In which there's a squillionth picture of satanic windmills to accompany the Caterist, and why not nuke the planet before we overheat it?

 

Richard Ackland had the pond from the get go, what with comparing Chairman Rupert to William Randolph Hearst and dragging in Orson Welles and one of the pond's favourite movies, Citizen Kane ...

It's all there in the Graudian, What sort of country are we? That’s the question implicit in Lachlan Murdoch v Crikey. 

Ah, memories. The pond once took the trip to Hearst Castle, if only to confirm the size of the fireplace featured in the film ...

In later times, the chairman and brood could only boast of a TV series, which has been very popular and was slickly done, but isn't quite on the same turf as Welles' masterpiece, or his persecution, or the film's narrow escape from destruction.

Still it remains a popular pond parlour game, working out who was the more heinous mogul. 

Hearst and his minions helped start a war, and destroyed many lives and careers, but having lived through it, the pond is always inclined to celebrate the deeds of the chairman ... surely contributing to the destruction of the planet and the destruction of democracy in the United States must be valued, and besides, Hearst showed an unnerving interest in show folk and other people, not least his mistress, Marion "Rosebud" Davies ...

It led to amusing anecdotes, where people were bumped down the table until they took the hint and left the table. 

Sure Chairman Rupert once owned a studio - it was obligatory for fashion-conscious moguls - but the chairman has only ever shown an interest in raw, unbridled power, and his behaviour is strictly transactional, and his marital follies (there have been a few) never quite measured up to Hearst's devotion to his Rosebud, or hers to him ...

Never mind, the pond will leave that game to others, because today is Caterist day and FUD is all the go ... as it always is, as reliable as Pinky's devotion to the Brain's endless quest to rule the universe ...

Please allow the pond to pause for a celebration. The pond hasn't kept an accurate account, but thinks that's the squillionth time the reptiles have published a snap of satanic windmills atop a fear-mongering story about renewables ... and how fitting it is that this milestone should have been achieved atop a Caterist tilting in Don Quixote fashion at windmills ...

Some might doubt the Caterist credentials for the tilting, having been so spectacularly wrong on the matter of the movement of flood waters in quarries, but that's the great thing about reptile science. You don't have to have expertise, you're just required to have a certain skill at FUD, and the right mindset ... which will see no mention made of climate change ...

It's all terribly impressive - few realised that as well as a wretched student of sociology, the Caterist was an expert engineer who might talk in a complex way of complexity and synchronicity, while atop the digital page, the reptiles could get excited about the greenies and a deep freeze ...

 

In such cases, it's always better to revert to the Graudian, which has the lake story and a story about the UK's current weather and the cold snap ...

What's more interesting to the pond is the way that the reptiles routinely talk about climate alarmists and climate catastrophists and snowflakes and such like ...

And yet each week we have a precious snowflake of the Caterist kind, peddling imminent complete catastrophe and total collapse, and alarmism and FUD ... anxiously doing a Chicken Little and crossing his fingers ...

Fifty years or more? So all that talk of the air war in the second world war was a nonsense? It seems that the main risk to the bomber squads making those epic trips to Germany and back wasn't the flak or the German fighters, but the lack of reliability in the aircraft ...

As for commercial aviation, might the price of the ticket have had something to do with it?

Or it could just be that as always the Caterist is prone to rhetorical flights of enormous stupidity ...

Before anyone reverts to nostalgia about the early days of flying, there was this about how global travel took off ...

In the pond's experience, if the rich find something expensive and perceive it to be relatively safe, and the common mob are kept away from the fireplace, then it will become extremely fashionable ...

Luckily there was a Rowe on hand to celebrate the landscape arising from the latest Caterist effort ...

And so to what the pond won't be covering this day ... because the Major went there ...

And Dame Slap was also at it again, yammering away in the reptile triptych of terror ...

The pond refuses to indulge in trial by media, though of course it's what Hearst ordered, and the chairman routinely orders, as a way to boost circulation.

Nor was the pond tempted by the Catholic boys' daily story about last rites - seeing as it involves imaginary places invoked by talk of a triptych of imaginary friends - or that ABC payback - if that's a "brutal reality check", wait until climate change really gets going on reality ...

