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
Just admit it Mr Abraham – you are out of your depth.
Desist. Give in. Retire. Build a ranch in Montana. Don’t show your face for another 10 years.
.
Dave N says:
July 13, 2010 at 8:12 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/12/a-detailed-rebuttal-to-abraham-from-monckton/#comment-429701
Because, on the death of an hereditary peer, Lord Monckton could be voted to be one of the sitting hereditary peers.
DaveE.
Chris, (and I hope I can call you Chris) I’m only half-way through the rebuttal (I do check some for veracity, mostly for my own knowledge gain) and I haven’t read any of the replies, but you go!! Turn up the heat! The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, is a title you own. Keep it. It never fails to amaze me at the ignorance of some people in America. As you correctly pointed out, we don’t recognize peerage titles, and rightly so. It doesn’t fit well in our society, but it does in others. Many, if not most, Americans have their history firmly planted in the British Isles, why some don’t want to understand our heritage is beyond me.
Polar bears are amazing creatures, anyone whose ever spent time near, at or above the arctic circle, should have a profound consideration of them that goes beyond respect. Man, to the polar bear, is as good a feast as is the seal. Seal is just easier to kill. They will track and hunt man for days if necessary. The previous statement was not peer reviewed, just simple observations from 2 men. One from circa 1960 in Greenland, another from circa 1990 in Alaska. There may be other references.
Anthony, you said “I don’t have a dog in this fight, ….”…:-|…wrong, but you know it already. Most, if not all of the topics in the Viscount’s rebuttal have been covered here, reflecting the same view as the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley’s. If he’s a liar, then so are you, and so are the rest who affirm the various assertions presented here, on this site, including my feeble assertions. Here, at this moment, his fight, and my fight, are the same, as it is your fight, also. This is not a disagreement of two fellows. This is a disagreement of thoughts and ideas. This is a disagreement of the direction of the entire planet. While my words, ideas, thoughts and knowledge have little weight in the light of the Viscount and yourself, I put them fully behind Chris Monckton, the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. I find his words truthful(if not coy at times) and Abraham’s purposefully deceitful. If this were a simple war of words between two characters, I wouldn’t care. However, this isn’t. The argument between the two parties have worldwide implications. While this won’t be the last, (there are many more ahead) we all have a “dog in this fight”.
>>>Maybe we do need to put global warming on trial.
I feel Monckton is angling for another Scopes Monkey Trial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial
At one stroke, the entire saga will be broadcast worldwide and on the front of every newspaper – and it will be the aggressive Goliath establishment vs a ‘poor’ private (if lordly) individual.
A foregone conclusion – the establishment is toast.
.
I have submitted a request for information to St. Thomas University. Hopefully someone on staff will reply.
Below is the content of my e-mail (with my name redacted):
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Dear Sir or Madam,
Please relay my concerns with the conduct of Dr. John Abraham to appropriate members of your faculty and administration.
I recently happened across a detailed rebuttal of Dr. Abraham’s presentation titled, “A Scientist Replies to Christopher Monckton” and was disappointed to find in it substantial proof of academic dishonesty and outright falsification.
Was the presentation produced as part of Dr. Abraham’s duties at your university?
If not, why did it contain your university’s crest and name prominently on the majority of slides?
If yes, how does a member of your faculty whose “primary focus is the education of undergraduates in mechanical engineering courses with a goal of preparing them for substantial careers in heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and computational methods” come to be assigned the task of rebutting the content of a presentation made by a member of the public?
Was the content reviewed for accuracy by someone at your university other than Dr. Abraham? If not, why not? If yes, how did that person so seriously fail in providing even the cursory review that would have precluded publication of many of the claims in Dr. Abraham’s presentation?
What is your university policy regarding the publication of inaccurate information in e-mails? This practice by Dr. Abraham was manifestly apparent based on his own comments and Christopher Monckton’s rebuttal of those comments. On several occasions Dr. Abraham seems to have willfully or otherwise misinterpreted Christopher Monckton’s actual statements in correspondence to other academics then quoted the response of those same academics to the misinterpreted statements. All this was done with the clear intent to damage Christopher Monckton’s credibility and reputation.
I eagerly await the courtesy of a response to my questions.
Sincerely,
Concerned Citizen
BS, Nuclear Engineering, Oregon State University
MSIA, Carnegie Mellon University
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, as I have now read over 70% of your rebuttal, please take this to a court of law. Even in the U.S., with Abraham’s mention of your alleged source of monetary gain, I believe you can show intentional to harm. I understand the British law is a bit more stringent, but either way, you have shown his intentional mischaracterization of your assertions and he has also shown knowledge the mischaracterizations could damage you. While I don’t believe money is, nor should it be, the motivation, please take this to court. Please.
Lord Monckton’s update settles the question of whether he is or is not a member of the House of Lords.
De jure, he is, as convoluted as that jure appears.
Which now opens up the interesting point that all those sites and commenters claiming he is *not* are open to charges of slander.
This post is sooooo getting bookmarked…
No question about malice in that. His only defense would be that what he says is true.
Take him to the cleaners, Mr. Monckton! All the other attempts have failed, but then, they didn’t have you. God knows we could use a hero – and we really really need a head on a post to point at. They keep slipping away and claiming it’s proof of innocence – and laughing at us as they keep on stealing.
They keep distracting us with details of how the Piltdown skull was assembled and it kills momentum.
The pack needs to smell some blood, sir. If they are roused too late, they will be slaughtered and in sausage skins before they know it.
I pray you can deliver.
