Guest post by The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
Dear Anthony, – I’ve enjoyed your series on disinvitation of those who doubt “global warming” by true-believers in the New Religion.
Your readers may enjoy the following well-documented account. – Christopher
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Yet another “global warming” disinvitation to add to the season’s merriment. Some months ago Roger Helmer, a Conservative Member of the European Duma who has dared to question whether “global warming” is a global crisis, was invited to lunch with the Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia, together with leading members of the university’s Environmental Sciences faculty.
The Vice-Chancellor invited Mr. Helmer to bring anyone else who might be interested, and replied that he would be accompanied by James Delingpole, a distinguished columnist with Britain’s national conservative newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, and Lord Monckton, deputy leader and climate-change spokesman for Britain’s second-largest party in European elections, the United Kingdom Independence Party.
A couple of months went by. Then, two days before the lunch was due to take place, the Vice-Chancellor’s office got in touch with Mr. Helmer by email, announcing that Mr. Delingpole and Lord Monckton had been disinvited:
“I am writing in response to recent correspondence/your call about Mr Helmer’s visit to UEA next Friday 29th. The Vice-Chancellor is looking forward to meeting Mr Helmer as planned. However, I am afraid that there has been a misunderstanding in terms of the proposed accompanying guests. It is not normal practice for the Vice-Chancellor to meet MPs and MEPs accompanied by journalists or party political activists, and to avoid setting a new precedent I am afraid that the invitation to meet with the VC cannot be extended to Lord Monckton and Mr Delingpole on this occasion. I am conscious that your office gave our office the names of Mr Helmer’s proposed companions last month but unfortunately they only came to light yesterday.
“If Lord Monckton or Mr Delingpole have particular journalistic enquiries, the University’s Press Office would of course be very happy to receive them.”
Mr. Helmer was not pleased either with the cheesy pretext for the disinvitation or the very late date. The day before the planned visit, he wrote:
“Thank you for your e-mail regarding my visit to UEA tomorrow, but I have to say that I am rather taken aback at this abrupt change of tack. I supplied the names of my colleagues whom I proposed to bring with me some weeks ago (as you rightly point out), and it is rather an embarrassment to have to turn them off at this very late stage. You will be aware that we are dealing here with people who are prominent in their respective fields, and will certainly have dense diary commitments.
“I am disappointed also because while I have a good level of general familiarity with the various issues which we hope to discuss, these colleagues certainly have much more detailed knowledge than I, particularly on the science (Lord Monckton) and on the history and content of the leaked e-mails (James Delingpole). I feel that our meeting will therefore be less useful than it might have been.
“However, we must make the best of it. I propose instead to invite a parliamentary colleague to accompany me (I await his confirmation). This is Stuart Agnew MEP, who represents the Eastern Region and is therefore one of the MEPs covering Norwich and Norfolk. I trust that Mr. Agnew will be acceptable to the Vice Chancellor: if not, please let me know as soon as possible.”
Lord Monckton recommended that Mr. Helmer might take a rather tougher line. Mr. Helmer agreed, and wrote to the Vice-Chancellor’s office again:
“Following my e-mail earlier this morning, I have now been in communication with Lord Monckton, and I feel I have to ask you and the Vice-Chancellor to reconsider your decision.
“You describe Lord Monckton as a “political activist”. Not only is he Deputy Leader of a party which came second (ahead of Labour) in the 2009 Euro-Elections. He is also a former science adviser to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and acknowledged around the world as an authority on the science of climate change and an expert on climate sensitivity. It is rather depressing that the University is not prepared to talk to him.
“I now learn that Lord Monckton has — at very great inconvenience — arranged to return to the UK early from a banking conference in China, and to delay a forthcoming business trip to New York, at a cost of many thousands of pounds, precisely so that he can attend. I find it particularly embarrassing, therefore, to uninvite him at this late stage — you have placed me in a very difficult position. Moreover there is every possibility that this snub by the University to a public figure would become public.
“In these circumstances I should like to appeal to you, and to the Vice Chancellor, to reconsider your decision. At the same time, I am assured that James Delingpole would be happy to follow Chatam House rules if you wish, and would have an important contribution to make to our discussions.
