Time to cull the prat nominations.

Posted by Pointman on August 30, 2012 · 45 Comments 

I think it’s time to close off the first round of voting, since the viable candidates are by now obvious. People have really stuck to the letter of the law and voted for prats who’ve been very active this year. The front-runner, polling twice as many votes as anyone else, is Peter Gleick. Since he is both a prat and a self-confessed criminal, it seems appropriate and one can only hope that he’s the first of many alarmists lawyering up to prevent a little stay in that big house upriver. At the moment, he looks to be a very strong contender for climate prat of the year but there’s still three months to go, so we’ll see.

Some of the more predictable nominations, such as Al Gore, have attracted remarkably few votes. I suppose it reflects the perception of them as being yesterday’s men, no longer worth wasting a precious vote on. I had high hopes of Michael Mann being in the top five but again, he attracted surprisingly few votes. Apart from threatening to sue anything that moved, he’s been quiet this year. If he’d won it, I was sort of looking forward to hearing from his attorneys so I could write a nice simple two-word blog piece, to wit, fuck off – if you’ll forgive the word play.

Greg Laden didn’t get nominated, which was another surprise. I thoroughly enjoyed the unbelievable antics over at his place, on the piece he wrote about l’affaire Tallbloke. His frantic re-edits and gyrations to dodge a legal suit were so hilarious and yet at the same time, so transparently pathetic, that in the end, even his fellow alarmists were giving him hell. What a toe-curling embarrassment he was for the lot of them. Never mind Greg, given your nature, I’m sure there’ll be a next time, unless your carer has forbidden you from blogging any more.

The only person who didn’t get a single vote, was Louise “barking” Gray of the Telegraph. Too small a fish I think but to be fair to her, there was a slight programming problem. On the voting form, she appeared under the name Ian Chubb, whom nobody appears to have heard of. Harry is still working on that bug but after two weeks, still no sign of a fix. I’m beginning to have some serious doubts about the bloke.

There are even rumours from afar of people being able to vote several times, but even if such a “feature” existed in the polling software, I think climate realists have too good a sense of fair play to take advantage of it. Harry’s looking into it and the password protected README file is getting bigger by the day. I’d love to see what’s in that file. I really should have done a more thorough background check on him, but I suppose it’s a case of you get what you pay for.

The top five contenders are Gleick, Flannery, Bono, Hansen and Oreskes, so geographically we’re looking at three Americans, one Australian and one of the more embarrassing sons of Erin, whose tax arrangements do call into question his committment to the “big society.” He believes in it but would rather not help to finance it by paying his fair share of taxes; everyone else in Ireland gets to do that. While his credentials as a climate prat are not in doubt, he’s very much an all-rounder prat. On any topic he pontificates about, he’s a complete prat. It’d be much better if it had been someone who specialised in just climate prattishness but the voters have spoken.

He’s not exactly famous outside Australia, but Prof. Tim Flannery is their climate commissar, one of whose many claims to pratitude, was suggesting that teeth with fillings should be yanked out of the mouths of the dead, to save the world from Mercury poisoning. Thank goodness he’s on the alarmist side. I don’t think I could cope with having an ally like that on ours. He definitely a 24 carat prat, which probably accounts for him being the closest one behind Gleick.

James Hansen, of course, is world-famous and deservedly so. He’s spent his whole career predicting various Armageddons, none of which have actually materialised but there’s simply no stopping the man. In point of fact, he’s becoming even more alarmist by the day. While I deeply appreciate the damage he does to the credibility of climate alarmism, I feel he’s somehow broken clean through the upper stratospheric prat barrier, and can only now be regarded as something of a cross between a clown and a deranged person. If anyone out there decides to run a Climate Loony of the Year Award, he’d be the perfect exemplar.

