UPDATE: Below is Peter Hadfield’s response in entirety, submitted Feb 7th, 2012. I’ve made only some slight edits for formatting to fit. Comments are open. – Anthony
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Various You-Tube videos by a former “science writer” who uses a speleological pseudonym “potholer54” sneeringly deliver a series of petty smears about artfully-distorted and often inconsequential aspects of my talks on climate change. Here, briefly, I shall answer some of his silly allegations. I noted them down rather hastily, since I am disinclined to waste much time on him, so the sentences in quote-marks may not be word for word what he said, but I hope that they fairly convey his meaning.
For fuller answers to these allegations, many of which he has ineptly and confusedly recycled from a serially mendacious video by some no-account non-climatologist at a fourth-rank bible college in Nowheresville, Minnesota, please see my comprehensive written reply to that video at www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org. The guy couldn’t even get his elementary arithmetic right – not that the caveman mentions that fact, of course.
The allegations, with my answers, are as follows:
“Monckton says he advised Margaret Thatcher on climate change. He didn’t.” I did.
“Monckton says he wrote a peer-reviewed paper. He didn’t.” The editors of Physics and Society asked me to write a paper on climate sensitivity in 2008. The review editor reviewed it in the usual way and it was published in the July 2008 edition, which, like most previous editions, carried a headnote to the effect that Physics and Society published “reviewed articles”. Peer-review takes various forms. From the fact that the paper was invited, written, reviewed and then published, one supposes the journal had followed its own customary procedures. If it hadn’t, don’t blame me. Subsequent editions changed the wording of the headnote to say the journal published “non-peer-reviewed” articles, and the editors got the push. No mention of any of this by the caveman, of course.
“Monckton says the Earth is cooling. It isn’t.” At the time when I said the Earth was cooling, it had indeed been cooling since late 2001. The strong El Niño of 2010 canceled the cooling, and my recent talks and graphs have of course reflected that fact by stating instead that there has been no statistically-significant warming this millennium. The caveman made his video after the cooling had ended, but – without saying so – showed a slide from a presentation given by me while the cooling was still in effect. Was that honest of him?
“Monckton says Greenland is not melting. It is.” Well, it is now, but for 12 years from 1992-2003 inclusive, according to Johannessen et al. (2005), the mean spatially-averaged thickness of Greenland’s ice sheet increased by 5 cm (2 inches) per year, or 2 feet in total over the period. The high-altitude ice mass in central northern Greenland thickened fastest, more than matching a decline in ice thickness along the coastline. Since 2005, according to Johannessen et al. (2009), an ice mass that I calculate is equivalent to some six inches of the 2 feet of increase in Greenland’s ice thickness over the previous decade or so has gone back into the ocean, raising global sea levels by a not very terrifying 0.7 millimeters. According to the Aviso Envisat satellite, in the past eight years sea level has been rising at a rate equivalent to just 2 inches per century. Not per decade: per century. If so, where has all the additional ice that the usual suspects seem to imagine has melted from Greenland gone? Two possibilities: not as much ice has melted as we are being told, or its melting has had far less impact on sea level than we are being invited to believe.
“Monckton says there’s no systematic loss of sea-ice in the Arctic. There is.” No, I said that the 30-year record low ice extent of 2007 had been largely reversed in 2008 and 2009. The caveman, if he were capable of checking these or any data, would find this to be so. In fact, he knew this to be so, because the slide I was showing at that point in his video, taken from the University of Illinois’ Cryosphere monitoring program, shows it. Of course, the slide was only in the background of his video and was shown only for a few seconds. Since that particular talk of mine the Arctic sea ice has declined again and came close to its 2007 low in 2011. But it is arguable from the descriptions of melting Arctic ice in 1922 that there may have been less sea ice in the Arctic then than now.
“Monckton says there has been no correlation between temperature and CO2 for the past 500 million years. There has.” Well, there has in the past few thousand years, but the correlation since the Cambrian era has been spectacularly poor, as the slide (from a peer-reviewed paper) that the caveman fleetingly shows me using at that point demonstrates very clearly. For most of that long period, global temperatures were about 7 Celsius degrees warmer than the present: yet CO2 concentration has inexorably declined throughout the period.
“Monckton says a pre-Cambrian ice-planet shows CO2 has no effect on climate. It doesn’t.” No, I cited Professor Ian Plimer, a leading geologist, as having said that the formation of dolomitic rock 750 million years ago could not have taken place unless there had been 300,000 ppmv CO2 in the atmosphere: yet glaciers a mile high had come and gone twice at sea-level and at the Equator at that time. Professor Plimer had concluded that, even allowing for the fainter Sun and higher ice-albedo in those days, the equatorial glaciers could not have formed twice if the warming effect of CO2 were as great as the IPCC wants us to believe. At no point have I ever said CO2 has no effect on climate, for its effect was demonstrated by a simple but robust experiment as long ago as 1859. However, I have said, over and over again, that CO2 probably has a much smaller warming effect than the IPCC’s range of estimates. The caveman must have known that, because he says he has watched “hours and hours” of my videos. So why did he misrepresent me?
