This is a press release from CFACT sent to me. Post your Kicks or Kudos here, your choice, but play nice and be mindful of blog policy as moderators are standing by to snip your call. – Anthony
Target: Monckton
Have you noticed the kicking around that CFACT Advisor Lord Christopher Monckton’s been getting lately?
Add to the title “Viscount of Brenchley,” “whipping boy du jour.” Seldom a recent day goes by without some new name calling or conspiracy theory attacking Lord Monckton echoing through the left-wing blogosphere.
Why is Chris Monckton the victim of a global warming attack campaign? Effectiveness. Few have been so brilliantly effective at debunking the global warming scare as this compellingly articulate British Lord.
Lord Monckton does his homework. He scours the scientific literature. He devours every word and graph. He is in constant contact with a vast network of leading scientists throughout the world. He wades past the executive summaries and masters the details. He checks the math, checks the logic, and checks the consistency of what is claimed about our climate. He synthesizes global warming science and policy raising vital questions that provoke thought in the mind of any expert or layman with an open mind.
Despite the nearly unimaginable sums available to the global warming folks – despite their command of the media, the politicians in their thrall and the carbon profiteers lining up at the taxpayer’s trough, Lord Monckton and his allies are winning. Like the child who revealed that the Emperor had no clothes, Lord Monckton wakes the good sense of those who hear him. The public has caught on.
The warming propaganda machine has lost its momentum and is desperate to get it back. They want to silence Lord Monckton and remove him from the field. To that end they’ll say anything. They attack his title hoping we won’t notice that every British Viscount has a right and by long tradition is called “Lord.” They attack his graphs and charts, hoping we won’t bother to learn that most of his data comes straight from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the sources it cites. Lord Monckton had hoped that by using the IPCC’s data warming advocates would be forced to debate the merits. Sadly, they continue to alternate between mocking the data and restating their conclusions as received wisdom. Yet when granted a fair forum for debate, it is Monckton who triumphs. Just weeks ago his team of experts were voted the winners in a warming debate at the Oxford Union – a treasured haven of free thought.
Last year Lord Monckton gave a presentation on global warming in St. Paul Minnesota that became a sensation on YouTube. This inspired Prof. John Abraham of the University of St. Thomas to attack his presentation in a lengthy video. Lord Monckton has refuted Prof. Abraham using his own medium. The first of a series of videos setting the record straight are being released today and we invite you to view them.
As CFACT has said before, the chain of logic behind global warming claims does not hold up. Lord Christopher Monckton will neither be silenced, nor ignored. As Mahatma Gandhi told us, “first they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”
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Bill Tuttle says:
August 13, 2010 at 11:31 am
Mikael Pihlström: August 13, 2010 at 10:42 am
Despite several elucidations, you’re stuck on this topic. Do you think if the UK Parliament and Queen’s Representative would hesitate to get a “Cease and Desist” order if they *did* have a strong case?
—–
I hope they will just make the matter very clear (done, see Guardian,
below) and leave the man with , obviously, a very complicated inner life
and grave problems with reality perception alone.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/11/christopher-monckton-house-of-lords-claims
Bill Tuttle says:
August 13, 2010 at 11:31 am
Mikael Pihlström: August 13, 2010 at 10:42 am
On falsification of AGW: you sceptics have had 30 years to come up with some plausible theory or your own model: nothing.
Wrong answer, boyo. The skeptic point of view is that it’s natural variation, as demonstrated in the historical and geological record — we don’t *have* a model, we have the data. You just don’t happen to like that
——
Whether we like it or not, the task of science in the modern world
is, to the best of its abilities, predict or project or produce storylines
about future developments of great importance to society. Your reliance
on the ‘record’ without even knowing the causal interpretations is not
really useful.
———
“To the extent that they don’t fit” means that they don’t fit. Period.
——–
That is a naive view of scientific method. Models are always abstractions
of the truth. The question is whether they give the general picture,
well e.g. Hansens scenarios seem to perform in this respect.
George E. Smith says:
August 13, 2010 at 11:26 am
On falsification of AGW: you sceptics have had 30 years to come up
with some plausible theory or your own model: nothing. “””
——————-
That theory; which AGW proponents have yet to disprove, is that CLIMATE CHANGES, and always has, and always will and nothing that has happened over in fact milions of years can be shown to be outside the bounds of natural variability.
———
Oh, climate changes eternally? I did not realize that, being so
focused on the period 1900-2100, namely the period when we can
still do something about warmimg, provided the change is anthropogenic.
Now in this specific time period, what is the ‘natural causes model’ you
sceptics been working on? The sun; not likely anymore? PDO, but it
is cyclical so prolonged rising trend?