Naomi Oreskes is that strange creature called a science historian, who appears to know very little about science, by which I do mean the basics. Things like you’ve actually got to test theories rather than just believe in them. She’s published a string of books that are a wonder to read if you’re a connoisseur of broken logic, poor research, vagueness, non sequiturs and to my mind, rather obvious hatchet jobs on notable climate realists. From my viewpoint, they represent the triumph of spin over fact, assumption over certainty and shadow over substance.

None of them are politicians but the person currently in sixth place, the Australian PM Julia Gillard, certainly is, if you’re prepared to overlook her pure political ineptitude, so I’m going to amend the rules to allow six finalists. There simply must be a politician represented in the finals. Although this gives Oz two people in the running, she’s just such a fundamentally sickening politician, I can’t resist giving her some grief. She’s up for re-election next year and I think of it as me doing my modest part in damaging what’s left of her already bleak prospects.

Most surprisingly, none of the UK nominees polled very well but they’ve all gone very quiet about the climate of late; they’ve got bigger worries, what with the economy and nagging the Germans to keep the Euro alive. Speaking of Germans, not one was even nominated. After this coming Winter of blackouts, soaring utility bills and people sitting freezing in unheated homes, I rather suspect next year’s Pratties will have more than a few nominees from the land of the Nibelungen.

Given such a number and rich variety of prats to choose from, I appreciate how difficult a task it has been for the voter, but on the whole, I think we’ve ended up with a fairly representative selection, including even a celebrity prat.

Now that we’ve narrowed the selection down to six finalists, the only remaining thing to do is come up with some sort of prize. Money looks to be out of the question, not even the Koch brothers are interested in kicking in any dough. However, there have been some great suggestions, ranging from a photostat of a 50 trillion-dollar Zimbabwean banknote, to the absolutely brilliant idea of a graphic of a Polar bear in a polka dot bikini. Anybody out there fancy a go at doing the Polar bear? Fen? Josh?

If all else fails, plan B is still the supermarket coupons, which reminds me, I’ve still got to check their expiry dates.

Since we’re not exactly doing a Diamond Jim Brady on the prize money front, we should really try to make up for it with a nicely worded presentation scroll. You know the sort of thing – presented to blah de blah in grateful recognition of their efforts in the advancement of whatever. That one I can handle myself but if anyone wants a try at doing it, feel free to drop it here as a comment, but please, restrain yourself with the wording.

At this point, I suppose I must offer my reluctant commiseration to the nominees who failed to make the final cut, but I’d remind them there’s always next year. I’d also remind people, that while the six finalists look solid, there’s still the option, at any point, of replacing the lowest scorer with the name of an exceptionally gifted prat, who’s decided to make a late dash for the winning tape. It could be one of the old nominees or even a hitherto completely unknown prat, who’s just committed an absolutely weapons-grade act of totally inspired prattishness. To borrow a phrase from the immortal Del Boy Trotter, it’ll have to be a blinder though. We’ll call that the Blinder Prat option.

I’ve been avoiding discussion of the thorny subject of tactical voting, but in all conscience, I feel honour bound to touch upon it. Obviously, for any of the countries with a finalist in contention, the prospect of your representative actually carrying away the Climate Prat of the Year Award can’t be pleasant. The temptation to vote for a foreign prat, just to avoid that dubious honour, will be strong. Please don’t do this; vote according to your conscience and to hell with purely nationalistic considerations.

Well, that’s the cull done but I’m obliged by the rules of the Prat Humane Society, to declare that no prats were actually physically harmed during it. The rules, of course, don’t cover their egos, since there’s nothing big enough to cover the egos of the likes of Mann and Muller, who I am pleased to see, have been having a jolly good go at each other lately. The clash is strangely reminiscent of the immovable and unstoppable objects paradox, in a dwarf versus midget sort of way.

We’re on the home straight, so nothing else remains to be said, except keep voting and may the best prat win.

©Pointman

Related articles by Pointman:

Announcing the inaugural Climate Prat of the Year Award.

Climate Alarmism and The Prat Principle.

Click for a list of other articles.

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