“Monckton said there had been no change in the Himalayan glaciers for 200 years. There has.” No, I cited Professor M.I. Bhat of the Indian Geological Survey, who had told me on several occasions that the pattern of advance and retreat of these glaciers was much as it had been in the 200 years since the British Raj had been keeping records. That is very far from the same thing as saying there had been “no change”: indeed, it is the opposite, for advance and retreat are both changes. Why did the caveman misrepresent me?
“Monckton says only one Himalayan glacier has been retreating. Many have.” No, I mentioned the Gangotri and Ronggbuk glaciers as being notable examples of glacial retreat in the Himalayas caused by geological instability in the region. To discuss one or two retreating glaciers is not the same thing as to say or imply that only one or two glaciers have been retreating. Why did the caveman misrepresent me? It is this kind of intellectual dishonesty that permeates the caveman’s cheesy videos. He has not the slightest intention of being accurate or fair. If he had, he would surely have mentioned that the IPCC tried for months to pretend that all of the glaciers in the Himalayas would be gone by 2035. The IPCC’s own “peer-reviewers” had said the figure should be “2350”, not “2035”, but the lead author of the chapter in question had left in the wrong figure, knowing it to be unverified, because, as he later publicly admitted, he wanted to influence governments.
The caveman says I misquoted the lead author who had left in the erroneous date for the extinction of the Himalayan glaciers, but here is what that author actually said in an interview with the Daily Mail: “We thought that if we can highlight it [the erroneous date], it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.” For good measure, he said I had misquoted Sir John Houghton, the IPCC’s first science chairman, who had said that unless we announced disasters no one would listen.
Sir John, too, tried to maintain that I had misquoted him, and even menaced me with a libel suit, until I told him I had a copy of the cutting from the London Sunday Telegraph of September 10, 1995, in which he had said, “If we want a good environmental policy in the future, we’ll have to have a disaster”, and that I also had a copy of an article in the Manchester Guardian of July 28, 2003, in which Sir John had luridly ascribed numerous specific natural disasters to “global warming”, which he described as “a weapon of mass destruction” that was “at least as dangerous as nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, or indeed international terrorism”. Perhaps the caveman didn’t know any of this, but here’s the thing: I do not recall that he has ever bothered to check any of his “facts” with me (though, if he had, I wouldn’t have known because he lurks behind a pseudonym and, even though I am told he has revealed his identity I have no time to keep track of the pseudonyms of people who lack the courage and decency to publish under their own names).
“Monckton says Dr. Pinker found that a loss of cloud cover had caused recent warming. She disagreed.” No, I drew the conclusion from Dr. Pinker’s paper, and from several others, that cloud cover does not remain constant, but waxes and wanes broadly in step with the cooling and warming phases respectively of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. I did not misrepresent Dr. Pinker’s paper in any way: I merely used it as a source for my own calculations, which I presented at the annual seminar on planetary emergencies of the World Federation of Scientists in 2010, where they were well received. Less cloud cover, particularly in the tropics, naturally warms the Earth: the point is surely uncontroversial. If one removes the influence of this natural warming phase from the record since 1976, it is reasonable to deduce that climate sensitivity based on that period is much lower than the IPCC thinks. Strictly speaking, one should study temperature trends in multiples of 60 years, so as to ensure that the warming and cooling phases of the PDO cancel one another out.
Frankly, that’s quite enough of these dull allegations. There are others, but they are all as half-baked and dishonest as these and it would be tedious to deal with each one. You get the drift: the caveman is a zealot and we need not ask who paid him to watch “hours and hours” of my YouTube videos to realize from these examples that his videos are unreliable. More importantly, it would interfere with my research: I hope shortly to be in a position to demonstrate formally that climate sensitivity is unarguably little more than one-third of the IPCC’s central estimate. My objective is to reach the truth, not to distort it or misrepresent it as the caveman has done.
He concludes by challenging his small band of followers to check the scientific literature for themselves to establish that the Earth has been warming and that CO2 is “largely responsible”. Of course the Earth has been warming since 1750: I have at no point denied it, though that is the implication of the caveman’s statement.
And of course there are scientists who say CO2 is “largely responsible” for the warming: that is the principal conclusion of the IPCC’s 2007 report, reached on the basis of a fraudulent statistical abuse: comparison of the slopes of multiple arbitrarily-chosen trend-lines on the global-temperature dataset falsely to suggest that “global warming” is accelerating and that it is our fault. Not that one has ever heard the caveman utter a word of condemnation of the IPCC’s too-often fictional “science”. But it is also reasonable to mention the growing band of scientists who say CO2 may not be “largely responsible” but only partly responsible for the warming since 1950. Would it not have been fairer if the caveman had pointed that out?
Climate skeptics have come under intensive attack from various quarters, and the attacks have too often been as unpleasantly dishonest as those of the caveman. Also, there is evidence that someone has been spending a lot of money on trying malevolently to discredit those who dare to ask any questions at all about the party line on climate.