——–
By the way; I’m NOT a “skeptic”; I’m quite sure that”the science” is wrong. IT’S THE WATER !!
——–
Water is good, in principle. But, what constant rising trend could you
postulate in relation to water, moisture and clouds and fit a model?
Smokey says:
August 12, 2010 at 12:28 pm
“I am calling your bluff, Marge.”
I’m holding a Royal Flush, Smokey. You lose. Unless JimRob saves you with a ZOT.
My first response was snipped.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0811/0811.4600v1.pdf
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/reflections-on-continuuing-monckton-kerfuffle/
Anne van der Bom says:
August 13, 2010 at 8:38 am
“Anne, please specify exactly how emissions have deviated from scenario A. Thanks.”
I think I will not try to outdo Steve McIntire.
What part of “emissions” did you not understand? While CO2 levels have increased close to linearly, emissions have shot through the roof. That alone shows how poorly Hansen understood CO2.
Still, more than enough opposing comments make it through. Actually I wouldn’t be surprised if are more comments critical of AGW on RealClimate than comments supporting AGW on WUWT. But that of course could also be due to the willingness of both sides to venture in “the dragon’s den”. However, I can offer you some consolation through the fact that Lord Monckton has been able to comment. Perhaps you should ask him how he pulled that off. 🙂
For the most part, the comments that make it through on RC are ones that can be addressed easily. The difficult questions are deleted. Everyone knows this, what planet do you live on? As for RC letting more comments through … that’s a joke, right?
I’m intrigued that so many of the bed-wetters, hand-wringers, and wolf-criers who populate the Church of Canutism are so mesmerized by my status as a member (albeit non-sitting and non-voting) of the House of Lords. For these, here is a copy of a letter I sent earlier this week to the Clerk of the Parliaments:
“Michael Pownall, Esq., Cler. Parliamentor.,
“House of Lords, LONDON, SW1A 0PW.
“Sir, – I should perhaps confirm for the avoidance of doubt that, as my title implies, I am a Peer of the Realm, a member of the House of Lords or House of Peers or upper House of the UK Legislature, and a member of the Peerage of the United Kingdom, albeit without the right to sit or vote (a right which I do not pretend to possess). This is a free country, where law and custom entitles me to express my opinion, and that, Sir, like it or not, is my opinion.
“The House of Lords Act 1999, which purported to exclude hereditary peers from membership of the House of Lords, is defective, regardless of its terms. I note that you have not answered those questions in my earlier letter to you that would swiftly have drawn your attention to official internal advice to the effect that the Act in the form in which it was passed was not and is not effective in removing membership of the House.
“However, some months before you first wrote to me, and as soon as I discovered – regrettably by way of a newspaper reporter – that your enquiry clerks had been instructed to say that I was not a member of the House, I took the earliest convenient opportunity to place on the public record the fact that the House ‘authorities’ disagree with my interpretation of the Act, so that no one was in any way misled. Until then, I had had no idea that you did not regard excluded hereditary Peers as members of the House.
“If you had contacted me at the same time as your clerks contacted the third party to whom they first gave your interesting but in my view defective opinion to the effect that hereditary peers excluded from sitting and voting are also excluded from membership of the House, I could and would of course have made your position publicly known very much sooner. You have only yourselves to blame for any delay in placing your opinion on the public record that may have resulted from your clerks’ conveying information about me to a third party without, at the same time, conveying it to me.
“It has now been brought to my attention that your enquiry clerks have again been conveying information about me to third parties without telling me at the same time. Apparently third parties are being told that I am not entitled to use as a logo a purple portcullis surmounted by the Vicecomital Coronet. I had asked you questions about this matter in my earlier letter. You had replied saying you would consult the Lord Chamberlain. I have heard nothing from him. Would it not have been wiser if you not instructed your Clerks that you would be taking steps to prevent me from using my own logo until the Lord Chamberlain had given me his opinion? My logo is not a registered badge of Parliament, and is plainly distinct from Parliament’s badge in numerous material respects. The Lords do not use the portcullis at all on their notepaper: they use the Royal Arms within an elliptical cartouche.
“The United Kingdom Independence Party will one day succeed in winning back the democratic and public supreme lawmaking power that formerly lay with Parliament and with Parliament alone, but is now vested overseas in unelected Kommissars (the revealingly apposite official German title for European Commissioners). Once Parliament is again sovereign, when the House ‘authorities’ wish to stand on their dignity there will at least be some genuine dignity for you to stand on.”
Gareth Phillips wrote:
“Lord Monckton … is a senior member of one of the most right wing parties in Europe ( UKIP).”