But it left the pond short of a bonus, and below the digital fold, it was equally dire ...

Good old Eric, carrying the water for the industry, but the pond checked, and there were no snaps of satanic windmills, just a couple of snaps of power grids, which the pond must rate a spectacular fail ...

As for Frank's plea to stop the nasty, apparently he's completely clueless about the reptiles and their business model ... being nasty, especially about indigenous voices, is what drives them on, and soon enough there'll be a column berating Frank for blathering about bipartisan goodwill and everyone being respectfully heard ...

The reptiles don't do respect, they like to shout loudly at the top of their collective voice, so that only they might be heard ...

So the pond decided if we're going to talk about catastrophe, instead of climate change, why not an old favourite, the nuking of the planet in the old-fashioned Dr Strangelove way ...

There you go, there's nothing like talk of "the need for more strategic nuclear weapons" to get the pond excited ... it doesn't just bring back memories of the pond's favourite comedy (how many times can you talk of precious bodily fluids and fluoride? As many as you like!).

The notion that you can drop the odd nuke and nobody will much mind is a wonderful notion, extremely strategic, and it reminded the pond of the great days of MAD, and not just Dr Strangelove, but also films such as Lumet's 1964 Fail Safe, and the whole MAD syndrome ... (not to mention the talk of copyright infringement, as dire as any nuclear armageddon).

The pond doesn't often spend time with the Dibbster, but the pond found his talk of a renewed nuclear arms race immensely cheering. 

Instead of over-heating the planet, why not just blow it up? Or at least bung on a third world war and let the nukes fall where they may ...

Ah yes, the virtue of being practically continuously at war, and didn't the US teach the Taliban a lesson, and hasn't that been spectacularly good for Afghan women ... and then there was the lesson they taught Iraq, another sublime outcome, not to mention the lesson they taught Libya and the sort of lesson in Syria ...

So many lessons, so little time, but then the pond decided to abandon the Dibbster when he proposed that the thing that's needed are more serious studies in the public domain ...

Apparently he's unaware that he's scribbling behind a paywall, and that in reptile parlance, the public domain consists of paying a weekly shekels stipend to the chairman ... though it's unlikely he'll ever build a zoo of the kind Hearst did, because lashing his minions onwards is much more fun than caging wild creatures ...

It's good to see that the Dibbster and the bromancer are on the same page when it comes to erect missiles ready to blast off with a payload, and the urgent need to contemplate something short of a nuclear war ... but if needs must, a few nukes across the bow will soon sort the Chinese out, and we can all go out to the local Chinese restaurant to celebrate ...and you can always toss in a Slim Pickens' yee haw if you like ...

Meanwhile on another planet, Kudelka had a celebration last Saturday ... and it's as good a note as any to finish up this day's outing in the Murdochian fireplace ...

In which the settles for prattling Polonius and nattering "Ned" as the best way to induce an extended Sunday snooze...

 

The pond only had one take-away from Marina Hyde's latest outing, it being largely about football,  which for pond is roughly equivalent to translating Sanskrit, and it was this ...

Rupert Murdoch was recently said to be incensed that the Daily Star’s can-this-lettuce-outlast-Liz-Truss stunt went around the world, believing it to be classic Sun territory into which the paper had somehow failed to plant its flag. 
Perhaps consequently, readers are inflicted with near daily attempts to chase that dream. These have tipped into the advanced stages of something or other, if Friday’s headline “Walker’s Got Mbappé In Pocket” is anything to go by. 

On closer clinical inspection, this turned out to be a reference to a pair of jeans the Sun has had specially made up, which bear a leather label reading “KYLE WALKER JEANS CO” and which feature a printed image of Kylian Mbappé peeking out of the back pocket. I mean … guys? Is everyone involved in this idea OK?

Speaking of OK, does the chairman ever notice the lizard Oz, or its assorted band of hidebound, geriatric, moribund scribblers, and their constant attempts to outlast a lettuce?

This struck home with particular force for the pond when watching the painful, pitifiul attempt this weekend by Polonius to join the climate science denialists ...

For years, Polonius, realising he's not even a pimple on the bum of a climate scientist, has done his best to skirt around the topic, and yet this weekend he had a go at it ...

