In which the bromancer continues his decline, while the dog botherer and Lloydie of the Amazon do bog standard News Corp denialism ...

 

The big question to be sorted this morning: given the infallibly stupid suggestion by the onion muncher that we join mad King Donald in his crusade (a subsidiary to sociopathic Benji's quest for a greater Israel), how does the bromancer feel about the venture? And what's he thinking about his best bro?

The headline didn't make the pond feel that comfortable about the direction the bromancer might be heading ...

The header: Donald Trump’s wild talk is destroying vital US alliances; America has been at the heart of Australia’s security and national identity for more than 100 years. Now all that is under threat.

The caption for a snap which didn't feature either bunny or an autopen: President Donald Trump speaks during the White House Easter Egg Roll in Washington. Picture: AP

A subsidiary question might concern the authoritarian dictator Viktor Orbán - what does the bromancer think about his best bro's lickspittle fawning devotion to the Putin puppet? 

Will the bromancer take a stand if Orbán, whatever the result, however much election stacking has gone down, refuses to walk off into the night? Will he celebrate with the onion muncher, and couch-molester JD if Orbán stays the course?

But the pond isn't greedy. 

An answer to the big question will suffice ...and it took five minutes for the bromancer of yabbering around the point for the pond to realise that maybe the bromancer wasn't entirely up for a middle east adventure with mad King Donald...

Australia’s security alliance with the US is not only the beating heart of our national security. It’s fundamental to our national identity, in a way that’s little understood today.
The influence of the US on Australia over the past century is far greater than Britain’s, culturally, militarily, inspirationally, in every way.
In the age of Donald Trump that whole complex web of institu­tional, cultural, military and social dynamics is suddenly under threat. In recent months, Trump’s wild, often bizarre and ridiculous statements have done more to damage the structure of US alli­ances than any modern president.
Anthony Albanese has responded essentially by making a token military deployment, otherwise hoping not to be noticed. It’s not the worst possible policy option but it’s not much.
In responding to the Trump effect, Australia shouldn’t panic. But autopilot isn’t good enough either.
Nobody really knows how the Iran ceasefire will work out. If Trump achieves free passage in the Strait of Hormuz, gets his hands on Iran’s 60 per cent enriched uranium or the regime collapses, history may forgive bizarre presidential statements. But if the Iranian regime survives, keeps its enriched uranium and control of the strait – the situation today – that’s a bad defeat, made much worse by Trump’s personal behaviour.

The pond should interrupt at this point to note that the reptiles didn't break up the bromancer's words with illustrations or AV distractions. 

And this is about as close to answering the big question that the bromancer gets.

Apparently he couldn't bring himself to completely break in public with the onion muncher, his very best bro - but his devotion to the cause of mad King Donald is clearly waning ...

It’s no longer any good concentrating on Trump’s actions rather than his words. His words now have strategic effects that damage US alliances, US capabilities and Australian security. How we respond to this new and ugly reality is challenging.
Trump has said repeatedly he may leave NATO, thereby already damaging US alliance credibility. He has accused NATO allies of doing nothing to help the US and said he might punish selected NATO countries. Trump is simply lying about all this. Britain, Portugal, Germany and Italy have allowed substantial US access to bases on their soil, France more restricted access, while Spain has been worst. Greece provided refuelling and resupply for US aircraft carriers involved in the Iran war. Some European countries, France and Britain among them, have sent military forces to the Middle East to help secure Gulf Arab nations that are US allies.
Australia, similarly, sent an AWAC Wedgetail intelligence and control aircraft to the United Arab Emirates. The intelligence it gathers is shared with the US.
Trump abuses allies, including Australia, for not sending ships to the Strait of Hormuz, but the US itself escorts no ships in the strait and has advanced no specific military plan regarding it.
Trump is scapegoating allies for his own chaotic mismanagement of the politics and diplomacy of the war. It’s crude and irresponsible.
Not only that, Trump has also said he would bomb Iranian desalination plants and destroy every single electricity generating plant in Iran, as well as “ending” the Iranian civilisation, presumably through strategic bombing. Those would all be explicit war crimes. It’s impossible for any European or Australian leader to support those missions, even if Trump finally never went through with them.
He has announced countless deadlines, then ignored them. Much that he says never happens. But a more rational president would have enjoyed much more allied support. The American military furnished Trump a much more limited list of potential energy targets in Iran, all of which had explicit military roles. They reject Trump’s fantasies too.
Trump previously threatened to invade Greenland, the sovereign territory of a NATO ally. He also makes offensive remarks about the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron. There’s no universe in which any of this is funny, clever or beneficial to anybody.
Should Australia reconsider commitment to the US alliance? The answer’s no, because the alliance serves our interests and historically served our values.
Trump has no mandate to wreck the institutions he’s so careless of. It’s popular in the US to want allies to do more, it’s not popular to destroy US alliances. Six European nations already spend a higher percentage of their GNP on defence than the US does and all are doing more. We too should do much more in our own interests.