So what? UKIP’s most distinctive policy is that the laws affecting the British people should be made by the UK Parliament in London and not the EU in Brussels. That policy can be described by a single word – “democracy.”
Gareth Phillips also wrote:
“He is a hereditary peer, the sort of guy Americans fought to be free from in the war of independence.”
No they did not. (Many Americans actually supported the British and a lot of those moved to Canada afterwards). Those Americans who fought against British rule did so because they wanted to make their own laws, not have them made in London. In other words their motivation was rather similar to that of UKIP!
However, none of this has any bearing at all on whether or not Lord Monckton’s views on global warming are correct or not.
James Sexton,
Hansen didn’t make predictions. His scenarios projected that if emissions were X, the atmospheric percentage of CO2 would be Y, and the planet would have an avg temp in the range of Z.
A prediction would have been: in 20 years there will be 400 ppm of CO2 and the avg temp will be 57 degrees (F).
Translation: When we do the same thing, it’s not the same thing. And even though we fired the first ad hom salvos, it’s not wrong when we do it.
J Smith
The socialists did make a royal mess of everything, including the house of lords, this they had to do as it was a great democratic safeguard for democracy, as an englishman totally disgusted by the unholy mess the labour bastards have done to me and my country I left with what little I have left. You are wrong about Lord Monkton, I suspect you know this but as he is correct about most things you have to find a red herring to deflect from truth.
Mikael Pihlström :-leaving aside the dodgy science for a while the AGW crowd have failed with all their forcasts, however history in real books is hard to get round without burning all the books(been done, worked for a while locally)the Viging farms are just coming out fron under the glacier, still colder than when they farmed there then. The fabled north west passage was open to non atomic icebreakers in 1939, it needed at least 2 huge atomic powered ice breakers last year to get 2 ships through, colder now then. So it goes on, we know the glaciers on Greenland are still growing as the end of one got too big and fell off. Then the AGW try to con us with sea level rise, tyhere is no way ever to quantify this honestly, there never will it is just scaremongering. I might take AGW as more than a scam when the best brains on their side want to fix it by moving all industry from well regulated northern hemispere countries (putting us into the dark ages again) and shifting it to unregulated china and india, runaway pollution anyone.
Joel shore: who cares about projections any more? The new satellites are demonstrating that the earths temperature is is no danger of going out of control and this whole agw fright night is nothing more than a tempest in a gigantic tea pot. Get over it. Move on. Nothing to see here.
Mikael Pihlström: August 13, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Whether we like it or not, the task of science in the modern world is, to the best of its abilities, predict or project or produce storylines about future developments of great importance to society. Your reliance on the ‘record’ without even knowing the causal interpretations is not really useful.
Your insisting that we *understand* everything that causes natural variation before we can say that, in light of the record, there is nothing happening that hasn’t happened many times in the past, and can’t be explained by natural variation, is pure sophistry. Natural variation is the null hypothesis — your side has to falsify it to have any scientific credibility, and to be blunt, you got nothin’.
“To the extent that they don’t fit” means that they don’t fit. Period.
That is a naive view of scientific method. Models are always abstractions of the truth. The question is whether they give the general picture, well e.g. Hansens scenarios seem to perform in this respect.
I haven’t been patronized all day, and never with reference to a Platonic abstract. How refreshingly droll.
Answer me this: since the AGW theory predicts an upper atmospheric tropical hot spot, and since the models predict the existence of that upper atmospheric hot spot, kindly tell us where it is to be found. In the real world, please, not in the truthy abstraction.
Mikael Pihlström says:
“The credibility of your front man should be an issue, above all”
Mikey, I am my own front man, and it is you who has major credibility issues. So I have a question for you. You said:
“There is no intergovernmental AGW industry; that is pure fantasy.”
What color is the sky on your planet? You keep dodging that question.☺
I’ll help you out: The intergovernmental AGW industry is Pachauri’s UN/IPCC. It’s in the IPCC Charter. On our own planet Earth we know about these things. You’re welcome to visit any time.
And for my next trick:
Marge, regarding your 2 lame links: Pf-f-f-ft. I’ll give you something you can actually learn from — if your mind isn’t made up and closed tight.
The following dozen papers are the minimum required reading necessary to understand exactly why the climate sensitivity number is unknown to any precision — but note that every UN/IPCC Assessment Report has been forced to ratchet down the number.
Prof Richard Lindzen and many others peg the sensitivity number at well below 1°C. If so, there is absolutely nothing to worry about WRT increasing this beneficial and necessary tiny trace gas.
