Sometimes you just have to laugh. This is one of those times. I’ve been put in my place by an “urban coyote poet” for daring to publish on this blog.
Elmer (of M4GW, not M4CC), Chris Monckton, and I , apparently are threats to democracy, and mentally imbalanced too, because apparently a radio station personality, Sue Jeffers, is using WUWT as references on air in Minneapolis. Observe:
She browbeat him with a torrent of misinformation: There is no global warming; polar bears are not in trouble; consult the work of “Lord” Monckton; on and on.
I wondered where she got this nonsense, so I checked her website. There she promotes links to the Republican Party, the Tea Party, and a site called “Minnesotans for Climate Change,” which is linked regularly to Wattsupwiththat.com. Mystery solved — mad Anthony Watts is a major source for the misinformation she dumps on her listeners.
Oh, the humanity! I’m apparently mad as a hatter. I’ll give the advice I give radio listeners that sometimes write in to my own radio station to demand that some program be taken off or censored: you have control of your own radio receiver, if the program doesn’t suit you, change the station. You are not being forced to listen.
The rant continues:
Then there is “Lord” Christopher Monckton, neither a lord nor a scientist, whose job in England appears to be deputy head of a right-wing nationalist party. In the United States, he serves as “policy advisor” to an infamous climate-denial website, apparently qualified for the position by his degrees in classics and journalism.
It is notable when poets consider themselves qualified to pronounce “climate truth”, and to pronounce others as being “mad” for having a differing opinion but people with backgrounds in mathematics (Monckton) and meteorology (myself) are not. Oh, the ironing.
You can read the entire Lenfestey opinion piece at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
The state of fear at the new year
I thank Mr. Lenfestey for bringing hundreds of new visitors to WUWT, perhaps they’ll take time to read and consider rather than simply taking an emotional stance as Mr. Lenfestey has done.
Readers may want to get background on Mr. Lenfestey at his website – I particularly liked this photo in relation to his book of poetry anthology LOW DOWN AND COMING ON; A FEAST OF DELICIOUS AND DANGEROUS POEMS ABOUT PIGS (Red Dragonfly Press, 2010)
UPDATE: Chris Monckton sends this letter:
To The Editor, Star Tribune.
2 January 2012
Sir,
Climate: get the facts right
Mr. Lenfestey (January 1), in an article about the climate that remarkably presented not a single fact about the climate, says I gave a “misleading” presentation at Bethel University in 2009. That presentation was truthful, while the driveling attempted rebuttal of it by a non-climatologist at a local bible college, gleefully referenced by Mr. Lenfesty, was full of elementary errors of science, of fact, and even of arithmetic. Would it not have been fairer also to give the URL of my detailed and, indeed, devastating reply to this mendacious nitwit? See scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/response_to_john_abraham.html?Itemid=0.
Here are a few facts about the climate. This millennium there has been no statistically-significant global warming (UAH and RSS satellite data, 2001-2011). Sea level has been rising for the past eight years at a rate equivalent to 2 inches per century (Envisat, 2004-2011). Pacific atolls are gaining land mass, as is Bangladesh, where sea level has been falling (Mörner, 2011). Global sea-ice extent has hardly changed in 30 years (University of Illinois cryosphere data, 1980-2011). Hurricanes, typhoons and tropical cyclones are at near-record lows of activity (Accumulated Cyclone-Energy Index, 2011).
It is at least ten times cheaper simply to adapt to any warming that may occur than to tax, trade, regulate, reduce or replace CO2 (President Vaclav Klaus, lecture at Cambridge University, May 2011). Besides, China, which already emits more CO2 than the entire West, will continue to build one or two large coal-fired power stations a week (annual official PRC statistical communiques, 2008-2010).
Authorities are investigating the tiny, malevolent clique of politically-motivated scientists behind the now-collapsing climate scare for downright scientific fraud against taxpayers: ag.virginia.gov/Media%20and%20News%20Releases/News_Releases/Cuccinelli/100410_UVA_Mann_Docs.html).