It's hardly a ringing endorsement of the onion muncher's proposal we join mad King Donald's crusade, and it then became apparent that the bromancer was in a state of mourning.

All he could do was take a walk down memory lane, celebrating the good days.

It got so teary and sentimental, so Banjo, that the pond almost felt the need to send a box of tissues to Surrey Hills by courier ...

No nation, not even Canada, has had the US so much at the heart of its national life as Australia has. From the very first, America inhabited our imagination and fired our dreams. In 1901 the states federated to become a nation for national security, so Australia could secure possession of this continent. Our Constitution was a mix of British and US influences. Federalism and the Senate followed US models.
Quickly, Australian leaders worked to draw the US into our security. Alfred Deakin, our most brilliant and complex prime minister, defied British instruction, and Winston Churchill’s vigorous opposition, to invite US president Teddy Roosevelt to send the Great White Fleet to Australia in 1908. Deakin already worried about Japanese military power. The fleet got a fantastic, rapturous public welcome that led Roosevelt, who incidentally loved Banjo Paterson’s ballads, to declare: “I have a hearty … admiration for Australia and I believe America should be ready to stand back of Australia in any serious emergency.”
When American troops first entered World War I, they did so under the command of John Monash, our greatest general. In the darkest days of World War II, prime minister John Curtin famously declared: “Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links of kinship with the United Kingdom.”
After World War II, Labor in government tried unsuccessfully to get a security treaty with the US. In June 1950, Percy Spender, foreign minister in Robert Menzies’ government, got word that Britain was planning to send ground troops to help the US in the Korean war. Spender, like Deakin, had visited the US before he ever went to Britain and was fired with American ambition. Menzies was on a ship travelling from Britain to the US. Spender was so conscious of the strategic importance of the relationship with Washington that, in Menzies’ absence, he forced acting prime minister Arthur Fadden to declare, before Britain, that Australia would send troops to Korea.
This brought Australia credit for being the first to come to the side of the US in battle. This was crucial in 1951 when Spender came to sell, almost single-handedly, what became the ANZUS Treaty to US president Harry Truman, who had fought beside Australians in the first world war.
Australia later became a key member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance with the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. Under John Howard and George W. Bush the alliance achieved the greatest intimacy it has ever enjoyed, then or since. Canberra secured unparalleled access to US intelligence and decision-making.
Now there are Australian service personnel throughout the US system and Americans in our system, which makes the story that Australian servicemen on a US submarine retired to their bunks when that sub sank an Iranian ship near Sri Lanka utterly bizarre. Cross-crewing is about increasing capability. That’s not possible if you’re scared to fight.

Or maybe they avoided participating in a war crime? 

Never mind, there's still a lingering war monger in the bromancer. 

