UPDATE: The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley thanks readers and responds to some critics of his title in an update posted below. – Anthony
UPDATE2: A new condensed version of Monckton’s rebuttal is available below
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I don’t have a dog in this fight, as this is between two people with opposing viewpoints, but I’m happy to pass on this rebuttal from Christopher Monckton, who writes:
Professor Abraham, who had widely circulated a serially mendacious 83-minute personal attack on me on the internet, has had a month to reply to my questions.
I now attach a) a press statement; b) a copy of the long letter in which I ask the Professor almost 500 questions about his unprovoked attack on me; and c) the full subsequent correspondence. I’d be most grateful if you would circulate all this material as widely as you can. The other side has had much fun at my expense: without you, I can’t get my side heard, so I’d be most grateful if you would publicize this material.
Links to both Abraham’s and Monckton’s presentations follow.
I’ll let readers be the judge.
Abraham: http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/
(NOTE: He uses Adobe presenter – may not work on all browsers)
Monckton: monckton-warm-abra-qq2 (PDF)
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UPDATE: 7/13/10 6:40PM PST In comments, the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley thanks readers and responds to some critics of his title in an update posted below. – Anthony
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From: The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
I am most grateful to Anthony Watts for having allowed my letter asking Professor Abraham some questions to be circulated, and to so many of you for having taken the trouble to comment. I have asked a good firm of MN libel lawyers to give me a hard-headed assessment of whether I have a libel case against Abraham and his university, or whether I’m taking this too seriously.
I am charmed that so many of you are fascinated by the question whether I am a member of the House of Lords. Perhaps this is because your own Constitution denies you any orders or titles of nobility. Here is the answer I recently gave to the US House of Representatives’ Global Warming Committee on that subject:
“The House of Lords Act 1999 debarred all but 92 of the 650 Hereditary Peers, including my father, from sitting or voting, and purported to – but did not – remove membership of the Upper House. Letters Patent granting peerages, and consequently membership, are the personal gift of the Monarch. Only a specific law can annul a grant. The 1999 Act was a general law. The then Government, realizing this defect, took three maladroit steps: it wrote asking expelled Peers to return their Letters Patent (though that does not annul them); in 2009 it withdrew the passes admitting expelled Peers to the House (and implying they were members); and it told the enquiry clerks to deny they were members: but a written Parliamentary Answer by the Lord President of the Council admits that general legislation cannot annul Letters Patent, so I am The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (as my passport shows), a member of the Upper House but without the right to sit or vote, and I have never pretended otherwise.”
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UPDATE2: A new condensed rebuttal for easier reading is here
I don’t think I’d want Chris Monckton mad at me.
Lord Monckton is one of the finest bestowers of the literary Glasgow Kiss I have had the pleasure of reading since Hugh MacDiarmid shuffled off his mortal coil.
This is pure joy.
“A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.”
I would give my [snip! – consider it given] to have even half of the flair and insight of Christopher Monckton, although that might prove problematic as he seems to have many more than two! Rebuttal? – more like a blitzkrieg, and deservedly so!
It doesn’t appear to be happening globally, but it feels like the temperature is rising between the two camps.
Did Professor Abraham just bring a knife to a gun fight?
Right from the beginning, he describes Chris ‘denying that the climate is changing’. Good grief. Are we all back in kindergarten now?
Having so completely mis-characterised Chris and the skeptic community in general I knew it was going to be slanted,but I was not prepared for the deluge of misrepresentations and obfuscations that followed.
I have now listened to enough of Abraham’s comments to make me feel ill at the sound of his voice. What is clearly noticeable is the tendency to ‘mix and match’ any available quote as a ‘rebuttal’ to something Chris has said, most of the while (not all the time of course) avoiding addressing the points being made as much as possible – or simply puffing.
One has to think about the reasoning behind the attack on Chris: he must be scaring the hell out of them. That is the only conclusion I can come to. Why go to so much trouble creating such a bilge bucket of half-responses. And do not expect him to engage Chris on response. An open debate is avoided at all costs – that much is clear already from the CRU investigations. On the excuse of ‘it will give them a platform to spread misinformation’ deny all open debate.
