I think Hans Christian would approve

Take Rudd. Our vain emperor was told by activists the world was warming, thanks to man’s gases, and they could make for him a cause so fine that he would seem the saviour of the world.

They gave him graphs they said showed this heating, and warned that only stupid “deniers” would see in them a cooling trend since 2001.

Rudd was too afraid to admit he actually saw that cooling in the satellite data and so dressed himself instead in the holy robes of a planet saviour - robes he’ll now pay for with a new emissions tax even he says will raise at least $114 billion by 2020.

His ministers, equally scared to seem stupid or bad, agreed his robes were fantastic. And journalists cheered.

Oh, there were doubts, but who in that crowd dared speak? Yet in emails leaked last weekend we find that even the men who’d sold our emperor his new threads fretted that we’d find out they’d sold Rudd a dud.

Kevin Trenberth, who co-wrote two United Nations IPCC reports in which Rudd had found his cause, admitted: “The fact is that we cannot account for the lack of warming at the moment.”

What? The boy had spoken. The spell was broken. Only there’s a problem with this retelling. Our emperor Rudd is still strutting starkers, crying that this cooling world is warming, and he, first among all leaders, must save it.

Or I could have told this tale with Malcolm Turnbull as the emperor, since he bought this same cause from the same shysters, and never once checked why his bared backside felt so windy.

And one of the consequences,
ANGRY resignations from the Shadow Cabinet last night propelled Malcolm Turnbull closer to a leadership showdown which opponents to an ETS could ensure he loses.

Four MPs quit the front bench so they could fight the amendments to legislation creating an Emissions Trading Scheme negotiated with the Government by Mr Turnbull and senior colleagues.
A lot of these people were unhappy with the scheme before; for it to be shoved forward now, after these revelations and without review, just took it over the edge.