That must have perked up the onion muncher, though the bromancer was keen to deny he was a servile lickspittle like his best buddy bro...

The US is by far the greatest cultural influence on Australia, much more so than Britain. Conversely, our influence with the US is part of our influence with other nations. None of this makes Australia servile. Canberra gets immense benefits from the alliance but disagrees with Washington when necessary.
The US is a modern universal. Many nations define themselves in part by their relationship with the US. But even the most pro-alliance politicians must deal with Trumpian reality and thus sometimes publicly disagree with Trump. But the Trump presidency will pass. We need to influence it where we can, and ensure alliance structures and institutions survive intact, at a time when Trump’s negative genius has made it intensely unfashionable to defend.
This requires from our political class moral leadership, greater national self-reliance, nuance, a grasp of history, dynamism, agency, integrated strategy, a focus on our core national interests. Any takers?
Greg Sheridan is The Australian’s foreign editor.

Here you go, here's a taker, just the man, thick as a brick and ready to serve ...(warning, News Corp link)

What a chance to join the victory parade ...

And so to the dog botherer, and the pond had serious qualms of conscience. 

How could the pond serve up yet again a load of dog botherer climate science denying, renewables bashing bollocks?

Sadly the reptiles keep doing it, and so must the pond.

The header: How the green energy dream became a civilisational crisis; As we ignore the engineering of coal and nuclear, our economy is paying the ultimate price for political virtue signaling. (sic)

Say what? No credit for the singular collage which manages to feature Satan's little helper, wretched solar panels and terrifying whale-killing windmills? Apparently so ... perhaps AI is a modest little helper and needs to credit for destroying the last remaining shreds of what was once a proud graphics department.

As for the dog botherer, it was a tedious five minute outing, but as usual the pond could seize the chance and use the outing as an excuse to note some alternative worlds ...

Red List alarm: Emperor penguins, Antarctic fur seals 'Endangered'

The emperor penguin and Antarctic fur seal have both been uplisted to Endangered on the IUCN Red List, as scientists warn that melting sea-ice and warming oceans are reshaping life at the bottom of the world.
Antarctica has long been a place apart – a place where life endures against extraordinary odds. But the latest update to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species signals that even the continent’s most iconic inhabitants are losing their battle with a rapidly changing climate.
The emperor penguin, long considered a symbol of Antarctic resilience, has been uplisted from Near Threatened to Endangered. Satellite data reveals that the species lost around 10% of its population between 2009 and 2018 alone – more than 20,000 adult birds. The primary culprit is the early break-up of fast ice, the coastal and grounded sea-ice upon which emperor penguins depend for raising chicks and moulting. 

Fiddle-faddle, what does the dog botherer care about that sort of hysteria?

We are a country convulsed by fuel anxiety; distressed about housing affordability; hampered by electricity prices, the demise of manufacturing and poor productivity; burdened by debt and deficit; and worried about our capacity to improve any of this while dealing with record immigration. We are a strong and significant nation made vulnerable.
Rich in energy resources, we are enduring crises in supply and affordability for electricity and liquid fuels. A world-leading exporter of coal, gas and uranium, we are trying to wean ourselves off the hydrocarbons and refuse to use nuclear power.
It is time to observe what we have done and where we are heading. It is time to make the calculations about economics, engineering, environment and politics.
Decades of warnings about national energy self-harm have been ignored. South Australia provided the test case, shutting down coal-fired generation and its only coalmine so that it became the canary without a coalmine.
Governments ignored predictions this would make it dangerously dependent on electricity brought overland from Victoria and a decade ago, when a storm took down some transmission lines and wind farms dropped offline, the interconnector failed and the state went dark for the first time. In response, the government imported $600m worth of diesel generators for emergency back-up.
The state has the nation’s highest penetration of renewable energy, most expensive electricity and least reliable supplies. But politicians around the country – state, federal, Labor, Liberal, Green and teal – are in denial about causal links.

