“Thinking again?” the Duchess asked, with another dig of her sharp little chin. “I’ve a right to think,” said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to feel a little worried. “Just about as much right,” said the Duchess, “as pigs have to fly....” [Chapter 9, ‘The Mock Turtle’s Story’, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1865)].

A kindly soul has just pointed out to me that yesterday good ol’ Guardianista, John Vidal [“For it is he!”], had a teeny dig (once again) at ‘Dotty Stotty’ in his regular Wednesday Eco soundings’ slot [‘Too much hot air’, Eco soundings (4th item down), The Guardian, October 8]:

“Philip ‘Dotty Stotty’ Stott, emeritus professor of geography at London University, has been quiet of late, but Eco Soundings’ favourite climate change sceptic has come up with a list of new ministers who will be needed in the new climate change department...” [see: ‘That New Climate Department’, October 3].

Now, John is a witty cove, but his final riposte was distressingly authoritarian and illiberal [so typical of the ‘liberal’ Guardian these days]:

“And how about a minister to control contrarian gibberish?” [my emphasis].

“Control!” Of course! Otherwise, I might go around causing dangerous mayhem among the proletariat who stubbornly remain benighted in their ‘false consciousness’ over The Guardian’s ‘global warming’ tropes.

Poor John! Like many Warmistas, he appears to dote on ‘control’. But, does he really think that pigs can fly, that politicians and ministers can actually ‘control’ climate change?

In his masterpiece, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Samuel Johnson tells us about an Astronomer who declaims that he can indeed ‘control’ climate:  “...the sun has listened to my dictates, and passed from tropic to tropic by my direction; the clouds, at my call, have poured their waters...”

Unfortunately, Johnson points out that the Astronomer was mad.

I think - don’t you? - the gibberish comes largely from those who tell us that, like Johnson’s mad Astronomer, they can control the clouds and the sun. Such hubris.

Still, as the Mad Hatter declared: “Time marches on its stomach!”

“Tea-party anyone?”

Further reading: just up - Charles Clover’s new piece in The Daily Telegraph (October 9): ‘Ed Miliband, Energy and Climate Change Secretary, has his work cut out’.