It's easy to see the trick here, with Polonius working on the meta-level of politics rather than science, and delivering a rough equivalent of the dog botherer's "climate alarmists" by resorting to "true believers" ...

"Believers" is what you deploy when you think science is a religion, rather than an ability to deliver replicable analysis and results. Belief doesn't really enter into it ... or at least into a typical dictionary definition ...

...the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained.

Of course it's more than that, but it's not a matter of being a true believer if you happen to accept the science as it stands in relation to carbon dioxide emissions...

But you won't find Polonius contemplating the science ... that's the black snake that lurks in the outdoor dunny ... and so instead you get the silly old doddering codger referencing world famous climate scientists of the Major Mitchell kind, clutching their degree from Trump University ...

The entire point is to raise FUD to a level where it all becomes too hard ...or where any attempt to think outside the box is met with box lovers determined to keep things the way they are ...

But enough of domestic sagas, because there's even more talk of "true believers", as you'd expect from a lettuce or a one-time fellow traveller with B. A. Santamaria and fundamentalist Catholics of the DLP kind ...

Thanks to that training, some might say breeding, everything turns theological in Polonius's world ... and inevitably the theological obsessions he disapproves of, those dark satanic black masses with inverted crosses, take place on the ABC ...

Ah yes, the dangerous radicals who always take things too far...

Sorry, sorry, the pond meant the dangerous radicals who took things way too far, as in this Crikey story ... (paywall)

“CoalKeeper is dead,” Queensland Minister for Energy Mick de Brenni said after yesterday’s energy ministers’ meeting. “Angus Taylor and Scott Morrison’s CoalKeeper is dead.”

To which one might respond, best to drive a stake through its heart and decapitate it just to make sure.

CoalKeeper — or a capacity mechanism, to give it its formal name — was devised by Taylor and his appointed bureaucrats as a way to prop up unreliable and unviable coal-fired power stations, with the cost to be borne via higher energy bills, under the pretext of ensuring reliability in a system with a growing level of renewable power.

Despite opposition from the states — led particularly by Victoria — Taylor clung grimly to this lifeline for fossil fuels, even as owners of old, expensive coal-fired power stations began bringing forward their closure and openly ignoring him. By the time the 2021 election came round, a humiliated Taylor was lashing out wildly at power companies and threatening to force them to keep their coal-fired power stations running even if the power wasn’t needed.

The new government briefly flirted with allowing gas in the mechanism after it entered government, but in its final form announced yesterday by Chris Bowen, the “Capacity Investment Scheme” (CIS) will be renewables-only dispatchable power. It will operate under an auction-and-underwrite process similar to that already established by Matt Kean in NSW, enabling existing NSW tender processes, which are already underway, to slot into the new scheme and receive Commonwealth funding.

As Reneweconomy’s Giles Parkinson cannily noted, yesterday’s agreement locks NSW in even if NSW Labor wins the March state election and wants to backslide from Kean’s leadership on decarbonisation — perhaps under pressure from fossil fuel unions like the AWU and the mining division of the CFMMEU.

It can also be seen as the end of the first stage of repairing the colossal damage a near-decade of denialism and do-nothingism under the federal Coalition did to Australia’s energy infrastructure (punctuated all-too-briefly by Malcolm Turnbull’s unsuccessful efforts to make progress).

And so, but back to Polonius, still imagining that prime Angus beef is the way forward, what with him still being a true believer (there being no need to mention science in the company of methane-emitting Angus beef)...

Yes, money comes from coal and gas, so to get the money to fix the planet, you must fuck the planet by getting money from coal and gas, and then you'll have the money to fix the planet, though the planet will be comprehensively fucked, and so won't be fixed, but you wanted a virtuous circle of mayhem and destruction, and what better way to get one ...

The pond feels another Xmas song coming on ...

And so to another item the pond won't be covering. After her recent forays into comrade Dan territory. our Gracie has returned to the IR bee buzzing in her bonnet ...

The pond is well over reptile black bashing, the Higgins matter and IR, and unintended consequences, which since they haven't actually happened yet, are a kind of speculative science fiction ...

