SPARROW SQUAWKS

Jeff Sparrow is unhappy with Quadrant for drawing attention to the launch of Overland 195:

Yesterday’s Overland session on climate change at the Sydney Writers Festival seems to have fanned the low-level cretinism normally gusting out from the Quadrant blog (cf the notorious Sally-Warhaft-is-a-dumb-blonde post) into a veritable tornado of idiocy. Take, for instance, this little item:

When the Sydney [Left] Writers’ Festival hold a phoney “forum” on climate change they ensure dissent is silenced by excluding Ian Plimer - writer of the best selling Australian book on climate change.

Though the entire sentence stands as a minor masterpiece of witlessness, particular credit should be given to the scare quotes around forum, intended, one presumes, to emphasise the phoney phoniness of this counterfeit deception.

In fairness to Quadrant, "forum" implies authoritative discussion, whereas the "discussion" participants were not experts. That is, none are climate scientists. The inclusion of computer scientist Tim Lambert in the discussion is especially problematic in that he has repeatedly rubbished the climate change views aired by those not trained as climate scientists.

A 486 word response from Sparrow to 33 words from Quadrant is a massive overreaction bordering on paranoid.