For instance, after a speech by me in in the US in October 2009 went viral and received a million YouTube hits in a week (possibly the fastest YouTube platinum ever for a speech), a Texan professor who monitors the seamier side of the internet got in touch to tell me that someone had paid the operators of various search engines a sum that he estimated at not less than $250,000 to enhance the page rankings of some two dozen specially-created web-pages containing meaningless jumbles of symbols among which the word “Monckton video” appeared.
These nonsense pages would not normally have attracted any hits at all, and the search engines would normally have ranked them well below the video that had gone platinum. The intention of this elaborate and expensive artifice, as the professor explained, was to ensure that anyone looking for the real video would instead find page after page of junk and simply give up. The viral chain was duly broken, but so many websites carried the video that more than 5 million people ended up seeing it, so the dishonestly-spent $250,000 was wasted.
At one level, of course, all of this attention is an unintended compliment. But no amount of sneering or smearing will alter two salient facts: the Earth has not been warming at anything like the predicted rate and is not now at all likely to do so; and, in any event, even if the climate-extremists’ predictions were right, it would be at least an order of magnitude more cost-effective to wait and adapt in a focused way to any adverse consequences of manmade “global warming” than it would be to tax, trade, regulate, reduce, or replace CO2 today.
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
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Note: for anyone who wishes to see what this is about, you can see “potholer54” aka Peter Hadfield on Monckton at YouTube here – Anthony
UPDATE: Here is Peter Hadfield’s response in entirety, submitted Feb 7th, 2012. I’ve made only some slight edits for formatting to fit. – Anthony
Response from Peter Hadfield:
In January, Christopher Monckton criticized me on WUWT after I made a series of videos exposing errors in most of his claims. I have asked Anthony Watts for the opportunity to respond in kind, so that we can put Mr. Monckton’s verbatim assertions up against the documentary evidence he cites.
At first I was puzzled as to what Mr. Monckton was responding to in his WUWT guest-post, because he failed to address any of the rebuttals or the evidence I showed in my five videos. Then I realized he must have watched only the last video in the series, including a light-hearted 30-second ‘mistake count’. So in this response I am going to deal with what Mr. Monckton actually said, as shown and rebutted in my videos, rather than what he thinks I think he said, and what he thinks I rebutted.
Mr. Monckton doesn’t claim to be an expert, and neither do I. All I can do is to check and verify his claims. So the question is whether Mr. Monckton has reported the sources he cites accurately in order to reach his conclusions. I have made it very easy for you to check by playing clips of Mr. Monckton making these assertions in my videos, then showing images of the documentary evidence he cites. Since this response is text I will write out Mr. Monckton’s assertions verbatim and quote the documentary sources verbatim (with references in the body of the text.) References to the relevant video (linked at the bottom) and the time on the video where they are shown, will be shown in square brackets.
ON THE COOLING EARTH:
Since Mr. Monckton failed to address the evidence, but implies I was duplicitous in my timing, let’s see what my video actually showed. In a speech given in Melbourne in February 2009, Mr. Monckton said: “We’ve had nine years of a global cooling trend since the first of January 2001” [Ref 1 – 4:06] — and St. Paul in October 2009: “There has been global cooling for the last eight or nine years” [ibid.].
So in my video, the period Mr. Monckton was talking about was clearly identified in his own words, as well as in the graphs he showed, and I showed the dates the speeches were made, and the studies I cited covered the same period.
[“Waiting for Global Cooling” – R. Fawcett and D. Jones, National Climate Centre, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, April 2008]
[“Statisticians reject global cooling” — Associated Press 10/26/2009 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33482750/ns/us_news-environment/]
ON THE MELTING OF GREENLAND:
Again, let’s deal with what Mr. Monckton actually said, which is what I rebutted. In a speech in St. Paul in 2009, Mr. Monckton cited a paper by Ola Johannessen, and told the audience: “What he found was that between 1992 and 2003, the average thickness of the vast Greenland ice sheet increased by two inches a year.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbW-aHvjOgM 11:40)
No, he found no such thing. Johannessen said he only measured the interior of Greenland above 1,500 metres [1 – 11:59] In fact, he specifically warns that the very conclusion Mr Monckton reaches cannot be made: “We cannot make an integrated assessment of elevation changes… for the whole Greenland Ice Sheet, including its outlet glaciers, from these observations alone, because the marginal areas are not measured completely…. ” [“Recent Ice-Sheet Growth in the Interior of Greenland” Ola M. Johannessen et al, Science November 2005]
ON THE LOSS OF ARCTIC ICE:
Mr. Monckton claimed there is no long-term systematic loss of ice in the Arctic, and I rebutted this with studies showing a decline in Arctic summer sea-ice extent since satellite measurements began in 1979. [1 – 8:20 onwards]
Mr. Monckton’s response: “I said that the 30-year record low ice extent of 2007 had been largely reversed in 2008 and 2009.”