As always, the reptiles made sure there was a snap of Satan's little solar panel helper, and Satan himself, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen during a visit to the Ampol Lytton refinery in Brisbane. Picture: NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

This is the sort of rant where the dog botherer rails at the 'leets, apparently unaware of his own position as a member of the News Corp/Sky Noise down under 'leet squad (still no rebrand?):

Other states pursue the same strategy and even the pro-renewables Australian Energy Market Operator has intervened to keep significant coal generators going to guarantee supplies. Taxpayers subsidises renewable energy to force coal generation out, then subsidise coal generation to insure against unreliable renewables, and subsidies also go to consumers and industries so they can survive record power costs.
This is all as absurd and macabre as a David Lynch film. All our energy problems are predictable and self-generated (pun intended), yet we have refused to learn any lessons.
We are led, like lemmings, by politicians and bureaucrats convinced they are leaping into a green energy future. They tell us Australia will be a “renewable energy superpower”, which sounds about as likely as a balsa wood aircraft carrier; they even talk about “reliable renewables”, a phrase that renders satire redundant.
Our governing elites are loath to confess the total cost of their unnecessary renewable energy experiment, but with the help of artificial intelligence we can ascertain that in the past 25 years the federal government has spent at least $150bn, with the states adding about half that again. On top of that there is more than $100bn and growing of private investment that will all be recouped with margins from consumers.
The opportunity cost of all this is difficult to quantify. It has added to debt, inflation and taxation pressures; it has taken people, investment and resources from more productive pursuits; it has baked in added cost pressures for business and industry; it has alienated land; and it has not produced any material benefit for the nation or the environment.

Nothing new here and for that the pond apologises, and the reptiles must also have felt the emptiness because they offered an audio distraction...

Luckily the pond just has to note the distraction - screen caps don't play - and press on ...

To justify this economic madness, politicians and media deliberately conflate normal weather extremes with “dangerous climate change” to fuel an alarmist narrative. Children are indoctrinated with the same catastrophism as floods, fires, droughts and heatwaves are described as “unprecedented” when a simple check of the record exposes the ruse.
I have detailed examples in these pages relating to floods, fires and maximum temperatures. The facts are not rebutted, just ignored in favour of the hysterical narrative.
Our temporary predicament over liquid fuels must be a turning point in our debate. In their green frenzy governments have forgotten the basics and left us exposed, and the fragility of our petrol and diesel dependence will be sorely exposed if we ever see conflict in the East Asia region.

He's detailed the facts? He's done a Sgt Joe Friday?

Could the pond help a little? Per the Graudian:

US had hottest March on record as nation faced ‘unprecedented’ heat
The continental US registered its most abnormally hot month in 132 years of records, according to Noaa data

March’s persistent unseasonable heat was so intense that the continental United States registered its most abnormally hot month in 132 years of records, according to federal weather data. And the next year or so looks to turn the dial up on global warmth even more, as some forecasts predict a brewing El Niño will reach super strength.
Not only was it the hottest March on record for the US but the amount it was above normal beat any other month in history for the lower 48 states. March’s average temperature of 50.85F(10.47C) was 9.35F (5.19C) above the 20th-century normal for March.
That easily passed the old record of 8.9F set in March 2012 as the most abnormally hot month on record – regardless of the month of the year – according to records released on Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).
Nationals Leader Matt Canavan claims the Labor government is “addicted to the status quo” with their clean energy projects. “We’re losing our country, losing it down the drain,” Mr Canavan told Sky News host Chris Kenny. “They’re not willing to make any changes; they think we should do more of the same, which has got us in this mess.”

And so on, and at this point the reptiles recycled snaps of their bog standard villains ...

Teal MP Allegra Spender Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman; Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen. Picture: NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

 

The dog botherer remained all in on fossilised fools...