"Perhaps the crispest definition is that science fiction is a literature of 'what if?' What if we could travel in time? What if we were living on other planets? What if we made contact with alien races? And so on. The starting point is that the writer supposes things are different from how we know them to be. What if we wrote hypothetical scenarios showing how things could go badly wrong? What if they didn't go badly wrong? What if I spent my time fluff-gathering and navel gazing. What if arcane imagines of a hypothetical Geoffrey Robertson ruined the pond's day?" (Apologies, the original is here).

So instead of our Gracie, the pond could do its duty, and deliver a full serve of nattering "Ned", big enough to ensure that anyone with any sense would head back to bed for an extended Sunday snooze...

The pond should have warned that there are six gobbets in all, not peak "Ned" but still a bit of a climb, and those who started out hopeful, because the reptiles splashed on a minor league graphic (not the cult master in his prime), will soon have their hopes dashed ...

The pond should also have advised that "Ned" is in full Chicken Little mode, blathering about a fractured nation, as if the reptiles have had nothing to do with the fracturing, and as it it isn't obvious that his hysterical anxiety about the fracturing largely seems to have arisen from the way the Murdochians fucked up the Victorian election, and now are surrounded by a bunch of comrades they find truly terrifying...

The pond will probably slip in the odd cartoon to help "Ned" and demonstrate that his panic is probably not needed ... things are looking up, there's a movement to the centre ...

Oh good, that's good ...

"William brought the groceries," Aunt Amy said. She sat down wearily in the straightbacked chair beside Mom, and began fanning herself again. She wasn't really old, but ever since Anthony had snapped at her with his mind, something had been wrong with her body as well as her mind, and she was tired all the time.

"Oh, good," said Mom. Lollop went the fat peas in the pan.

Everybody in Peaksville always said "Oh, fine," or "Good," or "Say, that's swell," when almost everything happened or was mentioned--even unhappy things like accidents or even deaths. They'd always say "Good," because if they didn't try to cover up how they really felt, Anthony might overhear with his mind, and then nobody knew what might happen. Like the time Mrs. Kent's husband, Sam, had come walking back from the graveyard because Anthony liked Mrs. Kent and had heard her mourning. (That old cornfield favourite here).

It's just swell to keep on reading "Ned", it's really fine and good ... and never mind the funk he's always in ...

Ah the liar from the Shire, not even he can bring a smile to "Ned's" face ...

You'd think the reptiles having backed a winner of the SloMo kind would find joy in the consequences. It's all good ... even a lettuce can be good on a slow moving day ... but "Ned" is intent on putting on his black and white glasses ...

What a negative way of looking at it. 

No, not the decision to run a sinister snap of a Satanic figure in black and white, that's simply because the reptiles ran out of the colour digital ink that's needed to make the intertubes work ...

No, it's the notion that the reptiles and their Liberal lackeys are on the wrong side of history, when they're on the right side with Iranian theocrats, the Indonesian parliament and GOP reps who burst into tears like snowflakes while denouncing snowflakes in favour of SS marriage ...

It could be worse ... instead of all this talking of fracture of culture and politics, look on the upside ...

But no, instead of saying how it's all good, "Ned" is determined to head off to the lettuce patch, and moan and whine and wring hands and gaze at the sky with a sigh ...

Ah, the reptiles got the coloured digital ink back from the supplier, and suddenly they can do full colour again ...

It's all good ... though this portrait of "Ned" in Santa gear verges on the scurrilous ...

Meanwhile, it's back to the "we'll all be rooned" routine ...

Yes, yes, but it's all good, and there's so much winning ...

And then "Ned" has to go and spoil all the talk of the lettuce winning by showing the real reason for all the hand-wringing and the source of the reptile tears, though luckily they still had sufficient supplies of digital ink ...

Imagine how it would have looked if they'd run out of the ink again ...

 

By golly that looks sinister, almost verging on the demonic... and the similarities are unnerving ... and that's how to become a lizard Oz picture editor ...

And so on to the final gobbet, with the colour in the telly restored, the year somewhere around 1974 (though some might prefer the black and white of the Ming the merciless era), and yet another serve of lettuces and "what ifs?"

It's always a tragedy when people refuse to be sheeple. If only the people had followed the reptile lead, they could have been blessed with more of the liar from the Shire and that weird mobster lobster Guy in Victoria... and then we could have had more years of climate science denialism, culture wars and all the rest of it ...