A growing body of learned papers concludes that the warming we cause will be about one-third of what the IPCC predicts, so it will be harmless and even beneficial (Lindzen & Choi, 2009, 2011; Spencer & Braswell, 2010, 2011; Douglass et al., 2008; Shaviv, 2008, 2011; etc., etc.).
Finally, Mr. Lenfestey puzzlingly says I am not a Lord. But I am (Who’s Who, 2007-2011).
Yours faithfully,
MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY (by Letters Patent granted to my late grandfather in 1957).
“Oh the ironing”.
That’s punny.
Ode to a tree whisperer…
There once was a man named Lenfestey
Who wrote quite a lot with his pensey.
He pretended a lot
to know much more than not.
In the end he’s no more
than just peskey.
(me thinks he’s spent too much time talking to nut trees)
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz has nothing on Cowboy Poet Lenfestey. Lenfestey’s torturous written word and tortured logic should be outlawed by the Geneva Convention.
“Looks like Lenfestey gets a pretty good kicking in the comments below the article…”
Really?? From the ones I previewed (admittedly I didn’t read all of them as my stomach began to get queasy), it looks as if the commenters and the column author are in agreement that CAGW is real and it’s all conservatives’/Republicans’ faults.
“Not the startling webmasters
centering their silent geometries.
Nor the weavers of the dew-dropped
handkerchiefs revealed on the grass at dawn.
Nor the lanky wolves prowling the night kitchen
too fast to be caught, too big to want to catch.
But the short, clownish, jumpy ones,
two of eight shiny black eyes
looking right up at you like Chinese sages,
full of whiskered confidence and wisdom.”
Well his poetry is workmanlike, if a little whimsical.
Not to my taste, rather in the way that science and logic aren’t his….but I guess a poet mixing his metaphors applies the same treatment to all he views, including climate science.
I’d much rather read a poem of his on the subject than his ad homs on the protagonists though.
Also, caption for first picture: “What do this petrified tree and this man’s cranium have in common?”
Caption for second picture: “Mr. Lenfestey does not consider himself a ‘furry’ because pigs are hairless.”
Pigs = methane farts !
Get rid of the pigs Mr Lefty !!!
Sean Peake says: January 3, 2012 at 10:14 am
[OMG! … and he’s feeding beer to his pig.]
It’s man-beer-pig
Typical reaction of a narcissist to criticism. First reaction is to devalue the critic. Rather than argue with any facts, you simply sling insults. Does the piece actually contain any actual criticisms of anything or is it just all name-calling and insult slinging?
I suspect “Lord” Monckton will take exception to the quotes marks and the assertion that he is “neither a lord nor a scientist”.
Verity – he already has, see the update – Anthony
Exposure of Global Warming Deception goes Viral
http://www.examiner.com/seminole-county-environmental-news-in-orlando/exposure-of-global-warming-deception-goes-viral
Just the uncontrolled coal seam fires in China emit as much CO2 as all automobiles and trucks in the US. Simply putting those fires out would result in an atmospheric CO2 reduction equivalent of removing ALL of the traffic in America. Doing the same in India, Indonesia, and the US would result in removing as much CO2 as ALL automotive traffic globally with some left over to balance some of the aircraft emissions. I don’t see any major push by the UN to put out coal seam fires.
Well, I don’t know about y’all, but I was inspired to poetry myself!
Rings, Rings
The trees make rings
If you listen close
They’ll tell you things
They’ll tell you what you need to do
After releasing all that CO2
We must ignore all the facts
And impose a carbon tax
Tax the rich
Give it to the poor
Until there are
No rich no more
I deeply regret that I couldn’t make this stuff up:
LOW DOWN AND COMING ON; A FEAST OF DELICIOUS AND DANGEROUS POEMS ABOUT PIGS.
