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
Curt says:
July 12, 2010 at 12:44 pm
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.
You’d think Monckton would understand the subtle distinction involved with titles and forms of address. To refer to yourself as a Professor at an American university does not involve the distinction between the different levels, it’s the equivalent of referring to oneself as an officer rather than using the exact rank. Monckton’s title is ‘Viscount’ but it’s correct to address him as a ‘Lord’.
Monckton asks the question:
17: Please provide a full academic resume. Though you have described yourself as a “professor” (3, 62)
more than once in this presentation, are you in fact an associate professor?
This from a man who has described himself as “a member of the Upper House of the United. Kingdom legislature,” and also “I am a member of the House of Lords, though without the right to sit or vote, and I have never suggested otherwise” whereas in fact he was neither and has never been!
So it’s rather rich that someone who is prone to inaccurate usage of his own title should complain about someone else who quite properly uses his!
REPLY:And I find it rich that somebody who’s at a university but doesn’t bring their name to the discussion can criticize a man who has the courage to put his name to his words. What’s your title at your university Phil? Careful, or I’ll put you back in the troll box. 😉 -A
JDN says:
July 12, 2010 at 12:37 pm
“[…]Associate professors frequently outproduce tenured full professors […]”
Do they produce more AGW papers than the tenured ones? Oh, that’s good. We like to have a laugh.
From my school days…
500 lines for Abraham – hand-written please!
“I must not have the audacity to insinuate that my superiors should tolerate such diabolical asininity designed to give artistic verisimilitude to such mendacious excreta from such an insignificant insect as myself.”
…as best I can remember it!
I am surprised that someone has not told Lord Monckton, that it is the height of bad manners to indulge in a battle of wits with someone who is obviously unarmed!
Reply to richard – I believe the presentation was the Oct 14/09 talk in Minneapolis, youtube link available at ingodwetrustblog.com
This brings about the topic of Nobility. Nobility does exist: A noble person is who never surrenders his/her convictions. An ignoble person is the contrary.
Being a “winner” most of the time means to surrender own’s convictions, usually in exchange of some retribution or favor from the powerful.
Phil.
How’s that glass house you like to throw your stones from?
CaptainDave at 1:47 pm
Thanks, I’ll have a look.
Anthony can you let us know if Abraham and University of St. Thomas has complied to Monckton’s request that:
Will you, therefore, now be good enough to take down your talk from whatever public places it has reached; to pay $10,000 to the United States Association of the Order of Malta for its charitable work in Haiti; to ensure that your University, which failed upon my request to have your talk taken off its servers at once, pays $100,000 to the same charity for the same purpose; and publicly to disseminate a written apology
and retraction substantially in the following terms:
“The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
“We, St. Thomas University, Minnesota, and John Abraham of that University,
retract, apologize to Lord Monckton for, and undertake never again to repeat all or
any part of, the 83-minute talk with 115 slides entitled “But Chris Monckton Said
…”, that we prepared without notification to him and then widely disseminated via
the University’s servers and other media.
“We have agreed that, in token of our good faith, by 30 June 2010 without fail we
shall have paid between us US$110,000 to the United States Association of the
Sovereign Military Order of Malta for its charitable work in the reconstruction and
relief of Haiti.”
What is Monckton’s recourse if his demands are not met? I hope you will follow up.
“and I am checking links to the “dark side” as well”
I stopped visiting those sites long ago. I have a religion already thank you very much. Science is the key to everything, and beliefs MUST be seperated from science in order for it to work. This is why any debate between even a half-way informed skeptic and an cagw will be one-sided…and funny to watch.
As much as I like anyone who can get climate scientists to bluster, I don’t have a horse in this race either, but the longer it goes on, the more attention the media “might” put into it, and once the media breaks, this entire charade of a camel’s back will fall faster then you could imagine.
There is still months and maybe years before this happens, and I just hope society is not wrecked because of “feelings” and “beliefs”. I do believe our society has been there, done that, and I would hope we would learn from the mistakes of our ancestors. One can only hope.
Found it. http://ingodwetrustblog.com/constitution-in-peril/lord-christopher-monckton-speaks-in-minneapolis/
Lord Monckton:
Masterful reply. Your post did say something about “subsequent correspondence” but I have not been able to locate it. Have I missed it or have I missed the subtle reprimand that Professor Abraham and his University did not have the good manners or grace to reply?
So essentially everything after Abraham states that Lord Monckton don’t believe in climate change is, well, pretty much then moot. lol it took him only about 21 sec to state as much.
After 23 sec, personally, I found it rather interesting that there’s really a lot of time at hand wondering over why I now like dry farts like Lord Monckton, and Dr Lindzen, even viewing them as akin to proper truth seeking hackers, heroes really, when I probably should be making sure I’m not suffering from an eight month running heat stroke, but just getting old. :p
Never expect any detailed, point by point, specific responses to questions asked of, or arguments made to, a “progressive”. I learned this long ago. You are wasting your time. Remember, AGW is a religion to some of the less intelligent true believers and a source of funding to all involved on the appropriate side of the issue.