Chris’ peer reviewed scientific paper in the American Physical Society Journal 2008 makes Abraham’s claims dubious from the start. His ‘stuff’ about the Antarctic ice sheet sweeping into the sea is by now urban legend not believe even in blue collar bars in Dixie. Any regular reader of WUWT is much better informed and able to give a more balanced report on global ice.
The word ‘hack’ was invented to describe Abraham’s type of article. It’s a hat that fits.
A wonderful rebuttal, one that will fall, Lord Monckton knows, on deaf ears.
Where’s “c) the full subsequent correspondence”? Or is ” ” another copy of it?
In the very first sentence of his hit piece, John Abraham refers to himself a “Professor”.
That appears to be a deliberate misrepresentation; Abraham is listed by the university as only an associate professor.
There is a big difference between the two. Ask any real Professor.
I’ll answer one of the questions: 17)
American associate and adjunct professors are also addressed as professor. So, there is no relevance to the question.
JDN,
Which is the more accurate statement from an Associate Professor:
“I am an Associate Professor…”
“I am a Professor…”
“The question goes to the defendant’s credibility, your Honor.”
Im actually not a big fan of monckton’s response. I find it sounds a bit whiney sometimes. He should of just put together a slideshow refuting every piece of the evidence rather than complaining about being picked on and called names.
@Crispin in Waterloo : I Concur (in Kitchener)
Another Minnesota liberal. I think some have migrated to Penn State and to Boulder Colorado.
Sean Peake: July 12, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Did Professor Abraham just bring a knife to a gun fight?
Worse. He brought a plastic spoon.
“Any regular reader of WUWT is much better informed and able to give a more balanced report on global ice.”
Lets hear your “report” on global ice then? I would be especially interested to find out about what’s going on with Pine Island Glacier, Totten Glacier, Cook Glacier, Thwaites Glacier etc… ? I think WUWT readers are able to converse pretty well with regards to sea ice, but land ice is not a specialty of the proprietors of this site so there’s no need to make false statements. I think Goddard’s completely refuted attempt to discern Grace mass trends was evidence of that.
I think Lord Christopher Monckton is too condescendent to dig in such abyss of ignorance where global warming believers inhabit; such an imaginary realm it is only a product of a strange opposition of planets, which alter the concience, if any, of hideous creatures.
Though he deserves our admiration, he is surely stirring a killer bee hive, in a kind of surrealistic dive into a nightmare world of cataclysms and armageddons or into the horrendous smell of anaerobic creatures living in sewages.
To put it in a sentence:
What nature does not give, Salamanca does not lend
Translated: What you don’t have at birth, no university can lend it to you.
Answer to question 456) Ice can accumulate at the top of an ice sheet and melt at the bottom even with a net loss of ice. I’m not saying this happened, but, it could. The answer may not prove anything.
Very wise, Andrew.
Bill Tuttle says at 12:21 pm:
“Worse. He brought a plastic spoon.”
I have it on good authority that Assistant Professors are allowed to use sporks.
Smokey says:
July 12, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Seriously, we call them all professors around here and only worry about the variations when they have to serve on committees, produce a CV, or ask for tenure. Associate professors frequently outproduce tenured full professors because of their desire for tenure. I’m saying that Monckton is beating him up over nothing.
Smokey, JDN:
In American colleges and universities, the full-time faculty consists of assistant, associate, and (full) professors. The big step is from assistant to associate professor, becuase assistant professors are not tenured, and associate professors are. The step from associate to full professor, if it comes at all, comes much later, and at most colleges, the decision on this promotion is a mystery to anyone outside the Faculty Senate. But outside of the faculty itself, no one cares about the distinction between associate and full professor.
Weird, on paper I have similar education and qualifications to Prof Abraham, both PhDs, both Engineers specialising in energy/thermodynamics. Somehow he is a true believer and crusading for AGW, while I am still looking for convincing evidence.