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
Is it not slightly ironic that Monckton is so keen that Abraham follows his version of standard academic practice, and demands $10,000 from Abraham. This is definitely a novel interpretation of standard academic practice, and might appear as an attempt to intimidate a critic into silence. Not that a Peer of the Realm would stoop so low of course.
Those who lack a sense of humour usually die in unpleasant ways.
Those who consider themselves as sages usually die as donkeys.
It is a very, very curious fact, that all GWrs. lack the sense of humour.
JDN,
If that is the rule, then why is Abraham listed as “Associate Professor,” rather than as “Professor”? In casual conversation you may be right. But Abraham’s hit piece was anything but casual, and he began right off by misrepresenting his own position.
Face it, Abraham is self-aggrandizing. Besides, Monckton only asked him the question; he made no assertion and drew no conclusion. It is up to Abraham to set the record straight. Do you think he will man-up and make the necessary correction?
The central problem is that before he published, Abraham should have done some fact checking with Lord Monckton. Instead, he made a lot of provably wrong assumptions — and now Monckton is making a monkey out of him.
I call for a public debate at the university between Lord Monckton and Associate Professor John Abraham. Do you think Abraham has the stones to accept such a challenge?
I don’t.
REPLY: The issue of associate/full professor is a side issue. Concentrate on the content – Anthony
I can say I listened to and read both of these. I certainly hope that Abraham will comply, but I’m doubtful he will.
So some unknown Professor from an unheralded Faculty at a backwater university tries to earn his progressive chops with the ohhhh soooo progressive crowd and in actuality gets a giant new bung whole the size of an Al Gore eco-grifter’s bank account ripped into him as a result.
Professor Abraham is a prime example of what is wrong with modern university educators who substitute their religious/belief system of dogma into the curriculum and call it science.
One can only hope the good professor will slink back into the hole he came from. One can also hope his students take him to task for his juvenile diatribe and further expand the gaping bung hole “Chris” ripped into him already.
And wait until the lawyers get on him . . . his career is toast.
Do you prefer butter or jam Professor Abraham?
“359: Had I not made it explicit earlier in my talk that sea level was rising at about 1 ft/year?”
Run for the hills!
Handbags at dawn.
The first 3 pages are good. Still reading.
But I question whether putting 500 or so back to back questions was the best way to format this. Anyway, when I get to the all important “last” question, I may revise my position on that.
So far, and obviously I’ve just started, the most damning thing to me from a social, not scientific, perspective is Abraham behaved like a weaselly little worm by not contacting Monckton first. I’m sure Monckton’s questions will cover more than this.
I’m hoping they go behind challenging Abraham on his varying points of weasel-like behaviour, and get into defending the science, and addressing any serious questions or criticisms Abraham brought up.
I was somewhat impressed by Abraham’s presentation, but not by Abraham’s failure to give Monckton a timely chance to respond to this attack on his reputation in advance. That, of course, undermines my confidence in Abraham’s presentation.
Has someone got a link to the original presentation from Lord Monckton that “Professor” Abraham was commenting on?
Logic is dead. Long live logic!
I know two people who, on paper, are chefs, and one can cook and the other can’t. Not well, anyway.
Jeeeeeeez!!!!! I started out willing to give Abraham a fair hearing – but he even starts his presentation with the baseless assertion that CM is a (quote) “denier of climate change”! Whenever anyone uses such a STUPID term, I find it very hard to have any respect for them. When a person calling themselves a “scientist” or a “professor” uses such terminology, I find it almost impossible to see any credibility in them.
The degree to which Abraham’s assertions are UNSCIENTIFIC beggars belief. How he lamely thinks he can counter CM’s evidence with – ahem – predictions! So we see, according to Abraham, CM was somehow wrong to cite the established fact that those four dead Polar Bears were not victims of “climate change” – apparently CM was wrong simply because it is predicted that there will be more Polar Bear deaths in the future due to climate change! What sort of remedial non-argument is that?!!!
And the equally lame attempt at countering Monckton’s assertion that ice in that particular area had grown very slightly in the last 20+ years. Abraham’s response was to cite a single anecdotal observation of melted ice!!! Dirr??!!! This man calls himself a professor?
And all that cheap talk about not being able to find CM’s sources – but not actually bothering to even request them? Anyone with any sense knows that is the very first thing you should do – request it (you know, Prof Abraham, like the Steve McIntyre requesting data from the CRU).
I could go on. If my blood is boiling, then Lord CM’s blood must be evaporating through his ears. Surely there are grounds for suing Abraham, for misrepresentation of CM’s views and defamation of character?
Lord Monckton, I am sure you are reading these comments. You have my total and unreserved respect.
Smokey says:
July 12, 2010 at 12:13 pm
Just as the commander of any floating craft is a “captain”, even if his rank is ensign, a teacher in a college or university is entitled to the honorific “professor”. My rank, for pay and other purposes is “Adjunct Instructor”. The accounting department can call me what they like… for all other purposes, I can, and will, be addressed as “Professor”.
