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.”
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Joel Shore:
I am replying to your post to me at August 13, 2010 at 8:18 pm for no other reason than I wish to encourage your posts to me because I enjoy laughing them.
My original post above was at August 12, 2010 at 1:27 pm and I copy it here to avoid others needing to find it.
“Friends:
AGW supporters attack Monckton because they know he is right.
If they could show his statements were wrong they would. And they would proclaim his errors whenever he was mentioned.
But they cannot fault his statements in any significant manner, so they attack him with the intent that by discrediting him they will induce people to ignore what he says.
This tactic is known as Playing The Man Instead Of The Ball.
So, the attacks on Monckton prove he is acurately addressing the AGW scare.
As WW2 bomber pilots said;
“You always know when you are over the target because that is when you get the most flack”.
Richard”
I would have been proved worong by a Popperian ‘black swan’: i.e. your citing one, single, solitary example of Monckton having made a statement that is wrong.
But your series of responses to me have failed to state – and failed to proclaim – any error by Monckton. The nearest you have gone towards making such a statement is your citing a dubious and disputed argument by an AGW propoganda blog, and you are so unsure of that argument that you have not dared to explicitly state what Monckton said that is wrong (despite my challenging you to do that).
Now, in your latest reponse (at August 13, 2010 at 8:18 pm) you accuse me of using poor logic when I say that you have not yet stated any clear statement of an error by Monckton!
Please keep providing your responses to me: there is far, far too little to laugh at in this world and your posts are giving me much laughter.
Richard
The Old Maid card dealer is not up to speed. The APS’ running of Lord Monckton’s paper was not done willingly; Monckton forced the APS to run his article.
You could look it up. It’s in the WUWT archives. That issue has been discussed here previously in detail.
The issue was over climate sensitivity, as her very first link shows. The links I posted in response were provided to help educate margie the subject of the climate sensitivity number — not to provide targets for nitpicking quibbles.
Everything I wrote was accurate. If anyone disputes this, tell us exactly what the climate sensitivity number is. [And don’t quote Arrhenius, unless his 1906 corrigendum is included.]
The fact — verified by planet Earth — is that the climate sensitivity to CO2 is very low. It could be negative; that has not yet been established nor falsified.
Changing the subject earns no points. Neither does linking to a textbook chapter that tries but fails to falsify the null hypothesis. As clearly stated by Dr Spencer, natural variability fully explains the current climate, without the need for an extraneous variable:
“No one has falsified the hypothesis that the observed temperatures changes are a consequence of natural variability.”
On the other hand, the CO2=CAGW conjecture has been repeatedly falsified — not least by planet Earth.
Occam’s Razor precludes the use of extraneous variables such as CO2 when providing a hypothesis explained by a simpler mechanism. While CO2 probably has a small effect on temperature, the planet is not responding as predicted by the always-inacurate computer climate models.
Human activity has certainly contributed to atmospheric CO2. But due to the low climate sensitivity number, the effect on temperature is negligible, and can de disregarded for all practical purposes. Climate alarmists have an urgent need to believe in a looming catastrophe. The question is, who do we believe? Planet Earth? Or their GCMs and our lying eyes?
The correct answer is: we believe planet Earth. The one-third increase in an extremely tin trace gas has had beneficial effects on the biosphere, while there is no empirical evidence to believe in the alarmist predictions of doom based entirely on a high climate sensitivity to CO2.
Mikael Pihlström :- it is arrogant and foolish to think that anyone, except in a Bond film (they are also fiction) can affect the climate an any serious way, mankind is as yet not that powerfull (OK set off all the nukes in the world would do it but CO2?? you are having a laugh.
Monckton has scored an own goal by writing ( 13-8-2:56) that he is “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.”
There is a certain symmetry between Canute’s demonstrating to his sycophants that nature is indifferent to lordly words, and scientific indifference to Monckton’s rontonomade. As surely as a rising tide lifts all thrones, rising levels of CO2 raise all temperatures, leaving him increasingly hot under the coronet, and sounding ever less like a Science Lord (Ashby and Zuckerman come to mind) and ever more like a wannabe Jack Cade , with the added disadvantage of sounding very like a lawyer.
As to his parliamentary status, the Palace has just troubled to admonish Monckton that being a lord no more makes him a member of the upper house than being a white man makes him a member of White’s. The viscount’s failure to gather a single vote in four successive attempts to get sitting members to raise him up to their estate is a testament to the good sense of the mother of parliaments.
Wattsamatta U, Russell? Your Hahvahd cronies giving you grief because you haven’t jumped on the bash Monckton with ad-homs bandwagon? Got a paper you need to get thru pal review?
I understand. You’ve gotta be a part of the hive mind to get along. Otherwise you might stop getting invites to the cocktail parties.
Don’t fret, I’ve got the cure: a couple doses of these will solve your problem.☺
Russell Seitz: August 14, 2010 at 1:14 pm
As surely as a rising tide lifts all thrones, rising levels of CO2 raise all temperatures…
So, you’re saying that, because CO2 levels were rising 20,000 years ago, there couldn’t possibly have been an ice age 20,000 ears ago.
Got it.
Dear Mikael Pihlström,
“3/ There is no intergovernmental AGW industry; that is pure fantasy.”