@ur momisugly Richard
Here is the video of his presentation:
Lord Christopher Monckton Speaking in St. Paul
and here are the slides
Apocalypse? NO!
Ben says:
July 12, 2010 at 2:00 pm
A little of knowledge takes you away from God, a lot of knowledge takes you nearer to Him
@Rudolf Kipp at 2:10 pm
Thanks, the other one was just a 4 minute cut from the presentation.
This Ass’t. Prof. Abraham comes across as a blatant Warmist tool, concerned not only to libel his opponent in an enormous number of particulars but to do so under spurious cover of necessarily unreferenced pseudo-science typical of Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth, and many another of such hysterics’ sorry ilk.
Since November 19, 2009, at latest, the time has long since past to let such actionable smears pass by in silence. Monckton is fully justified in exposing this craven ideologue for the peculating fraud he unquestionably is.
Titular quibbles aside, the Lord Monckton has simply required that Mr. Abraham responds in the correct and accepted manner, which Mr. Abraham has manifestly not done so.
In the process the Lord Mockton has delivered a swiftly-raised knee into Mr. Abraham’s metaphorical gonads. Insofar as this episode has unravelled, it would appear that such a blow was richly deserved. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Evidence versus predictions?
“Models, models, everywhere but nary a fact in sight.”
Getting carried away with the AGW hype is like being a deer caught in the headlights. Sooner or later you are going to get run over.
Line 4, ‘Mockton’ should read ‘Monckton’, of course.
Right off the start, Abraham calls Monkton a well known denier of climate change. The term denier is used to associate people with holocaust deniers. And Monkton does not deny climate change. Normally, you throw out discussion that sink to this level.
On the very second slide, he says that Monkton is saying that the world is not warming, sea levels are not rising, that ice is not melting, on and on. I’ve never heard Monkton say this. What Monkton says is that it’s been going on for a while before there were high levels of CO2.
We can skip to Slide 95 where it shows a slide from Monkton’s presentation that says the Sun is the main cause of global warming. I thought Abraham said Monkton denies global warming??? He’s contradicting himself.
Is all this a joke?
On slide 4, he uses the fallacy of attacking the person’s credentials instead of attacking the material. On slide 5, he uses the fallacy of appeal to authority.
The rest of this is difficult to stay awake. Apparently, Abraham believes that science involves asking the people who obtained the data. Whatever they says is written in stone and this is science. You cannot object to their conclusions. Most of his presentation is emailing people telling them that “Monkton, a skeptic, says so and so, please respond with your view”. One reply came on slide 75 by Larry Hinzman, “I believe we would side with you on this argument.” Forget the data, we’re taking votes now.
Slide 64 is funny. He’s not denying it could have been warmer millions of year ago. He’s asking if we want to go back to that. Well, if the causes aren’t from humans, then this is flying right over his head.
Near the end, he’s attacking the source of funding. The irony is so striking, I’m baffled he would go there. Wow! He’s going hardcore. Several slides of where his funding is from. NASA seems to have funded a lot of Soon’s work too.
Slide 115, he’s still attacking the relationships Soon has. Is the irony thick enough?
Slide 116, attacks Monkton’s lack of attributions. But I believe Monkton has made available all his sources somewhere, but he never once mentioned any correspondence with Monkton. He obviously did not ASK Monkton.
Slide 125 is funny. Don’t trust me. Trust these organizations that agree with me.
Slide 126 has the best question ever! Who has an agenda?
Basically what I’ve seen is that Abraham showed responses from people who agree with AGW. But most of all the data he showed were from Monkton’s slides. Again, the irony is striking.
I’ve read most of Monkton’s response/questions and it’s scathing. Monkton says it correctly. There’s a difference between using someone’s data and using their interpretation of that data. Abraham doesn’t understand that two people can have different interpretation of the same data. So most of Abraham’s argument falls apart because Monkton isn’t misrepresenting the interpretation. Monkton is showing the data. This has always been explicit. I don’t know why this is even an issue.
Conclusion: Abraham is a troll. His presentation is a joke.
What if you were taking a class from John Abraham that touched on global warming. Do you think you would be getting an objective education of the issues.
In one of the techniques that is consistently used by Abraham in his presentation – “I’m not saying that every test Associate Professor Abraham gives his class ends with a question “Do you fully believe in global warming” and you get a F if you don’t answer in the affirmative but …”
[snip]
A detailed response is forthcoming.
[reply] We look forward to it. RT-mod
Steve Mucci says:
July 12, 2010 at 12:10 pm
A wonderful rebuttal, one that will fall, Lord Monckton knows, on deaf ears.””
I would be willing to bet it went viral on one campus. 😉