“Please reconsider this issue in the light of these comments, and let me have your advice as soon as possible.”
Faced with Mr. Helmer’s determination, the Vice-Chancellor caved in:
“Again may I offer our apologies for altering arrangements at this late stage and thank you for our willingness to suggest another accompanying colleague. The Vice-Chancellor would be very happy to meet you with your fellow MEP Stuart Agnew as you suggest. This would be a meeting over lunch with the Vice-Chancellor, Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research Prof Trevor Davies and colleagues from Environmental Sciences, Profs Julian Andrews and Peter Liss, between 12:30-1.30pm in the Vice-Chancellor’s office.
“I am sorry to learn in your second email of the inconvenience caused to Lord Monckton’s travel schedule. In view of the late alteration to his plans, the Vice-Chancellor has agreed to see Lord Monckton along with some of the same UEA colleagues in a separate meeting, immediately after you and Mr Agnew leave us at 1.30pm. We will make sure lunch is still available.
“I trust that these arrangements will be acceptable to you and colleagues and once again apologise for the inconvenience caused.”
The moral of the tale: don’t accept disinvitation. It’s rude and unnecessary. Stand your ground and put the academic bullies in their place.
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Noteworthy: the civil tone of the correspondence.
(Excessive partisanship [in sharp contrast] is an absolutely inferior strategy.)
An observation about the fragrant Lord Monckton and UKIP. If you visit the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) website and read their manifesto policies on energy and the environment you will find the following;
“[If elected we would] Freeze all state funding for scientific research into ‘global warming’”
“Jolly good show”, I hear you cry, “serve those alarmists right”.
But think about it. The posters here pride themselves on doing “real science”. Galileo is mentioned frequently. How do you all feel about working in a country where the government tells you what you can and cannot research? In Lord M’s Little England dreamworld there will no longer be a debate about the science of global warming because he will have eradicated any academic opposition to his point of view.
Having the vapours about being invited to lunch looks rather petty in comparison.
Visitor from Venus,
The key issue is “state funding.” And the UKIP doesn’t go nearly far enough, only promising to freeze state funding, when climate “studies” should be de-funded.
There are always more things that the recipients want funded than there is tax money available. You seem to think that state funding of these climate charlatans is their entitlement. It is not, and they’ve fattened at the public trough for far too long, without producing anything remotely valuable enough to justify the astronomical expense. Furthermore, they have schemed and lied keeping the climate scare going.
If you wish to contribute to their lifestyle, you are free to do so. Just don’t demand that the rest of us must continue to fund this “global warming” scam.
@ur momisugly Visitor from Venus – I can tell you from my own personal experience that so-called ‘centres for higher learning’ in the UK are involved in in promulgating government groupspeak in a manner that is highly proscribed by various arms of the State. The authorities have created a climate of fear which is as close as this old colonial, for one, has ever come to working in a police state. No wonder my forbears began fleeing the Puritans during the 17th century and my English cousins who remaned here were stoic during the WWII Blitz – they have had to be stoic for generations.
It is little wonder that the current global-warming-is-all-due-to-wicked-mankind BS is almost universally taught here as it comes from government-funded scientists. The current fuss about disinvitations is merely another symptom of how badly flustered and on the back foot are the tinpot tyrants in charge of institutions and have subverted the essential nobility of scientific research and teaching by conniving in a global fraud to maintain their government funding. The enquiries that have been mounted in the various institutions in this country are a disgrace and the formerly comfortable senior science aparatchiks know that their day in the harsh glare of public scorn is fast approaching.
Alexander,
You say this about the UK, but how do you splice that notion into the wider world? Everywhere, in every country, climatology is being researched, just as are biology, geology and so on, and similar results are being published. Monckton himself accepts that manmade carbon dioxide is causing warming: he disputes the extent (i.e. the sensitivity).
So for your view to hold water, there are three possibilities, which I’ll list in my order of likeliness:
1) The almost 200-year-old research into the heat-trapping properties of carbon dioxide continues to see more evidence being found that supports its validity;
3a) Climate scientists in each and every nation, from institutions funded by a whole variety of political regimes, are in on a conspiracy;
3b) They (Black Helicopter types) palmed mysterious pharmaceuticals into the coffee-vendors in the climate-research institutes of every country that made the scientists suffer a mass-hallucination.