It all made my head hurt by the end, but I found one very much a I don’t like what you say so you are wrong and the other a dismantling of of the first and answering of many of the points raised.
There has been some talk regarding “bringing a knife to a gun fight.” It is well to remember the “21 foot rule” taught in police academies. Especially when you consider Viscount Moncton’s response is 500 questions. That rule is fairly simple. In a situation where a potential aggressor is armed with a knife or other edged weapon, and is within 21 feet or less, you had better have your gun out. The knife wielder has a definite potential advantage against someone unprepared. I note that 500 cuts is less than a thousand, but still.
Gail Combs: July 13, 2010 at 1:04 pm
I think it is up to Lord Monckton…to clarify…
And, being a Gentleman, he honored the Lady’s request.
Dave McK: July 13, 2010 at 11:03 pm
No question about malice in that. His only defense would be that what he says is true.
Which would be skating on some very thin ice.
Some very thin *rotten* ice…
Bill Tuttle,
“Steve Milesworthy: July 13, 2010 at 8:59 am
Another double-standard of Monckton is to complain that Al Gore makes claims about 20 feet of sea level rise in 100 years, which of course he didn’t even if he implied it in his film.
Sorry, but in 2007, the High Court found that, in the context of his film, that’s *exactly* what Gore claimed.
Stating that Gore didn’t *say* something while admitting that he *implied* it is kind of lame…”
It’s kind of lame that you missed the point.
Monckton *implies* a heck of a lot of things very directly indeed. But when challenged he can pompously state that he never *said* them. So are people misunderstanding him because he is a poor communicator or because he is a good propagandist.
Like I say. Double standards.
we must not give up the fight I congratulate you . the old saying is use your right foot ######
Christopher, I’ve finally managed to read the pdf. All I can say is have some sympathy for the warmists. They are justly feeling miffed. They rightly thought that a stitch up inquiry by Muir Russell was all they needed to “prove man made warming is true beyond all reasonable doubt” – and restore their kudos (amongst the young anti-establishment i.e. anti Sir Muir Russell. generations ha ha!)
Now they’ve realised that the wave of public interest that swept their cowboy-science to prominence has lost interest in them and is sweeping them under the carpet.
Well I think Abraham lost the plot right at the start of his presentation with the facile assertion that Viscount Monckton is “denier of climate change”. Hardly the basis for an unbiased scientific assessment of the presentation, as Viscount Monckton has made his position clear that he supports the null hypothesis that climate is constantly changing due to natural events – always has and always will.
I found the rest of the Abraham presentation equally shallow and it is obvious that he is a believer in CAGW and, if this presentation is a representative example of his work, not a scientist at all.
Viscount Monckton is to be congratulated on the depth and length of his reply. He is a true sceptic of the failed CAGW hypothesis and his voice is a light in the darkness against the liberal politics of IPCC cargo cult climate ‘science’ which seeks to blame mankind for the ills of the world.
Bill Tuttle says:
July 14, 2010 at 12:22 am
Which would be skating on some very thin ice.
Some very thin *rotten* ice…
Quite- but until somebody with some spine and tenacity properly and finally dunks one of them, they remain convinced they can walk on water.
Which now opens up the interesting point that all those sites and commenters claiming he is *not* are open to charges of slander.
That would include the House of Lords Information Office itself, then. According to them there is no such thing as a non-voting, non-sitting member.
It is good of the Viscount to clarify this rather – most people, on hearing the term ‘Member of the House of Lords’ would assume somebody entitled to sit in that House (that is play a part in the UK legislature).
What’s worse, until then, they have the record to show they can.
tallbloke says:
July 12, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
July 12, 2010 at 8:12 pm (Edit)
tallbloke says:
July 12, 2010 at 5:13 pm
Got any data to show us yet Ben?
No. But supposedly he has a rat on his doorstep.
He’s had Overpeck round to call?
Ohh, that was the smell.
If all people can come up with is questioning if Mockton is a Lord then that is pathetic.
Rules of play in global warming:
Attack the man. Pay no attention to the science behind the curtain.
Steve Milesworthy: July 14, 2010 at 12:51 am
It’s kind of lame that you missed the point.
I didn’t miss your point at all — I was rebutting it.
Monckton *implies* a heck of a lot of things very directly indeed. But when challenged he can pompously state that he never *said* them. So are people misunderstanding him because he is a poor communicator or because he is a good propagandist.
Actually, he *has* stated — in writing — that when he has implied something, he has said it. Come to think of it, read his letter to Associate Professor Abraham, where he not only says that, but points out the differences between what he implied and what Abraham inferred; e.g., questions 27, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 42, 50, 77 — I consider that a reasonable sample, since only one would serve to refute your assertion.
Snip-snippety-snip server burps…
So are people misunderstanding him because he is a poor communicator or because he is a good propagandist.
You assert people are misunderstanding what he says — I assert people are purposely distorting what he says.
But that may just be cynical ol’ me.
Glad to see CM’s post on here this morning (well it’s morning for me) and I wish him every luck. The warmists may well have made their greatest mistake so far. Never mind the manoeuvres, just go straight at ’em! My fingers are crossed.
I would disagree with Christopher Monckton on one point. As an hereditary peer, he does have the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords. That the traitors and usurpers in power purport to have abolished that right and are forcibly preventing its free exercise does not eliminate it; this is merely another example of the ongoing denial of our ancient and constitutional rights, the abrogation of the rule of law and common justice, and the destruction of sound government and traditional British values.
Remember: just because a bunch of politicians say something doesn’t make it so. Not even if they pass a law.