Sadly all the reptile criticism and mockery and slander went for naught, and "Ned" is reduced to the usual Chicken Little handwringing and worrying that the sky is falling in, when all that happened was that this time around nobody listened to the reptiles ... and despite all their pleading, cajoling, and carrying on, their mob lost and they ended up being done by a lettuce...

Perhaps instead of prescribing for others they need to look around and see the sort of visionary leadership they can emulate... something from the Classic comics, if they find the original too long and difficult to handle ...

And speaking of what if, and it's all good ...

In which the dog bother does 'leet denialism, the bromancer does 'leet war and for a sorbet and a carol, the Bjorn-again one does 'leet denialism ...

 

The pond trusts that everyone is still keeping up with the Weekly Beast, which this week celebrated the gathering of the 'leets who make a career and a more than humble living out of deploring the 'leets. 

The header alone was rich 'leet company ... Lachlan Murdoch’s whirlwind week: from US court testimony to Sydney Christmas party as elites rub shoulders.

It truly was a 'leet gathering of those deploring the 'leets ...

The global head of News Corp, Robert Thomson, was among the guests at the shindig although he managed to escape the photographers who waited outside, as did former prime minister Tony Abbott.
Thomson is in Australia for board meetings and to secure a new editor-in-chief of the Australian, after the departure of Christopher Dore. Editor Michelle Gunn, who is in the running for editor-in-chief, arrived accompanied by the paper’s foreign editor, Greg Sheridan.
With his testimony as the chief executive of Fox Corp behind him, Lachlan can concentrate on preparing for mediation before Christmas in his other legal challenge: suing Crikey for defamation.
He is taking the independent news site owned by Private Media to court over an article that named the Murdoch family as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the 6 January Capitol riots. His barrister, Sue Chrysanthou, was among the guests at Le Manoir, mingling with News Corp Australia CEO Michael Miller, and Sky News presenters Peter Stefanovic, Sharri Markson, Laura Jayes, Rita Panahi, Paul Murray and Andrew Bolt.
We couldn’t help but notice the shadow minister for communications, Sarah Henderson, scored an invitation, which is not surprising given she is making a career of attacking the ABC.

They were all there, the onion muncher and his beloved bromancer, and more of him anon, and simplistic Sharri and the panhandler Panahi - albeit never mentioned on the pond as a shame too shocking to behold - and the assiduously avoided Bolter, not to mention suck-up Sarah ...

And after that celebration of the 'leets, time to get on with it, and do actual case studies of the 'leet reptiles at work ... and here the pond must begin with its usual preface, because these days the pond spends as much time ruling out reptiles as keeping them in ...

The pond won't for example be including Dame Slap, routinely these days wretched when it comes to bashing blacks, and horrid when it comes to the Higgins matter ...

It's a change from attacking the voice, just as the pond had begun to wonder why the reptiles were so obsessed with black bashing. 

From what the pond can understand, a third legislative chamber is not proposed, nor is a veto. There can only be a lot of chin-wagging, advising, and if deemed appropriate, consenting ... and yet the reptiles have of late been full of hysteria about the end of democracy. 

Does it come from their white nationalist roots - after all, Dame Slap was a MAGA cap wearer and we know the sort of company they keep - or is it a deep-seated attachment to colonial paternalism and a desire to keep pesky, difficult, uppity blacks in their place ... in memory of ancient imperial behaviour, or Dixie style if you will ...

No matter, because climate science denialism is the topic of the day. 

Even prattling Polonius gets stuck into it, and "Ned" is so interminable that the pond decided that they'd make a good Sunday pairing, enough to drive anyone back to bed to catch up on a few extra hours of snooze.

Meanwhile,  the denialism was in a safe pair of hands, or the dog botherer's keyboard, though the pond searched for an answer to a constant puzzle ... and never managed to come up with one ...

You see, you're about to read the dog botherer rabbiting on about how climate change isn't a problem ... so the solution to the non-existent problem is to nuke the country.

Please don't ask the pond to explain the inexplicable logic ... just marvel at the sight of it in action ...

