I was mostly intending to stay quiet on the court challenge to NIWA’s temperature record on account of it being nonsense and well-covered elsewhere, but last night while watching Outrageous Fortune (NZ free-to-air = graphic rendition of a twincestuous threesome in an 8.30pm show)(scene played for pathos) I followed a link to Poneke’s blog comments, where Iwi/Kiwi advertising guy John Ansell was holding court.
He referred to the Inconvenient Truth court case in the UK: “the movie was banned from schools” he said. Another commenter challenged him: “Banned?” he was asked. “Yes, banned in its original form.” I couldn’t resist mocking this farcical display, to which he replied with further dancing around the subject and pretending “banned” was an appropriate word to use when of course nothing of the sort was ordered by the judge.
And it strikes me that this is exactly what the court challenge is designed to do – not merely to gain the oxygen of publicity, as I’ve read all over, but to provide another chunk of narrative that can be circulated through the denier infosphere, heavily manipulated into service of their pre-defined conclusions. It isn’t intended to convince anyone of anything – but a year or two down the track, *whatever* happens, this court case will be one of the talking points mentioned by the John Ansells of the world, one more factoid in the rolling maul of misinformation and disinformation thrown out by people desperate to believe in a comforting conspiratorial lie.
Coincidentally, Ansell has just now gone off the deep end on race. Charming.
(See also this headache-inducing Kiwiblog thread where friend-of-FTM Repton tries to take up a wager on the outcome of the court case. The other party has gone strangely silent as of this writing.)