So I’m back again after another layoff… What was I up to? Well aside from returning to the algore secret world headquarters for new orders and getting my brain-washing topped up, I was enjoying a warm (too warm I tell myself ominously) month of summer training and racing in triathlons. I was also helping, in a small way, run the Toronto International Film Festival.

Of course Anthony Watts and friends have been busy without me. Unsurprisingly, they’ve said absolutely nothing new. The Arctic sea ice has continued to recede despite their daily protestations and crowing about momentary tiny reversals. They still darkly accuse reality-based scientists of being money-grubbing communist liars. They’re still finding phrases to work themselves into a lather over, with “global climate disruption” being the latest definitive evidence that “warmers” are slippery-tongued con artists. Apologies and retractions, as long after the fact as possible, as still trickling out of the deceived mainstream media. “Lord” Monckton is still threatening to sue anyone that criticizes him. Fox News cobbled together another collection of denialists to explain it all to their viewers.

What’s new? There have been some entertaining developments, randomly selected.

• Judith Curry, the “climate scientist” who changed teams (err, tribes), has started blogging with the kind help of our friend Anthony Watts. The results are naturally mixed but perhaps the process will restore blood-flow to her brain.
• Bjorn Lomsberg is now pretending that he never doubted global warming, he just wanted us to solve it with tech. Nice fig-leaf.
• Anthony is trying to diversify into protecting Australian farmers from municipal gubmints. Good tie-in for the gubmint haters.
• Steven Goddard has left his post (for “personal reasons”) at Watts’ Up With That’s Department of Arctic Sea Ice is Thicker Than Ever after he started snapping at his teammates again in his ferocious self-defense of factual ignorance. Never mind, Thomas Fuller is warming up in the bull(shit)-pen.
• Anthony tells us once again that nothing man can do can have any impact, so why the fuss? Just ask any former professor, they’ll tell you that global warming is simply a “corrupt social phenomenon.”
• Thomas Fuller tries to tell everyone that he’s just an open-minded guy who really does believe in global warming, just not that much. I guess Climategate slandering isn’t paying the bills after-all. The Way Things Break gives him a big hug.
• Anthony gives some more support to right-wing think tank-er Indur Goklany’s kooky mantra that we should be fighting malaria with DDT (and Rachel Carson was a murderer) theory. This brought a snort of derision from Tim Lambert at Deltoid.

So much fun I’ve missed out on! Well time waits for no man.

I can make a small contribution here though. There were two films at Toronto International Film Festival that touched on climate change. Cool It was an uncritical documentary about Bjorn Lomberg and his ideas on climate change. I really wanted to catch a screening, but my schedule didn’t allow me to get to it. My contacts tell me that it was very poorly attended, but I would have loved the chance to see some of the local denialists bouncing around the 75 seat theater chosen to screen it in. The documentary Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie, was also playing, it won the Cadillac People’s Choice Documentary Award. So much for the tide of public opinion turning against the “climate change alarmists”.