So, as I said, he did not tell his audience there had been a 30-year decline. Quite the opposite – he said there was no long-term decline. Mr. Monckton showed his audience a slide covering just three years, referring to the 2007 low as a “temporary loss of sea ice” which had recovered by 2009. Then he told them: “So we’re not looking at a sort of long-term systematic loss of ice in the Arctic.” [1 – 8:27]
ON THE CORRELATION BETWEEN CO2 AND GLOBAL TEMPERATURES SINCE THE CAMBRIAN:
Mr. Monckton’s conclusion about a lack of correlation rests entirely on a graph showing CO2 concentration and temperature over the last 500 million years [3 – 0:04]. The graph uses temperature data from Scotese and CO2 data from Berner. Neither researcher supports Mr. Monckton’s ‘no correlation’ conclusion. On the contrary, Berner writes: “Over the long term there is indeed a correlation between CO2 and paleotemperature, as manifested by the greenhouse effect.” [“Geocarb III: A revised model of atmospheric CO2 over Phanerozoic time” — R. Berner and Z. Kothavala, American Journal of Science, Feb 2001]
How so? Because paleoclimatologists have to factor in solar output, which has been getting stronger over time [3 – 4:45]. If the rising curve of solar output is compared to global temperatures over the phanerozoic (500 million years) there is a similar lack of correlation. But it would be absurd to draw the conclusion that the sun therefore has no effect on climate.
So when gradually rising solar output is taken into account there is a very clear correlation between CO2 and global temperatures, and the source of Mr. Monckton’s data points that out. So does another senior researcher in the field [“CO2 as a primary driver of Phanerozoic climate” — D. Royer et al, GSA Today, March 2004].
ON THE PRE-CAMBRIAN ICE PLANET:
Again, let’s look at what I showed in my video, which was a clip of Mr. Monckton himself, speaking in a debate:
“750 million years ago, a mile of ice at the equator, ice planet all round, therefore at the surface 300,000 ppm of CO2. Will you tell me how that much CO2 could have been in the atmosphere and yet allowed that amount of ice at the equator?” [3 – 5:17]
Since Mr. Monckton thinks this is a puzzle for climatologists, let’s go through the well-understood explanation step by step.
Mr. Monckton agrees with the experts that the frozen planet was due to very weak solar output (about 8% less than today.) And he agrees that the high albedo (reflectivity) of this white surface would have reflected most of what little solar warmth the Earth did receive.
But he doesn’t seem to accept that volcanoes would have continued releasing CO2 into the atmosphere of this frozen planet over millions of years, and that this eventually warmed the planet enough to unfreeze it [“CO2 levels required for deglaciation of a ‘near-snowball’ Earth” T. Crowley et al, Geophysical Research Letters, 2001]. He cites no peer-reviewed research showing why paleoclimatologists are wrong. (No, the opinion of “a leading geologist” is not the same thing.)
ON HIMALAYAN GLACIERS:
Mr. Monckton writes in his WUWT response: “the pattern of advance and retreat of these glaciers was much as it had been in the 200 years since the British Raj had been keeping records. That is very far from the same thing as saying there had been “no change””
Then let’s look at what Mr. Monckton actually said to his audience in St. Paul:
“The glaciers are showing no particular change in 200 years. The only glacier that’s declined a little is Gangoltri.” [3 – 10:20]
So is it a pattern of advance and retreat? Or no particular change? Or only one glacier retreating? Which?
In his WUWT resp onse, Mr. Monckton went on to say: “To discuss one or two retreating glaciers is not the same thing as to say or imply that only one or two glaciers have been retreating.”
But you DID say it, Mr. Monckton. Here it is again: “Only one of them [Himalayan glaciers] is retreating a little and that’s Gangoltri.”
ON MISQUOTING MURARI LAL:
Speaking about Murari Lal, the man behind the IPCC’s 2035 disappearing glaciers fiasco, Mr. Monckton told his audience there was: “….an admission that he [Lal] knew that figure was wrong but had left it in anyway because he knew that the IPCC wanted to influence governments and politicians.”[4 – 3:50]
This is not even borne out by Monckton’s own source, cited in his response, which is a quote from Lal in the Daily Mail about the 2035 date: “We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.” Nowhere does Lal say he knew the figure was erroneous.
MISQUOTING SIR JOHN HOUGHTON:
Mr. Monckton claims Houghton wrote this in the Sunday Telegraph of September 10, 1995: “Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen.” [4 – 5:50]
And I maintain Houghton wrote: “If we want a good environmental policy in the future, we’ll have to have a disaster. It’s like safety on public transport. The only way humans will act is if there’s been an accident.”
Who is right? Well, both Mr. Monckton and I have exactly the same source [Sunday Telegraph, September 10, 1995], but I actually show an image of it in my video [4 – 7:24]. Take a look. Even though it turns out my quote is correct and Mr. Monckton’s is clearly a gross misquote, he still insists in his WUWT response that he got the quote right.
ON HIS CLAIMS ABOUT THE ROLE OF THE SUN…
Mr. Monckton showed and quoted an extract from a paper by Sami Solanki: “The level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. We find that during the past 11,400 years the sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episodoes on to come.” [5 – 1:21 onwards]
That could suggest the sun is a likely culprit for recent warming. But why didn’t Mr. Monckton tell or show his audience what Solanki wrote in the very next line?