We are reminded of the centrality of liquid fossil fuels in our lives. Remedies bandied about by the likes of teal MP Allegra Spender and Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen are alarming in their green inanity.
If we all drove electric cars, they suggest, none of this would be a problem. Except we would also need to electrify delivery trucks, long-distance transport, combine harvesters, aviation, tractors, our defence forces, pumps, excavators, cranes and you name it, even SA’s back-up generators.
Like all modern economies, we run on electricity and transport. Two-thirds or more of both come from fossil fuels.
Speaking to true believers at The Guardian last week Bowen wanted everyone to think he was as clever as his own self-assessment. “You know, the sun has to travel 150 million kilometres to get to the Earth but it does not have to travel the 150km that are the Straits of Hormuz,” he said, proving the Seinfeld dictum that smugness is not a good quality.

At this point the reptiles decided to double down, on the basis that you can never have enough dog bothering in a day, so why not an AV featuring yet more dog botherer ...

Sky News host Chris Kenny says the ceasefire between the US and Iran “remains in place”. Mr Kenny said, despite the ceasefire, ships in the Strait of Hormuz are “at a standstill”. “After conflicting reports about the passage reopening and then closing again.”

The dog botherer kept making wiled-eyed claims ... with a tangy hint of the reptiles' war with China by Xmas...

“So it is ours, and the wind can’t be sanctioned, and Vladimir Putin cannot, you know, prohibit the export of renewable energy from his country, because it’s directly ours,” explained Bowen, claiming that renewables deliver “secure” energy. The entire problem with renewable energy (apart from demanding vast expanses of land to host kit and connection) is the lack of security – it is intermittent, unreliable and prohibitively difficult and expensive to store in necessary quantities.
Even Bowen’s point about sovereign independence is ridiculous given we purchase most of our solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, EVs and appliances from China. The communist giant manufactures much of this with our natural resources and could cut us off on a whim.
We have exported our jobs, emissions and self-reliance in pursuit of foolish emissions reduction goals that much larger countries, such as China, are not meeting, which means global emissions are rising and our efforts are redundant. We lose, there is no environmental benefit and China flourishes. Never before has a sovereign nation inflicted so much pain on itself to provide no net benefit, except to rival nations. Green genius.
Climate alarmists have talked up tipping points for decades, points at which the destruction of life as we know it would be unstoppable.

Just to reassure the hive mind, the reptiles introduced snaps of demons who always get it wrong, unlike the infallible dog botherer ... Tipping points predicted by luminaries like King Charles and Greta Thunberg have come and gone. Picture: Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images; Greta Thunberg. Picture: Martin Sylvest / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP

Hey ho, on we go ...

Surely our current malaise should be a reverse tipping point. It must be time to conclude that the single worst policy decision in our nation’s history and the most detrimental current setting is the commitment to net zero.
There is no benefit, only huge costs. There is generational pain but no gain.
Our political debate, education system, corporate world and media zeitgeist are caught up in a feedback loop of climate catastrophism, virtue signalling and self-flagellation that has undermined the fundamentals of our economic and intellectual success. This is far broader and deeper than an energy crisis, this is a civilisational crisis – which is unsurprising, I guess, when you consider that it is the provision of reliable and affordable energy that has triggered the prosperity and innovation at the heart of Western civilisation.
Yet we get this from Bowen: “I think potentially that this is an important moment to really double down on the argument that renewable energy is lower emissions, cheap and sovereign and secure.” This is national vandalism.

Relax, there's a new hero for our troubled times, and it's the "coal that batters" man, and he's in congress with the dog botherer on Sky Noise down under (wot, still no rebrand?) ...

Nationals Leader Matt Canavan claims the Labor government is “addicted to the status quo” with their clean energy projects. “We’re losing our country, losing it down the drain,” Mr Canavan told Sky News host Chris Kenny. “They’re not willing to make any changes; they think we should do more of the same, which has got us in this mess.”

It was all the way with the Canavan caravan ...