The climate sensitivity number is closely associated with the residence time. Note the disparity between the IPCC’s outright guesstimate and numerous other peer reviewed papers.
The climate’s sensitivity to CO2 must be understood in context. Here is the minimum reading necessary to understand the concept:
http://www.osta.com/gw/GWanalysis.htm
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
http://tiny.cc/tedpn
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/StupakResponse.pdf
http://junkscience.com/mar08/Lindzen-Rahmstorf-Exchange.pdf
http://tiny.cc/h7qj4
http://www.heartland.org/events/newyork09/pdfs/lindzen.pdf
http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Response.to.Dingell.EAQ.pdf
http://tiny.cc/dpbo9
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.pdf
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/cooglobwrm.pdf
You think you had a royal flush? Nah. You just got stuck with the Old Maid.
Report back when you’ve finished your reading assignment. And remember, we grade on a curve.
Kevin Kilty says:
Yeah…I’ve heard of them. And, what are you under the impression that they said that differs from this summary of their 1975 report: http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/nas-1975.html ?
Do you people trying to convince us Monckton is not a Lord really think you are changing anything?
Mike says:
August 12, 2010 at 10:56 am
Personally I view Mr. Monckton as a crackpot.
That says something about you Mike, not Lord Monckton.
Well, I saw his performance in the Oxford Union debate, and one might describe him in many ways, but not as boring. He was quick, and very funny. Maybe the other side needed better debaters, but Monckton handled them all well. Theatre almost.
Wow! That Crosstalk bit linked by “kwik” was refreshing. Thank you, Kwik and thank you, Lord Monckton.
Richard S Courtney says:
I am relying on your ability to click on a link and read it. Am I assuming too much?
Great logic there, Richard. So, if you say the moon is made of rock and I argue that it is made of green cheese, then your point is debateable because I have debated you on it? By that standard, anything is debatable…We can find plenty of people who will debate whether the earth is more than 10000 years old. Heck, we can find people who will debate whether the moon landings really occurred, whether 9/11 was really the act of terrorists, and whether the earth is really not flat.
Yes, that is some standard of evidence you’ve set up there.
I have got on to YouTube via the link provided but cannot get
on to programme 7 and further … all that shows are parts 1-6.
I wonder what I am doing wrong ?
Smokey “regarding your 2 lame links: Pf-f-f-ft”
This is your idea of a rebuttal? LOL.
Smokey “Report back when you’ve finished your reading assignment.”
You obviously haven’t been reading what you’ve cited, just as you didn’t read what I cited.
Here’s Roy Spencer on the Lindzen and Choi paper……Megadittos!
“But I predict that Lindzen and Choi will eventually be challenged by other researchers who will do their own analysis of the ERBE data, possibly like that I have outlined above, and then publish conclusions that are quite divergent from the authors’ conclusions.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/03/spencer-on-lindzen-and-choi-climate-feedback-paper/
Here’s the APS preface to the Monckton paper you cited.
“The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review, since that is not normal procedure for American Physical Society newsletters. The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007: “Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate.”
http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm
If you’ve an open mind and would actually like to learn something, try this.
http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/publications/jacobbook/bookchap7.pdf
Hey, Monckton’s a Lord. Get over it.
adrian smits says:
August 13, 2010 at 3:58 pm
a gigantic tea pot.
Speaking of tea, how is the Tea Party doing? Even Republicans better straighten up because Americans are tired of them too, not just the Democrats. Monckton is looking forward to the day Brits have their rightful freedom back. Americans are taking their freedom back too. 🙂
OK Evan–
Irish-American performance artist affecting an Upper House accent to compellingly imitate a British lord
Since the original Lord Monckton was created viscount in 1957 to reward his role in defeating Lord Haw Haw’s employers, one can only be saddened by his grandson’s entry into in the propaganda trade.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
August 13, 2010 at 2:56 pm
I’m intrigued that so many of the bed-wetters…..
Yes mi Lord, you’re right. They’re having hissing spits, sucking their thumbs, pouting their lips, throwing their toys, kicking and kicking while lying on the floor. It’s all going so badly for them the past few years with temps going down, and with ClimateGate and allll the other -Gates, that all they can do is throw a fit until they think we will pay attention to them.
But it’s a different day now. No more putting up with the ones that make the most noise and letting them have their way. No more of the super sensitivity to political correctness that has a chilling effect on people being themselves. Folks are actually scared of what the future could be with the path we are headed on now. That fear is acting as a smelling salts. The 60’s-Peace-Love-Dope-Marx-was-right-man-Baby-Boomers have screwed things up profoundly. Now it’s time for the big boys and girls to set things straight. The kids will just have to like it. 🙂