“Although the rarity of the current episode of high average sunspot numbers may indicate that the Sun has contributed to the unusual climate change during the twentieth century, we point out that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades.” [“Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the last 11,000 years” — S.K. Solanki et al, Nature Sep 2004]
ON THE ROLE OF THE SUN IN RECENT WARMING:
Mr. Monckton said: “The solar physicists – you might take Scafetta and West, say, in 2008, they attribute 69% of all the recent global warming to the sun.” [5 – 3:48]
No, they don’t. In my video [5 – 4:32] I showed the actual document Mr. Monckton refers to (an opinion piece) where Scafetta and West wrote: “We estimate that the sun could account for as much as 69% of the increase in the Earth’s average temperature.” [“Is climate sensitive to solar variability?” Nicola Scafetta and Bruce J. West, Physics Today March 2008]
I hope we all understand the difference between “69%” and “as much as 69%.” But what about all those other “solar physicists” who purportedly support Monckton’s position? Well, they don’t. Solanki’s figure is up to just 30%, Erlykin less than 14%, Bernstad 7%, Lean ‘negligable’and Lockwood –1.3% [5 — 4:40]
[4:41 “Can solar variability explain global warming since 1970?”– S. K. Solanki and N. A. Krivova, Journal of Geophysical Research, May 2003]
[“Solar Activity and the Mean Global Temperature”
A.D. Erlykin et al, Physics Geo 2009]
[“Solar trends and global warming” — R. Benestad and G. Schmidt, Journal of Geophysical Research” July 2009]
[“How natural and anthropogenic influences alter global and regional surface temperatures: 1889 to 2006” J. Lean and D. Rind, Geophysical Research Letters, Sep 2008]
[“Recent changes in solar outputs and the global mean surface temperature. III. Analysis of contributions to global mean air surface temperature rise” — M. Lockwood, June 2008]
Mr. Monckton then asserts that the International Astronomical Union (IAU) agrees with this conclusion (that the sun is largely responsible for recent warming.) After he had been confronted during a TV interview with the plain fact that it didn’t [5 – 5:49 “Meet the Climate Sceptics” BBC TV Feb 2011], Monckton gave a reason for the error in his WUWT response:
“I cited a paper given by Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov at the 2004 symposium of the IAU in St. Petersburg, Fla, but put “IAU” at the foot of the slide rather than Dr. Abdussamatov’s name.”
Maybe so. But that doesn’t explain why Mr. Monckton continued to make exactly the same claim elsewhere. At St. Paul he said:
“Most solar physicists agree [that the sun is largely responsible for recent warming]. The International Astronomical Union in 2004 had a symposium on it, they concluded that that was the case.” [Monckton rebuttal – WUWT 16:27]
And in his film ‘Apocalypse No!’ a slide headed ‘International Astronomical Union Symposium in 2004’ was shown to an audience, along with its main conclusions. Third on the list, Monckton read: “The sun caused today’s global warming.”
Monckton told the audience: “This is not my conclusion, this is the conclusion of the International Astronomical Union Symposium in 2004. This is what they said, this is not me talking here.” [Monckton rebuttal – WUWT 16:34]
Mr. Monckton has to accept that this claim is completely spurious. This is why he dislikes detailed examinations of his sources. While he takes every opportunity to debate on stage, where his speaking skills are essential and his assertions can’t be checked, an online debate is far tougher, because every paper and fact CAN be checked. So come on, Mr. Monckton, let’s debate this on WUWT to see which of us has correctly read your sources.
The rebuttals I made are not “inconsequential aspects of my talks” as Mr. Monckton claims; they include almost every major topic he covers, from the melting of Arctic and glacial ice, to the role of the sun and the correlation between CO2 and temperature. His only recourse in his WUWT response was therefore to call me names, attack my character and my competence, and question my financing and my motivation… anything but answer the documentary evidence I presented. And then he adds one more error — a ridiculous claim that I asked my “small band of followers” to “check the scientific literature for themselves to establish that the Earth has been warming and that CO2 is “largely responsible.”
Since I can’t establish that myself, I certainly wouldn’t advise other amateurs to have a go. So I ask Mr. Monckton to cite the source for this claim, sure in the knowledge that once again we will see a yawning gap between what the source actually says (in this case, me) and what Mr. Monckton claims it says.
References: (Hadfield’s own videos)
1 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbW-aHvjOgM
2 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTY3FnsFZ7Q
3 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpF48b6Lsbo
4 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3giRaGNTMA
5 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRCyctTvuCo
Monckton has had his chance to explain himself, now it should be time for Mr. Hadfield to respond. Being biased is very easy to spot, but not as easy to forget.
Anthony, equal right of reply implies equal prominence. That means if your intention is to be other than a propaganda merchant for Christopher Monckton, you would grant Peter Hadfield the opportunity of a blog post in response to Monckton’s libels and misrepresentations. As fairness is not a quality you demonstrate to any measure, I will not hold my breathe.
@Smokey.