Nationals leader Matt Canavan addressed reality at the National Press Club on Wednesday: “To recapture our sovereign capability, we’ve got to end this net-zero madness,” he said. “We’ve got to invest again in all types of energy, including coal, oil, gas and nuclear.” That this is viewed as a politically challenging proposition shows how far we have strayed.
If there is one overriding reason our economy, budgets, prosperity, productivity, education, innovation and public debate are in a mess, it is our irrational subservience to pointless UN net-zero goals. It is also a major reason that about half of all Coalition voters have switched to One Nation.
The Liberals need to wake up to this before their polling hits net zero.

The pond at this point would like to note the dog botherer's uncanny resemblance to the worst of MAGA, with this in the Graudian ...

Trump’s EPA chief Zeldin gives keynote speech at climate-denying group’s event
Lee Zeldin opens conference for Heartland Institute, which once compared climate advocates to the Unabomber

“No longer are we going to rely on bad, flawed assumptions instead of accurate, present-day facts, without apology or regret,” Zeldin said at the Heartland Institute’s conference on climate change in Washington DC, referring to well-established climate science.
Zeldin has been widely criticized by climate experts. Last month, more than 160 environmental and public health organizations called for him to resign or be fired, saying no EPA administrator in history “has so brazenly betrayed the agency’s core mission”.
In his speech, Zeldin poked fun at the media for calling him “controversial” for not “following blind obedience to whatever the dire, doom and gloom position of the day is from John Kerry or Al Gore or AOC” – referring to the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“It’s controversial that we won’t sign up for the script that the world is imminently about to end,” he said.
He derided previous administrations’ heeding of climate scientists’ warnings about the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions, and for ignoring “what’s good and necessary about carbon dioxide for the life of the planet”.
“What happened for years and decades in this country is that the elite, the ruling class, the people who would run the agencies, the people who have decided that they are in charge of the science, the politicians, the biggest grifters: there would be a cabal that would decide exactly which model is the chosen model, which methodology is the higher methodology,” he said. “And if all of you in this room, if any of you in this room dare to challenge any of that, well shame on you.”

This is where News Corp has helped take the world, to the outer edge of madness and self-inflicted wounds, with one of their favourite denialists featured ...

Another report author, Judith Curry – a climatologist who rails against climate “alarmism” – criticized the “monolithic consensus” on climate science that is “presented to the world”. Though the US government disbanded the group which produced the controversial report on the endangerment finding, Curry said the authors were currently reviewing comments on the report and preparing a new version to release this year.
Earlier on Wednesday morning, the Heartland Institute’s president, James Taylor, kicked off the conference with a rousing speech in which he invoked the debunked climate myth that increased carbon emissions are good for plants: “Restoring CO2 and restoring warmth to our world is … a restoration to more ideal conditions,” he said.
“The truth is clear: there is no climate crisis,” said Taylor. “The science is very clear.”

Many truths seem clearer by the day ...

At this point the pond looked around at the alternatives for a bonus but came up short.

Dame Slap is now faraway on her own planet above the magic faraway tree ...

Lived experience’ – the new CV must-have
Merit is being sidelined. In a new era of identity-driven hiring, a personal diagnosis is becoming more valuable than a professional degree.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

With the intermittent archive briefly working, the pond sent Dame Slap there.

This was such a weird retreat away from her climate-science denialist, MAGA cap donning days that for a minute the pond thought it might have some weird anthropological appeal.

But it was simply too arcane, too fluff-gathering and navel-gazing, too deeply Freudian.

The best the pond could do was a teaser trailer for her offering.

Tonly thing of interest there the way that these days the reptiles often don't credit anyone for the wretched collages at the start of their pieces, perhaps because 'no credit' allows members of the graphics department to walk freely in public:

Dame Slap is now about as far out there as Melania has been these past few days ...