The pond should have noted that the dog botherer was going to be in full hysterical flight this day, deeply alarmed by the alarmists and flinging abuse everywhere ...

It's the "just because climate scientists predict change" that is the marvel and the wonder in that initial outburst ... the sullen resentment at the notion that there might be change, when everyone knows that growth has its seasons and so does the climate. First comes spring and a hot summer, and then we have autumn and winter, and then waddya know, we get a hotter spring and an even hotter summer again ... though who knows we might also get more floods and bushfires and ...

Perhaps the pond has been reading the dog botherer and his denialism for too long ... it's all so familiar, so repetitious, and finally so desperate ...

Speaking of the Graudian, there was this yarn recently ... Australia needs ‘wartime mobilisation’ response to climate crisis, security leaders say.

Australia must adopt a “wartime mobilisation” response to the climate emergency, former security leaders have told a review of the country’s defence policy.

The Australian Security Leaders Climate Group is calling for “a fundamental reframing of Australia’s defence and security strategy” away from geopolitical rivalry.

The group – whose members include the former Australian defence force chief Chris Barrie and former air force deputy chief John Blackburn – argues the country must push for unprecedented global cooperation on the climate crisis.

Despite the US and Australia vowing on Wednesday to “drive stronger global action to address the climate crisis”, the security leaders insist the issue is still being treated as an afterthought rather than a top-order threat.

The ADF faces ever-growing demands to respond to disasters at home and in the region, the group warns in a submission to the defence strategic review being conducted by former ADF chief Angus Houston and former defence minister Stephen Smith.

Global inaction has resulted in climate change becoming an immediate existential threat to humanity and, together with nuclear war, is the greatest threat to the security of Australia and its people,” the submission says.

And so on ... 

Steady on, before we get to a war on climate, we need to get past that war on China, more on that anon ...

Even worse, apparently the dear old things fail to realise that the way to deal with this non-existent problem is simply to nuke the power grid and nuke the country, and heck, nuke the planet while we're at it ... (hmm, maybe that war on China could do the trick) ...

It's the same old same old, the notion that there's nothing to see here, nothing happening folks, we've seen it all before ... and indeed we have because the pond woke to news on the BBC World Service of what it was like in Greenland a couple of million years ago, courtesy of DNA studies ...

There's a story about it here - what's an extra 11 to 19C hotter in north Greenland if you happen to like mastodons - and that interview with the Prof could be heard here, but there's lots more out and about, none of which matters when you're dealing with the dog botherer ...

And after that elaborate set up, so to the dog botherer's solution to what he's just argued in a tedious, error-laden way isn't an issue or a problem in need of a solution ...

Yep, it's the new form of denialism. There isn't a problem, but if there is, we can save it all for some distant SMR dreaming, and so the pond thinks the dog botherer should now be on Santa's list ...

So what might distract from nuking the country? Why not nuking the planet in a way that only the bromancer could manage ...

Fresh from the finger food, canapés and crudités being served by 'leet Lachy to his 'leet guests in his 'leet Bellevue Hill mansion in Sydney's 'leet east, the bromancer was fighting fit and ready to bung on world war III, if not by Xmas, then certainly in the new year ...

Here the pond should note that you can't bung on a war in just a few gobbets, so this is the "Ned" Everest for the day, and anyone wanting to mention how well Vlad the sociopath's war in Ukraine has gone and what wonders it's done for Russia and Ukraine and the entire planet should possibly just forget it, and instead go into full armchair warrior war monger mode...

Got your leather chair, your extra fine Amontillado, and a comfortable navy blue blazer with a decent set of brass buttons at the ready? Or are you more in the Hugh Hefner velvet smoking robe school? (though the pond can't really recommend going the whole cigar route, the chance of being mistaken for General Jack D. Ripper on a fluoridation of water jag is too high) ...

Now on with the war ...

The pond thought the reptiles had got over their desire for war with China by Xmas, but there's no accounting for how crudités can excite your manly cock, and want you to get into a brawl ... and while the pond has left its Freudian days behind, still there's something to be said for the way that missiles give the bromancer a very hard erection ...

There's nothing he likes better than sitting in his leather chair, reminiscing about his service in country in 'Nam, and taking down the Chinese ...