1) will do me, personally. The others come an undignified joint 3rd. I agree with Monckton that the heat-trapping properties of CO2 are undeniable but where I choose to differ with him is in the uncertainties department – sensitivity, types of & nature of feedbacks and so on. It is quite right to accept the notion that uncertainties exist in all areas of science – we don’t know, with 100% certainty, why some people recover from cancer whilst others don’t, for example. Blogosphere science would be far more stimulating if it was those things that we all were to focus upon, and in that light it was good to see e.g. Walt Meier given posting-room on here recently.
You state: “the formerly comfortable senior science aparatchiks know that their day in the harsh glare of public scorn is fast approaching”.
This is a value judgement, with no basis in science. It does show what poor bed-mates science and politics are, even though to an extent one needs the other!
Cheers – John
I think you may all be missing a vital point here.
Reading the Monckton letter we find that lunch at 12.30 is for Acton, Davies, Liss & Andrews, with guests Helmer MEP and Agnew MEP.
At 1.30 Helmer & Agnew leave.
After 1.30 Monckton is allowed a late lunch, watched by Acton, Davies,Liss and Andrews. I cannot see any mention of Delingpole being ‘re-invited’.
So would you like to tuck into the ‘left-overs’ by yourself, while those 4 looked on ?
As Delingpole is currently in India checking on ‘bio-diversity loss among the leopard population’ it is questionable whether he could ever have attended.
The science fraudsters can’t defend their global warming mysticism, so they cower from any debate with knowledgeable skeptics who dare to challenge the “consensus” viewpoint. They are modern-day PT Barnums, preying on an all-too-trusting public with scare stories and crank CO2 cure-alls.
Send in the clowns…..
But what else do you expect from a third rate, mickey mouse, so-called “university”? The greater damage has been done by the vested-interest fraudsters at the Royal Society, who have persuaded the UK government to feather their nests with billions for carbon capture and wind farms. This, in an almost bankrupt country that now has aircraft carriers with no aircraft?
Send in the clowns.
Roger,
Calm down, dear chap!
Cameron et al do know about Peak Oil. I know full well they do. You might even welcome the odd wind-turbine dotted about once the proverbial hits the fan!
Two problems – one solution. Dare we act intelligently for a change? That is the question. I’m not holding my breath on that!
Cheers – John
Josh mentions ‘Lucia’ at ‘The Blackboard’ covering the story of ‘Lunchgate’. Well worth a visit.
“””” maelstrom says:
October 29, 2010 at 2:23 am
@george E. Smith:
What you say regarding titles is correct, however, the United States has a long-standing tradition of not honoring titles and hereditary peerages, to the extent that the US constitution actually forbids Americans from receiving them. Therefore it might be proper to address Christopher Monckton as Lord in the United Kingdom, but Americans are under no constraint to do so, and I think Christopher Monckton understands and respects the American position on this. “”””
Well actually maelstrom; since this is a fully international forum; we shouldn’t pay too much attention to what is US practice.
But since you did raise the issue; “” the US constitution actually forbids Americans from receiving them. “” then it is ok for us to discuss it.
And my first comment would be that your assertion (excerpted above) is completely false. The Constitution of the United States contains no such restriction; or anything like it.
Article 1 Section 9 of the US Constitution DOES provide that THE UNITED STATES shall not issue any “Title of Nobility” to ANYONE, American citizen or not; nobody; no matter what.
In addition the Constitution provides that no United States Officer may accept any Titles or gifts (other broad categories). One may argue that the United States Officer applies to the State Officers as well, since the Article refers to holding an office under THEM (after having used the term United States.
You have to keep in mind that the “United States” is a political entity that is one of the three parties to the contract that is the Constitution. Specifically it is THE ENTITY whose “common defense and general welfare” is to be “provided for” by Taxes which the Congress is authorized to “lay and collect” (That’s in Article I, section 8 in case you need to look). That plus paying the debts of the United States, are the ONLY things that the Congress is authorized to lay and collect taxes for. CAN YOU spell deficit spending ?
Meanwhile back at Section 9; in addition to “The United States”, the 57 Sovereign States are also one of the contractual parties to the Constitution; so arguably when article 9 says “under them” after referring to the “United States” one could argue that the separate States themselves as well as that Washington DC cesspool are meant.