Please look up E.ON and GE but at the very least try to comprehend why their love for legislated “green tech” exists. Fortunes ride on policy decisions in every single country on earth and right now legislating “green tech” which can’t possible stand on its own merits is BIG business. Anyone having sat through a high school level economics class should be able to grasp this.
Oh also, I’ve sat in classes (owned)sponsored by Monsanto and Dupont/Merc so try peddling academia being kept pure by tenure to tweens at strip malls and the 3:00AM barfly crowd.
No, Bill, you haven’t got it-
If the delta T from orbital forcing exceeds the GHG radiative forcing , the next ice age is still on
No, Smokey old bean, if, I’m in a snit about his acting the twit it’s because his recent actions demean a great British rhetorical institution.
One watches Question Time in the House Of Commons not in the expectation of hearing questions answered , but to applaud the Prime Minister’s magisterial evasion of the inconvenient truths flung against him.
Monckton isn’t the first Old Harrovian to make this mode of rhetoric his metier, but while it may properly ornament the goings on in Westminister or the Oxford Union, it becomes an affront to the honor of the scientific profession when practiced out of bounds. It’s like watching Carl Sagan trying to segue from amusing Johnny Carson’s audience into the SALT talks.
And furthermore, Smokey, you most certainly have not got it- if the orbital forcing exceeds the GHG forcing next time round, expect another ice age as usual.
Chris Edwards says:
August 14, 2010 at 12:49 pm
” it is arrogant and foolish to think that anyone, except in a Bond film (they are also fiction) can affect the climate an any serious way, mankind is as yet not that powerfull (OK set off all the nukes in the world would do it but CO2?? you are having a laugh.”
Setting off all the nukes wouldn’t change the climate. Doing it so as to maximise the amount of smoke and vaporised rock in the upper atmosphere could make the weather cooler for a year or two. After that it would be business as usual.
However, changing the climate by means of solettas in space (mirrors made from thin aluminised film) would be easy, and with present technology would cost a few percent of one year’s GWP. Unless of course it were done by today’s politicised NASA, in which case it would probably cost a few thousand times as much!
Still waiting for the AIDS/HIV cure though. He claims to be responsible for the “invention and development of a broad-spectrum cure for infectious diseases. Patents have now been filed. Patients have been cured of various infectious diseases, including Graves’ disease, multiple sclerosis, influenza, food poisoning, and HIV.”
And also a Nobel Laureate (though I suppose if he accomplished the former he’d deserve the latter). It’s true that pointing out some of his insane, self-aggrandizing claims doesn’t mean that all his claims are false. But it’s a safe assumption until proven otherwise.
As to his “civilized” response to Abraham, it seems pretty clear that his initial name calling screed (initially profanity filled and later moderated on the site that still has the “overcooked prawn” quote) backfired and he’s realized that it’s reduced his credibility to the masses and thus produced the “flower garden show.”
Similar happened with his backing away from the Hitler Youth quote, denied by Monckton and easily found on Youtube.
Monckton of Brenchley wrote : “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.”
Thank you ! You make it so easy to point out your hyperbolic extremism, which should be an embarrassment to anyone who claims you to be an ally in any way. The rest of your comment is a wonderful example of your strangej, self-regarding world-view, too. Thank you indeed and carry on…please !!
Rob:
Thankyou for your post at August 15, 2010 at 6:24 pm.
It is the most clear and succinct example of ‘playing the man and not the ball’ I have seen to date. So, I have copied it and intend to use it for purposes of illustration.
If ‘warmers’ had anything that would disprove any of Monckton’s arguments then they would use them. The fact that you choose to ‘play the man’ demonstrates that you cannot fault anything Monckton has said concerning the AGW scare.
And, in the unlikely event that there are any impartial observers still reading this thread, I ask them to note that – after all the above posts – you feel constrained to ‘play the man and not the ball’.
Richard
Russell Seitz: August 14, 2010 at 5:59 pm
No, Bill, you haven’t got it-
If the delta T from orbital forcing exceeds the GHG radiative forcing , the next ice age is still on
Your quote was “As surely as a rising tide lifts all thrones, rising levels of CO2 raise all temperatures…” which is an unconditional assertion.
There’s plenty of evidence that CO2 *trails* temperature change, there’s none that it *causes* it.
Richard S Courtney:
Since you have been so interested in knowing about the errors in Monckton’s work, I thought I would let you in on a big one that Brad Beeson has pointed out in the newer thread on Monckton here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/14/monckton-why-current-trends-are-not-alarming/#comment-459975
It seems that Monckton’s claim that a simple exponential growth model shows that CO2 levels are running behind the expectations of the A2 scenario is wrong. If you do the exponential growth model correctly (i.e., assume that it is only the level of Co2 above the pre-industrial baseline the increases exponentially) then you find that in fact measured CO2 levels are tracking, if anything, a little bit high of what the A2 scenario would predict.
Of course, Monckton could redeem himself by admitting his error (which is certainly subtle enough that I can believe it was unintentional) and noting that his claims regarding CO2 not keeping up with the IPCC forecasts are completely incorrect. Let’s both hope that this is what he chooses to do.
Well golly Richard, I must have misread the post title and post content. I thought they were about Monckton (i.e., the man) who, in this case, IS the ball. But I’ll play the man in your case and recommend a reading comprehension course.