I am only repeating – and documenting – the views of the house of lords themselves. They have taken what is believed to be the unprecedented step of correcting Monckton in a public letter. They highlight a judgement that shows clearly that Monckton’s claim, that he is a member of the house of lords ‘but without the right to sit or vote’, is false. They do not, however, say that he doesn’t have a peerage. They specifically state in their letter that ‘Your assertion that you are a Member, but without the right to sit or vote, is a contradiction in terms. No-one denies that you are, by virtue of your letters Patent, a Peer. That is an entirely separate issue to membership of the House.’. I contend that these are points of fact, and are not up for debate as there it is, in black and white.
You seem to have latched on to the word ‘peer’ but what is in discussion here is a different issue. Monckton claims to be a member of the house of lords. The house of lords say he isn’t. If you can explain why the house of lords have got it wrong then I am all ears.
@Smokey
To follow up, you said:
‘”FaceFirst” will have credibility only if and when a court rules specifically against Lord Monckton’s claims.’
Please see Baron Mereworth v Ministry of Justice (Crown Office), in which Mr Justice Lewison stated:
“In my judgment, the reference [in the House of Lords Act 1999] to ‘a member of the House of Lords’ is simply a reference to the right to sit and vote in that House … In a nutshell, membership of the House of Lords means the right to sit and vote in that House. It does not mean entitlement to the dignity of a peerage.”
I have now provided an example of a court ruling specifically against Lord Monckton’s claims. I’m not seeking credibility, only the truth. The article got me to check the claims of both Monckton and Hadfield – as any good sceptical thinker should do – and on this particular point of fact I have found Monckton to be wanting.
@Smokey Your indignance is amusing, given your posting history. It’s not as if I tried to SwiftBoat the Viscount.
@Tom Curtis Poking Anthony in the eye isn’t likely to get him to agree
@Anthony If it’s not already been suggested, I’d like to see a moderated debate between Hadfield and Monckton right here, with comment posting restricted to only a few chosen experts from both camps. It shouldn’t be difficult to find 3 or 4 from either side among the regulars.
@Everyone Lord Monckton’s peerage is – and should be – irrelevant. I don’t recall it being a point of contention in ANY of Hadfield’s videos, which is the focus of this discussion.
FaceFirst,
You may be right. But I don’t really know, since I’m an American and the emotions raised over stuff like this seems a little absurd and old-timey to me. It is in the nature of revolutions that the new guard simply takes the place of the old guard; they never do away with the system.
Soviet communists simply mover into the Czar’s palaces; ill-mannered, poorly educated, provincial peasants taking the place of the aristocracy. Now it seems to me that the current crop of British bumpkins is jealously guarding their new life peerages and, frightened of any disparaging comparison between themselves and those they’ve arbitrarily replaced, they are making sure there’s no comparison to be made any more. Lord Monckton routinely makes mincemeat out of debate opponents, bitch-slapping them around in a public setting. Can’t have that, can we? So get rid of Monckton politically since they are incapable of besting him with questions of science.
This situation makes the UK class system seem even more clowish from over here. People whose only accomplishment in life is their lucky ability to garner votes in their districts leverage that luck into being the new dandies. [Now I can understand why John Lennon threw away his medals. They were only a token for the 95% tax rate he was forced to pay. And I’m assuming you know more about the House of Lords situation than I do, because I’ve not read the letter you referred to. Why even have a House of Lords, if it’s populated by political toadies?]
So now, let’s cut to the chase. This site is not about whose nobility is more real. That’s your thing, not ours. My concern is the hijacking of science by a reprehensible clique of climate charlatans, led by Mann and Jones. They avoid the scientific method and transparency like Dracula recoils from a crucifix. They are clearly in the game for the status, political power, fame, and the endless jaunts to holiday venues, all paid for by others, mostly taxpayers. And it is all based on a lie: the demonization of “carbon”.
Now I would like you to ‘fess up: admit that my oft-repeated hypothesis remains unfalsified:
At current and projected levels, CO2 is harmless and beneficial.
Because that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? The runaway global warming scare, which is based on the nonsense that an increase in harmless, beneficial CO2 will cause runaway global warmiing and climate catastrophe. No less an authority than the planet itself is debunking that nonsense.
So rather than hairsplitting over questions of pre-WWII aristocracy and how it has been perverted by politics, can we keep to the central issue? Either falsify my hypothesis in a testable way, per the scientific method, or admit that the global warming / “carbon” scare is every bit as political as the question of who is a peer, and whatever that means in 2012.
@ur momisugly Smokey
I agree with you and DMarshall that Monckton’s peerage is irreverent in terms of the scientific debate. I do, however, think that is it incumbent on a site that proclaims to approach assertions with skepticism to assess all claims, who ever makes them. Monckton has made a claim and I investigated it. In this instance it has been shown conclusively that Monckton’s claim does not stand up to scrutiny.
This is important because once a person has been caught peddling untruths, it makes people more likely to question other claims made by that person. I think you would agree with that, wouldn’t you? This is the modus operandi of any ardent skeptic, and this site in particular has a responsibility to uphold these values.