So in Street slang; the USA can’t grant titles to anyone; citizen or not; and government officers can’t receive titles or gifts from others presumably foreign, WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE CONGRESS.
But ordinary US citizens or legal residents most certainly can accept foreign titles.
You Americans really need to read your Constitution and find out what it says and what it doesn’t say.
Well I’m an American; just not a citizen; and I apologise if I got any of this wrong; I sometimes wonder if I’m still a candidate for Alzheimer’s.
But back to Lord Monckton; it still is quite appropriate for Americans (but not mandatory), including American Government officials. to use his title to address him. No it isn’t ok to go around asking; “say Chris what is Queenie up to these days ?”
Yes America took a different path; and that is commendable; but the Founding Fathers, and the Framers did not decide to institutionalize just plain rudeness, and the image of “The Ugly American”.
So yes Lord Monckton speaks to us less formally and accepts us doing likewise with him; You Citizen Yanks can do that; but although now an American; I’m also still British too (by accident of parental ancestry); and I don’t neglect tradition.
For me it is just “not cricket” to be boorish (for me). And no I don’t meaan that Yanks are boorish if they don’t use his title; not at all; but it would be for me.
And yes I should explain that to me Yanks is a term of endearment; and does not discriminate between north and south where it is a technical term.
There is nothing wrong with just being polite to people; it’s even American to be that way.
And I should add the legal disclaimer that IANAL so none of the above is any legal advice; it simply is my application of The King’s English to what I remember of that part of the US Constitution.
I suppose you Googleistas can go and look it up, and correct me, if I got some of it wrong. Do y’alls remember even the punctuation when you learn something ? I try to, but sometimes I get commas and semi-colons switched. But I usually don’t transpose parts of the Declaration if Independence, and mistakenly put them in the Constitution; like “right to life” and such things; no excuse for mixing things up like that.
Re Tucci78 and name snobbery in UK academic institutions.
Everything has to be called a University over here in the UK. The Polytechnics in the UK developed out of vocational Technical Colleges that awarded qualifications such as HNC or HND that were approximately equivalent to say 1 and half or 2 years of a conventional 3 year Bachelors degree course. More often than not, they did not have the right to award their own degrees and were overseen by another more senior institution. Some of the Polytechnics were academically advanced and did some research but they rarely compared with Oxbridge or the Redbricks such as Manchester. In the last 20 years or so, almost every tertiary educational institution in the UK has renamed itself as a University with very little change in real academic standing. To my knowledge, only Imperial College has resisted the urge to rename and rebrand but people more familiar with the UK scene might be able to add some more to the list.
Thanks John,
But it is difficult to remain calm whilst surveying the greatest scientific fraud in history. Plitdown man must be turning in his grave!
I will take some pills and lie down in a dark room.
Previous comments say “they loose data” and ” don’t want to loose their carbon cash bonanza”.
From what? Was it too tight?
[Reminder: Confusus say: “Those who throw lose stones at glass typerighters loose footing on slippery slope.” .. 8<) Robt]
—
At 12:23 AM on 29 October, John Mason had responded with a polite and chatty non-answer to my question about “…ust what the heck justifies the scorn in which “the Polytechnics” seem to be held” in the United Kingdom, and while I appreciate the effort, I already know that
…
Mr. Mason’s effort, unfortunately, doesn’t explain why this should be so.
Fortunately, at 10:24 AM on 29 October, SidF offered amplification, writing:
…
Now, that seems parsimoniously to more thoroughly satisfy my curiosity. Here in these United States, the past century or so has seen a tendency for the dozens upon dozens of two-bit cow colleges (which have long been formally accredited degree-granting institutions) to jump themselves up into “university” status.
My own alma mater – a Jesuit-run outfit with its primary campus small enough to fit within one city block – did this some years after I’d graduated despite the fact that the administrators were only able to grant advanced degrees (Master’s, not doctorates) in chemistry, marketing, and “education” – which last I do not even consider a valid field of academic study, and treat with both hatred and scorn.
Well…marketing, too. As cartoonist Scott Adams recently observed: “That’s just liquor and guessing.”