I would like to suggest to Mr Leftnasty that he spend a couple of hours a day for the next couple of days perusing WUWT. He might learn something.
But I doubt it.
I don’t have poems about pigs, but I do have one about pheasants:
I’m not the pheasant plucker
I’m the pheasant plucker’s son
But I’ll sit here plucking pheasants
Till the pheasant plucker comes
“if the program doesn’t suit you, change the station. You are not being forced to listen.” not possible. For example, I don’t want news, sport, travel or weather… but every station has them. The same old s1ht read out on every station, every hour. No choice. No Escape – apart from turning it off altogether.
When I want news, I get the news. When I want weather, I get the weather. When I want sport, please shoot me because my brain has died.
This joker ain’t no yote, urban or otherwise.
Wow! Found this hoary old chestnut in the comments under the linked article:
“The Caillon research in Science magazine concludes that CO2 amplifies the affect of warming. The time period that was studied showed that warming (at that time caused by change in sun intensity) caused a release of CO2 and methand [sic] into the atmosphere that rapidly increased the warming effect. It actually demonstrates that the fundamental physics of global warming is very sound and follows already proven historical trends.”
Caillon et al (2003) compared two proxy series from ice cores, making a point to add the following caveat for their chosen temperature proxy: “Although we do not yet clearly understand the underlying mechanisms, we argue that the [delta]40Ar record can be taken as a climate proxy, thus providing constraints about the timing of CO2 and climate change during Termination III.”
The phase shift between the two series is presented as evidence of a lag from temperature and change of CO2. That’s all the analysis can do – it is not competent to do any more.
The data and analysis have no capacity to say anything about amplification. The data and analysis have nothing to say about solar intensity. Or methane. The work provided evidence that CO2 follows temperature and may have been contrary to previous expectations. It’s hard to see how the commenter could have been more wrong.
I am convinced that in this area and others, most people simply take what the media tells them at face value and never bother to check the facts. I’ve spoken to many alarmists who have claimed I’m on the oil industry payroll when I state basic facts about climate.
The same thing happens in many other areas. For example in quality (TQM / Six Sigma) I’ve been told that I’m lying when I’ve quoted Bill Smith’s (the “father” of the Six Sigma) paper which makes the ridiculous statement that a way to improve quality is to change the specification … the basis of the multi billion dollar global Six Sigma scam.
Just yesterday I checked Steve Biddulph’s (a leading author on childcare) reference to his statement that under no circumstance should boys be placed in day care before the age of three. Bidduph’s reference, a NICHD study draws no such conclusion.
I feel that in AGW, the majority of true believers and media journos have never done any background whatsoever. Ironically the AGW religion has made carbon as as organic is good. All that is needed is faith, not science.
Verity Jones says:
I suspect “Lord” Monckton will take exception to the quotes marks and the assertion that he is “neither a lord nor a scientist”.
Lenfestey really just shows his ignorance, because technically there is no such “thing” as a lord, any more than there is any such thing as a “Sir.”
The “Lord” bit is the form of address, which attaches to the rank that the peer holds in the same way that “Sir” is the form of address for a Knight, regardless of which order the Knight is a member of.
Not only that, but Lord Moncton’s viscountcy rank sits above that of Baron which is the rank of most life peers (and members of the House of Lords), being just below the rank of Earl.
Its a bit like accusing a Captain of not being an officer because he is not a Lieutenant.
In my family we change
To:
Perfect Anthony, that is the way to deal with these idiots.
Crystal gazing fools .
“…LOW DOWN AND COMING ON; A FEAST OF DELICIOUS AND DANGEROUS POEMS ABOUT PIGS…”
What, no Deliverance jokes?
[snip – funny but over the top – Anthony]
I know, I know, it sounded so good when your Poli Sci professor taught you the phrase in class, but try to answer the following anyway…
How does one deny the climate? Or do you really mean ‘human induced climate change denier’ and are just not bright enough to string together that many words, like most others in your Poli Sci class?