On to your hypothesis. I think it is worded in such a way as to be uselessly vague. Beneficial to who? Harmless to who? In a warming world, there will of course be winners and losers. In it’s current form, your hypothesis isn’t testable using the scientific method as it lacks clarity. Ergo, it cannot be falsified using the scientific method as you ask, QED.
@Monckton
“SteveE purports to quote an earlier posting by me, but he neglects to complete the quotation”
Lets look at the full quotations then:
“There has indeed been a remarkable correlation between CO2 and temperatures over the past 500 million years – but repeated reanalyses of the data have shown that it was temperatures that changed first and CO2 concentration change that followed.”
“Well, there has in the past few thousand years, but the correlation since the Cambrian era has been spectacularly poor, as the slide (from a peer-reviewed paper) that the caveman fleetingly shows me using at that point demonstrates very clearly.”
Nope sorry in one you clear state that there is a remarkable correlation between CO2 and temperature over 500 million years and the other you clearly state that the correlation since the Cambrian (542 million years) has been spectacularly poor.
Changing you arguement to being about which changed first temperature or CO2 is not what was being discussed.
What you’re trying to do is what Potholer refers to as a Monckton Manoeuvre I believe, where you change you arguement to try and make it sound like you were right.
Now would you like to correctly respond to the allegation that you typed in the article above:
“Monckton says there has been no correlation between temperature and CO2 for the past 500 million years.”
In the article, Monckton says:
‘“Monckton says only one Himalayan glacier has been retreating. Many have.” No, I mentioned the Gangotri and Ronggbuk glaciers as being notable examples of glacial retreat in the Himalayas caused by geological instability in the region. To discuss one or two retreating glaciers is not the same thing as to say or imply that only one or two glaciers have been retreating.’
Yet in the video, Monckton says the following:
‘The glaciers are showing no particular change in 200 years. The only glacier that has declined a little is Gangotri’.
It clear from watching the video that Monckton makes the specific claim that ONLY Gangotri is showing decline, and that ‘all the others are doing fine’.
It is demonstrably false to suggest that it wasn’t implied that ONLY one glacier was declining as exactly that was said verbatim and on camera. This rebuttal of Hadfield’s point by Monckton does not stand up to scrutiny.
I think a site occupied by skeptics has a duty to independently check claims for themselves and I would like others to join me in doing so. Anything less isn’t skepticism as I understand it.
FaceFirst says:
“This is important because once a person has been caught peddling untruths, it makes people more likely to question other claims made by that person. I think you would agree with that, wouldn’t you?”
First off, these are all opinions. As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, there is no court decision naming Viscount Monckton, and the general law does not seem to apply. Therefore, both sides are only giving their opinions. By labeling an opinion as an “untruth”, you are making an ad hominem attack. In an honest debate that would cost you points, the same as if I labeled your opinion as being dishonest which, based on your own rationale, I could. But I won’t, because it is all opinion.
And once again you are falling back on this unconnected issue, because it’s all you’ve got. You cannot falsify my testable hypothesis, so you nitpick a different issue in order to avoid giving non-existent empirical evidence. Allow me to deconstruct:
First, “ardent” skeptic is a misnomer. The only honest kind of a scientist is a skeptical scientist. You are either a skeptic, or you’re not. There is no middle ground, and there are no varying degrees of skepticism. Skeptics have nothing to prove; it is those claiming that “carbon” is a problem who have the onus to show, per the scientific method, that they are correct. So far, they have abjectly failed.
Next, I deliberately word my hypothesis in as few words as possible, in order to avoid confusion. But you still claim to be unable to understand, so let me help: CO2 is beneficial to the biosphere. More is better. Period, full stop.
The planet is currently starved of CO2. You say there will be “winners and losers”. Please provide testable, empirical evidence, per the scientific method, showing global damage or harm due to the rise in CO2. Please, no models or speculation; this is the internet’s “Best Science” site, so stick to the scientific method, or go to pseudo-science blogs like tamino, climateprogress, or any of the many others peddling anti-science misinformation. If evidence does not pass the muster of the scientific method, it is simply not science.
As others can see, the hypothesis as stated is certainly testable. Simply provide data showing verifiable global harm due to the rise in CO2, if you can. For example, “ocean acidification” is an opinion claimed by some to show global harm caused by CO2. But that claim fails because the minuscule pH change [which is only an opinion at this point] is much smaller than either the error bars of the measuring instruments, or the normal diurnal pH changes. Further, the immense buffering capacity of the oceans will absolutely prevent “acidification”. The pH assertion is not testable because instruments have a much wider measurement tolerance than the pH changes claimed. Methane is another false claim that has been raised. It also fails the scientific method becuase methane concentrations have been decelerating, not increasing. And of course, methane is not CO2.
Regarding your assumption that CO2 is harmless is not testable, that is wrong. Simply provide verifiable, empirical, data-based evidence showing global harm due specifically to CO2. That is eminently testable; simply show global harm. The problem for the alarmist crowd is that they have no such evidence.
Next, you conflate “a warming world” with the hypothesis, which specifically states that CO2 is harmless. AGW is a conjecture, and since the planet has been warming along the same trend line since the LIA, it is only an unproved assumption that the natural warming trend is due to increased CO2. A small fraction of the warming may be due to rising CO2, but again, that is beneficial, not harmful. Warmth is good; cold kills.