None of the American technical institutes to which I’d made reference – CalTech, MIT, Stevens, RPI – had never, to the best of my personal appreciation, been at any stage in their respective histories “overseen by another more senior institution,” and had always been qualified to grant undergraduate (and later graduate) degrees.
I suppose that the closest thing in America to what are called “the Polytechnics” in the U.K. are what we call “technical schools,” which accord certification (documentary proof that the student had satisfactorily completed a course of study in a particular technical area) but not academic degrees.
I tend to think of a nursing school which trains its students specifically to qualify as Registered Nurses (R.N.) as opposed to colleges which turn out graduates with Bachelor of Science in Nursing (B.S.N.) degrees.
Of course in my professional experience, the clinical expertise, fund of knowledge, and overall quality of those people trained in long-established “diploma mill” nursing schools tend to be a helluva lot better than what one finds in the B.S.N. types churned out by the “colleges,” but what the hell….
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The disinvitations are reflective of a mindset that believes itself above the need to consider proper courtesy and protocol. Hence, those they consider below their own exalted status as celebrities, academics, government bureaucrats and the like should suck up the insults without complaint. Snobbery at its ugliest.
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At 4:00 AM on 29 October, Visitor From Venus had written:
…
Not quite true. What that policy says is that government funding for scientific research into “global warming” would be frozen, and this is indeed a start on a jolly good idea.
On what grounds does an agency like civil government extort from the private citizenry (holding folks at gunpoint and growling “Your money or your life!” as makes no difference whatsoever) spending power with which to fund scientific research?
Not surprisingly, it is on the premise – sometimes very tenuous – that such research can and will result in knowledge amounting to a material advantage on the battlefield. That’s even the reason why governments fund research into public health; those of us well-versed in military history know full well that up until the early 20th Century, the overwhelming preponderance of morbidity and mortality in armies has been due to communicable diseases, not enemy action, and as warfare became industrialized and whole civilian populations became critically important to the strategic conduct of armed conflict, governments had more than sufficient reason to prioritize the maintenance of physical well-being on the “home front” as well.
In this light, let us then reconsider government (“Your money or your life!”) taxpayer funding for the utterly worthless “scientific research into [anthropogenic] ‘global warming’”.
If there is no real scientific basis whatsoever to hold that man-made global warming can be attributed to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions – and I submit that everything coming to light today (as well as over the past thirty years and more) demonstrates that the AGW hypothesis is not only a blunder but a fraud – then there is no justification at all for any government anywhere on the planet to fund “scientific research into [anthropogenic] ‘global warming’” of any kind whatsoever.
The proper policy position of the UKIP (and all other political parties) should not be to “Freeze all state funding for scientific research into ‘global warming’” but to zero it out altogether.
To shove the AGW fraudsters away from the public feeding trough, and maybe even follow up with criminal prosecutions and lawsuits for civil damages, both compensatory and punitive. There’s certainly the suspicion of peculation a-plenty in the ranks of the “Hockey Team.”
This has nothing to do with whether or not “the government tells you what you can and cannot research” but rather whether or not you can do that research at public expense.
If George Soros or some equally rotten son-of-indeterminate-parentage who has deep personal pockets wants to cough up cash to support the “Cargo Cult Science” of the global warming alarmists, that’s not forfended by the stated UKIP policy at all, is it?
But no more bleeding the suffering and entirely unwilling private citizenry to advance the cause of thieving charlatans whose objective has never been more than to secure their own wealth and influence by compelling the average subject of Her Majesty to a condition of poverty and suffering such that he will find himself freezing to death in the dark.
—
——————
Roger Longstaff,
I find a good lowland single malt Scotch or two will always do the trick.
Good luck and take care.
John
>>Translation:
>>“Don’t give me that, you snotty-faced heap of parrot droppings!
>>Persist in this farce, and the story of your cowardly prevarication
>>will be front-page news tomorrow!”
Especially as you are disinviting a journo from the Telegraph.
Don’t even go there….. !!
.
I fully support Roger Helmer, and Lord Monckton in the excellent work they are doing in exposing the antropogenic climate con.
Terri Jackson founder energy group, Institute of Physics, london
[snip – look up “graves disease” ~mod]