It's a rich fantasy life, though it might be better if someone would just make him supreme generalissimo so he could make everyone share his vision ... after all, a splendid time is being had this winter in Ukraine, so why not turn the whole planet into a disaster zone ...

Ah yes, as opposed to the American system ...

Sorry, the pond is just a tad bored with the war on China, and we all know where this is leading ... we need to spend more money on the bromancer's erections, or at least on some penis-shaped missiles ...

Stand by, the reptiles have a snap of one spurting, coming right up ...

Indeed, indeed, what a fine spurt that was, and haven't those missiles deployed by Vlad the sociopath produced wondrous results ... in terms of human misery, and epic destruction, not so much actual. military outcomes or territory gained and held ...

So let's take it to space, because what the planet really needs - thanks to the dog botherer having solved climate change by denying its existence - is space wars ...

In a decade? But the pond will have stopped blogging by then, and - stomping of foot - the bromancer promised a war, if not by Xmas, then certainly in the new year ...

What was it they said about generals always fighting the last war? Sheesh, if the bromancer wants to join forces and dig up the Schlieffen Plan, how soon before we start talking von Clausewitz and his famous saying "Murdochian journalism is the womb in which war develops"?

Or perhaps "All action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of twilight,  which like a fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are ..."

The pond often gets that foggy sense of the grotesque when reading the scribbles of war mongers of the bromancer leather chair war gamer kind, as if the recent events in Ukraine might not have put off talk of even more war, while the planet steadily goes down the climate science gurgler ... but what would the pond know, up against manly tyke men, with their erect missiles at the ready ...

No, no need for acronyms, we just need the bromancer, and a keyboard, and it's all done and dusted ...

Phew that was a chore, and so instead of "Ned" - stay tuned for that existential fight with the desire to nod off - the pond decided a little climate science denialism sorbet was in order and who better to deliver than the Bjorn-again one ...

Indeed, indeed, let's just keep doing what we've been doing, and perhaps sing the odd Xmas carol ...

Meanwhile, the Bjorn-again one never gets tired of singing his old song ...

Yep, things are going splendidly, so even though it's a tad mangled, the pond thought it could pause its contemplation of the Bjorn-again one and slip in an infallible Pope...

At some point, the Bjorn-again one would usually say that we need to spend more money on research, as opposed to actually doing anything about climate change or taking action, though this is perhaps a tad tricky when the research produces an EV, and then you have to spend all your time explaining how useless and what a comprehensive waste of time and money all that research has been ...

Indeed, indeed, and would it be a Bjorn-again outing without a meaningless bit of data, down to the 0.0001C level?

Meanwhile, the pond must apologise. In the old days, say a few weeks ago, the Bjorn-again one would scribble something like this ...

Fortunately, there are far smarter alternative approaches. The best long-term strategy would be to dramatically increase investment in green energy research and development. This approach would be much more effective while likely being 10 times cheaper than the approach taken by Europe and the US. This also makes it much more plausible to be implemented by governments around the world.

Consider how the computer went from being incredibly rare and expensive to commonplace and cheap. Governments didn’t achieve this revolution by subsidising every Western home in the 1960s or ’70s to install a massive, relatively inefficient computer in their basement. Breakthroughs were achieved by public and private expenditure on research and development leading to multiple innovations that led to evermore technologies becoming commercially viable, driving even more research and production in a virtuous circle. That’s the example we need to emulate when it comes to green energy.

Now look where we've reached ...

It doesn't have quite the same ring does it? "Electric vehicles will take over only when innovation has made them better and cheaper than petrol-powered cars".

But if we were to take computers as an example, it was the early adopters who forked out for expensive models - the pond confesses to acquiring a 512 at the cost of an arm and a leg - who allowed stupid scribblers to stupidly scribble ... "Breakthroughs were achieved by public and private expenditure on research and development leading to multiple innovations that led to evermore technologies becoming commercially viable, driving even more research and production in a virtuous circle. That’s the example we need to emulate when it comes to green energy (and transportation costs?)."

Enough already. As usual, the contradictions and monstrous stupidities make this the wrong sort of sorbet.

The pond has spent more than enough time with the reptiles this day, it's time for a cartoon, and as usual, the pond turns to the immortal Rowe for a closer ...