism on big emitters from the current 200-odd operations to a much larger number (The SM is a cap-and-trade scheme that forces lower emissions on those operations covered.);
• A ramping up of the required annual emissions reduction under the SM;
• A carbon adjustment border mechanism – green tariffs, like the delayed European scheme – to offset the loss of international competitiveness of the operations covered by the SM;
• A range of investment credits to any project that can demonstrate a contribution to achieving the target, including through an expanded National Reconstruction Scheme;
• More subsidies for electric vehicles, and;
• Specific policies directed to agriculture, including reducing herd sizes.

Naturally, being a true patriot, Dame Groan called out to King Donald to strike down the government ...

If this sounds like a lot of expensive meddling, you are not wrong. The irony is that many developments – green hydrogen, offshore wind – are essentially dead in the water (excuse the pun) and so Bowen is more limited in his options than he thought would be the case.
To be sure, there is the distinct prospect that rapid deindustrialisation in Australia might do a great deal of the heavy lifting in reaching the new target. If most of the refineries, smelters and other heavy industry operations, as well as the coal-fired electricity plants, exit the scene, then voila – “success”.
But in the meantime, the federal and state governments are shovelling out money to keep these operations going. You know it makes sense – or does it?
It’s also not clear how the Trump administration would react to the imposition of green tariffs by Australia when we are arguing the case for special treatment in respect of the tariffs the US imposes on our exports. Somehow the argument that there are good tariffs and bad tariffs is unlikely to wash with The Donald.

Indeed, indeed ...no praise, despite very best endeavours ...

And so it's time to wrap up this bout of denialism by the very best reptiles. 

Rest assured they're well insulated from the storm, and will be gone by the time vulgar youff start wondering who did what to them ...

Both the Prime Minister and Chris Bowen repeat on high rotation the myth that the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action. This is simply not true in respect of reducing emissions. After all, Australia contributes just above 1 per cent of global emissions; anything we do won’t affect the climate one jot.
Let’s not forget that between 60 and 70 per cent of global emissions are not subject to targeted reductions, including the US. Inaction costs nothing; action is very costly. It’s only when it comes to adaptation – and not just for climate change reasons – that action is called for, but emissions reduction targets are a different beast altogether.
The immediate future looks clear: even more meddling in the economy in the name of emissions reduction; much higher government spending to attempt to achieve this outcome; higher electricity prices; deindustrialisation, as the big players simply give up, and; more trampling of the rights of people in rural and regional areas.
The Coalition needs to step up to the plate and state that enough is enough.

Oh enough will never be enough, not until the planet is comprehensively stuffed ...

And so, duty done, to turn to a celebratory immortal Rowe, as alleged climate science believer and alleged conservationist King Chuck supped with the real King ...(oh there's a nice elephant on the right, and the bloodline flows from Andrew to Donald) ...

Last but not least, a bemused wondering. 

How long before attention turns to this sort of mockery? 

After all, the Comedy Central cable channel is owned by Paramount Skydance Corporation,  through MTV Entertainment Group, and Paramount has already shown once that it's run by a bunch of gormless, gutless wonders.

Just remember, me hearties, that you can always avoid Paramount Plus and yet magically sample its wares. As honest Long John was once reputed to have said ...

“Here it is about gentle viewers of fortune. They lives rough, and they risk swinging, but they eat and drink and watch content like fighting-cocks, and when a night's entertainment is done, why, it’s hundreds of shows instead of hundreds of farthings in their pockets. Now, the most goes for rum and a good fling, and to the couch again in their shirts. But that’s not the course I lay. I puts it all away, a feature here, a TV series there, and none too much anywheres, by reason of suspicion. I’m fifty, mark you; once back from this viewing, I set up a dinkum couch for me and JD in earnest. Time enough too, says you. Ah, but I’ve lived easy in the meantime, never denied myself o’ nothing heart desires, and slep’ soft and ate dainty and viewed much all my days but when on the couch.”