It is a very, very curious fact, that all GWrs. lack the sense of humour.
Oh, I dunno. Only read a few pages and already in stitches. So far my fave is the bit where, to refute the allegation that he left his audience with the idea that the world was cooling Monckton says the world has been cooling since 2001, second fave – to refute the idea that he might have hinted that sea levels are not rising he says that er, there had been little or no sea-level rise for four years.
And black is really white. ROFL!
TL:DR. 🙂
If the good professer just answered NO 488 times he would be correct within the 95% that Phil Jones adheres to.
revkin has lots of (anxious) links in his updates below, relating to this IPCC attempt to control the message. btw, having just read the first link, which simply directed u to the revkin page, but had plenty of sceptic response in the comments, i find the first link now shows up nothing except the url:
11 July: NYT: Climate Panel Urges “Distance” from Reporters
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/climate-panel-urges-distance-from-reporters/
10 July: NYT DotEarth: Andrew C. Revkin: Climate Panel Struggles With Media Plan
[July 12, 1:01 p.m. | Updated There are nice posts on the panel’s communication efforts by Bryan Walsh at Time Magazine and Kate Mackenzie at the Financial Times.][3:37 p.m. | Updated At the bottom of this post I’ve linked to a three-page “media backgrounder” that the climate panel sent to assessment authors on Saturday. It’s fascinating reading.] …
But any instinct to pull back after being burned by the news process is mistaken, to my mind….
When I was sent a copy of the letter Friday morning by another climate researcher, I immediately forwarded it to Rajendra K. Pachauri…
Friday night, Pachauri sent this response (ascribing the delay to the time different in India, where he lives):
My advice to the authors on responding to the media is only in respect of queries regarding the I.P.C.C. Some of them are new to the I.P.C.C., and we would not want them to provide uninformed responses or opinions. We now have in place a structure and a system in the I.P.C.C. for outreach and communications with the outside world. The I.P.C.C. authors are not employed by the I.P.C.C., and hence they are free to deal with the media on their own avocations and the organizations they are employed by. But they should desist at this stage on speaking on behalf of the I.P.C.C.
I sent this followup question (e-mail shorthand is cleaned up a bit): ….
I sent Pachauri’s response to Edward Carr to get his reaction, and here it is:…
3:37 p.m. | Updated Here’s a link to the “Background and Tips for Responding to Media” sheet sent to climate assessment authors. It was produced for the intergovernmental panel by Resource Media, a nonprofit communication consultancy that in 2007 created a Web site explaining the panel’s last set of reports.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/climate-panel-struggles-with-media-plan/?emc=eta1
So, perhaps he took it too seriously, perhaps imagining he was descending from Mount Tabor with The Ten Commandments….and found such a lot of non believers 🙂
…Descending from Mount UN with its Agenda 21 🙂
Liam says:
July 12, 2010 at 12:45 pm
“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.”
Almost the same for me:
On paper I have similar education and qualifications to Prof Abraham, both PhDs, but I’m a physicist rather than an engineer specialising in energy/thermodynamics. Somehow he is a true believer and crusading for AGW, while I am still looking for convincing evidence.
Almost exactly one year ago was the day I’ve found WUWT. Still have the “Real Climate gives reason to cheer…” post as bookmark.
This year was so educating and entertaining … and now this piece.
WUWT is my preferred reading, more than once daily, and I am checking links to the “dark side” as well, what I did some weeks ago with Abraham. But nor fo long, because from the beginning it was just primitive and cheap.
So the more I had a lot, and I mean A LOT, of fun today.
Very appropriate response to a most inappropriate acting individual.
Anthony, Lord Monckton et al, keep going and thank you.
richard telford says:
July 12, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Is it not slightly ironic that Monckton is so keen that Abraham follows his version of standard academic practice, and demands $10,000 from Abraham. This is definitely a novel interpretation of standard academic practice, and might appear as an attempt to intimidate a critic into silence.
Into silence: no. Into sticking to the verifiable facts: YES.
Sean Peake says:
July 12, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Did Professor Abraham just bring a knife to a gun fight?
No, it actually was a gun, quite large as well. It would been a little more impressive if it hadn’t been bright orange, with lime green trim and half filled with water, but still, personal decisions being as they are….
A mealy mouthed hatchet job just got blown out of the water. I hope Lord Monckton follows up on the monetary side as these AGWrs need to return some of the money that has been misappropriated from tax payers.
Can’t we just ask for the Al Gore Warm CO2 blanket to be pointed out? In a sane world, it’s absence would be the end of the hoaxers argument. They have yet to produce one GCM which does not reference the need for this non-existent feature of the equatorial atmosphere.
I assume it would be too much for people to ask for proof that doesn’t involve arm waving and name calling.