The pond decided it was better to be in for a climate science penny, in for a global warming pound with Lloydie of the Amazon ... and with that immortal Rowe in mind, settled for a good screaming:

What cunning wording, and yet what did "the great climate retreat" mean?

Was the climate in retreat? Or was it simply that News Corp's denialism was ascendant?

The header: NASA cools on Earth’s climate for a new moon shot; The Trump administration is freezing out global warming research and is returning focus to the space race.

The caption for the space ship: Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch looks back at Earth through the window of the Orion spacecraft on April 2, 2026. Picture: ANSA via AP

Lloydie of the Amazon seemed remarkably pleased at the work of mad King Donald and his minions:

The Trump administration is freezing out global warming research and is returning focus to the space race.
Donald Trump has put NASA back into the space race with the Artemis II flight to the dark side of the moon and back, but NASA scientists focused on planet Earth have found themselves in the climate change deep freeze.
It is all part of a comprehensive shift in priorities for NASA as the US under Trump withdraws from the international co-operations that have spent decades warning of the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the Earth’s climate.
This includes a US exit from the Paris Agreement, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The fruits of Trump’s new priorities are coming into season. Some are sweet, such as the success of Artemis II, while others are delivering a sour punch to scientists around the world.

A sour punch? Oh surely not ... after all, as Uncle Leon has suggested, the 'leets will need to flee a ruined earth for la dolce vita on Mars - the pond understands from the movies that you can terraform a planet in nanoseconds, see Total Recall - and these are just the first baby steps ...

Stunning images captured by NASA’s Artemis II crew on Monday, April 6, show a view of the Earth from the far side of the moon. At 1:57 pm EDT on Monday, the Artemis II crew broke the record set by Apollo 13 in 1970 as their Orion spacecraft reached the far side of the moon, placing them at 252,756 miles from Earth. Credit: NASA via Storyful

It was grand days for News Corp inspired ludditism ...

The Trump administration is dismantling the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, long considered the crown jewel in the US’s Earth science infrastructure but decried by the Trump White House as “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country”. Vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location.
With the US turning off the funding tap, the IPCC is in financial crisis. The IPCC secretariat told a meeting of member nations in Thailand in March that in 2024 and 2025 expenditures from the IPCC Trust Fund exceeded contributions.
It said based on the current trajectory, the IPCC’s cash balance will be fully depleted by the end of 2028. And that without a substantial increase in contributions, significant annual deficits will persist and jeopardise the completion of the highly anticipated IPCC update of the state of climate science known as AR7 – Assessment Report Seven.
Turning off the climate funding tap
The most recent document, AR6, was released in 2023 but the IPCC can’t agree on a timeline for when AR7 will be ready for policymakers. Reports typically are released every five to seven years.
A lot of the concerns have to do with funding, made more acute by the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw. According to Politico, the US gave about $US1.8m to the IPCC in 2024, more by far than the other 34 countries and organisations that contributed to the group. Germany, the second largest donor, gave $US383,000.
The Biden administration represented a peak in funding for the IPCC, which is now being forced to ask other donors for more money to replace what has been lost from the US. The secretariat has suggested three options: higher contributions to equal expenditure; contributions at the minimum level to complete AR7; or the status quo, which would result in “severe spending cuts with fully virtual operations and the suspension of multiple activities”.
For advice on what this looks like, climate scientists need go no further than NASA. The impact of NASA’s withdrawal from taking a lead in climate change research and advocacy is on full display. The agency sparked concern in January when it released its benchmark annual report on global temperatures without making any mention of climate change, emissions, fossil fuels or the term global warming.
This compares with earlier reports where NASA explicitly said: “This global warming has been caused by human activities.” Previously, NASA also has linked increased temperatures to extreme weather events such as heatwaves, wildfires, “intense” rainfall and flooding. But not this year.

For some peculiar reason, the reptiles decided to slip in a disaster ... A wildfire in Pumarejo de Tera near Zamora, northern Spain.

Odd, that's the very same snap the Beeb used in noting a link to climate change ...

Never mind, nothing is happening, it's all good, the dog botherer has spoken, and Lloydie of the Amazon is on hand to celebrate News Corp inspired Ludditism ...

The January 2026 release said: “Earth’s global surface temperature in 2025 was slightly warmer than 2023 – but within the margin of error: the two years are effectively tied according to an analysis by NASA scientists.”
The statement in January 2025 quoted former NASA administrator Bill Nelson that 2024 was the hottest year since record-keeping began in 1880.
“Between record-breaking temperatures and wildfires currently threatening our centres and workforce in California, it has never been more important to understand our changing planet,” Nelson said. The NASA statement said scientists had concluded “the warming trend of recent decades is driven by heat-trapping carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases. In 2022 and 2023, Earth saw record increases in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, according to a recent international analysis.”
The retreat from climate
The retreat from climate is causing consternation at NASA. Celebrated climate scientist Kate Marvel told Scientific American on March 25 she had resigned from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences because of the change in priorities for the space agency. According to Marvel, “(GISS) used to have a lease on a building over Tom’s Restaurant at 112th and Broadway in New York City, and that lease was ended. We were kicked out. We were dispersed. We have been kind of couch surfing at various New York City universities and libraries. That was very disruptive. And then, when we apply for grants, we don’t hear about them or we hear, ‘This is a good proposal. Under any other circumstances, we would want to fund it, but we don’t know anything about the money.’
“So it’s just waking up every day not knowing ‘Is this the day that I get fired? Is this the day somebody I work with who I respect gets fired? Could I get this money and plan ahead to do this science or not?’
“I was personally finding that more and more difficult to do.”
Back to space
On the other side, NASA’s astronauts are flying high again. The agency website is again dedicated to space adventure, not wild weather. The Artemis II program has been a global success, putting the US on track to put humans back on the moon in what is being perceived as a race against China.

Back to eternal glory ...

NASA astronaut Christina Koch illuminated by a screen inside the darkened Orion spacecraft on April 3, 2026 as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen (R) peers out of one of Orion's windows. Picture: NASA via AP

All good, in space they can't hear the overheated scream ...

Lloydie of the Amazon seemed pleased...we shouldn't just be nuking Oz, we should be nuking the moon. 

What could possibly go wrong?

After the Artemis II astronauts completed their journey around the far side of the moon, Trump told them: “Your mission paves the way for America’s return to the moon. We are going all out, and led by (NASA administrator) Jared Isaacman, we will be on the moon very soon, and we will set up a base on the moon. We’ll plant our flag again. We will push on to Mars.”
The central goal is to land American astronauts on the moon by 2028 and establish a sustainable, long-term presence (base) by 2030.
The administration is pushing for the development and deployment of nuclear reactors on the moon and in orbit. The International Space Station is being phased out in favour of commercial joint ventures.

There came a final celebratory snap ... The Artemis II crewed lunar mission lifts off from Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 1, 2026. Picture: AFP

Then Lloydie of the Amazon joined mad King Donald in burying climate science and climate change research, a resounding victory for the dog botherer and all who sail in News Corp's denialist ship ...

Trump told the Artemis II astronauts he had considered closing NASA completely.
“I had a decision to make in my first term, and that decision was what are we going to do with NASA. Are we going to have it be revived, or are we going to close it down?” Trump said.
While NASA may be back in space and heading for a moon landing and possible mission to Mars, the funding cuts have not stopped. Two days after Artemis II’s April 1 blast-off for the moon, Trump delivered his 2027 NASA budget request for a 23 per cent reduction in funding.
You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know where, if approved by congress, the bulk of those cuts will land.

Wars of choice, the destruction of the planet, is there no end to the achievements of mad King Donald, Faux Noise and News Corp?

Meanwhile, in an aged care home, serious issues arise ...

Weird days, weird times...