If you cannot provide solid evidence of global harm, then CO2 is ipso facto “harmless.” Therefore the hypothesis is falsifiable simply prove global harm due to CO2. Thus, your “QED” is simply wrong – and silly sounding – rhetoric, which takes the place of verifiable data. Give me replicable, data-based, irrefutable facts, not mere opinion. Until then, the hypothesis remains standing.
Smokey says:
January 17, 2012 at 8:35 am
The argument is not about CO2 = Plant Food = Happy Biosphere, its about sensitivity and the increased warming that is being predicted from CO2 induced downward infrared radiation. Where do you think all the extra downward infrared radiation is going Smokey? People that have an open mind to real science don’t look at 10 year temperature trends, they also have the mind power to understand that the oceans are heat sinks. http://tinyurl.com/6pjtcpx
major9985,
Please pay attention. The post above presents a specific hypothesis: CO2 is harmless and beneficial. Sensitivity has nothing to do with it. Furthermore, there is a huge range of opinions about what the sensitivity number is. That is because there is no definitive evidence to support a specific sensitivity number, which anyway does not address the hypothesis.
Likewise with “downward radiation”. That does not address the hypothesis. Likewise with “temperature trends”. That also fails to address the hypothesis. And “ocean heat sinks”; that also avoids the hypothesis.
Those are each and every one of them strawman/red herring arguments. In order to falsify the stated hypothesis, you must provide testable, empirical data showing conclusively that CO2 is directly causing global harm.
I have proposed my simple and straightforward hypothesis; the onus is now on others to provide empirical evidence showing specific global harm that can only be tied to the rise in CO2 – if they can. Since you have provided no such evidence, your irrelevant opinions on unrelated issues are meaningless. Pay attention to what the hypothesis states, and stick to the requirements of the scientific method in any attempts at falsification.
Smokey says:
January 17, 2012 at 9:48 am
No Smokey, it is irrelevant if increased man made CO2 is beneficial to the biosphere. The debate is about the warming that has been predicted from increased CO2 in the atmosphere (http://thingsbreak.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/anthropogenic-and-natural-warming-inferred-from-changes-in-earths-energy-balance.pdf) and how climate sensitivity will react to that change.
major9985,
I asked you to pay attention to the specific hypothesis I presented. Instead, you went off again on another unrelated tangent. The hypothesis has nothing to say about “warming”, or “climate sensitivity”.
If you cannot falsify the specific hypothesis presented, you are no different than anyone else; that hypothesis has withstood all attempts at falsification.
By constantly changing the subject, and arguing instead about irrelevant matters not contained in the hypothesis, you make it clear that you are unable to falsify the hypothesis per the scientific method.
CO2 is globally harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. More CO2 is better. If you challenge that, then the onus is on you to prove otherwise, by posting testable, empirical evidence [ie: no ‘computer models’ or irreproducible claims, opinions, or WAG’s]. Good luck.
Smokey says:
January 17, 2012 at 10:58 am
No smokey I don’t play games when it comes to serious topics like this..If CO2 increases temperatures to dangerous levels like science is suggesting, it is irrelevant that your garden is growing a bit better. . Lets all try to be adults here.
[SNIP: Don’t EVER try this again. -REP]
Thanks for the clarification, Anthony. However, there is a convention that the right of reply means equal prominence as well as equal space. A lot of people will read Mr. Monckton’s piece but very few will bother to scroll down through dozens of comments to see if I have posted my two-cents’ worth in reply. Even Mr. Monckton has so far failed to respond to the single point I have made in the comments section about Johannessen’s paper. Why the unwillingness to have a free and full debate, with an equal forum for both of us?
REPLY: Two reasons.
1. You have an online forum or your own, Monckton does not, which is why I allow him to publish here. Your videos were already given a fair exposure here.
2. You have not offered any equivalent “in kind”, nor even notified the subscribers on your forum of Monckton’s response.
I don’t see any reason to offer you a larger “right of reply” here (which I assume you mean you want a guest post) when reciprocity does not exist. Even if it did, I don’t work in video essays, nor does my moderator REP, so we’d have no easy way to respond on your channel. Mostly, you just want to take advantage of the high traffic that WUWT offers. There’s no benefit for me or WUWT readers to give you guest post status. As I said, you are welcome to write a detailed reply in comments. Best I can do is make a note of it in the main post with a link. Take it or leave it.
BTW when will you be applying your considerable video debunking skills to Al Gore? It seems he’s just as guilty of distortion as other topics you take on. If you are truly non-biased, let’s see you do one.
– Anthony
Thanks for the replies, Sorry, but as far as Monckton’s claim that he is a peer – I’m siding with UK’s upper house, who obviously has real constitutional lawyers on staff. I think siding with Monckton’s laywer (whose own website has his specialty listed as International Law including Extradition and Human Rights with a particular emphasis on appeals and therefore is not a constitutional lawyer as claimed by Monckton’s supporters) is naive. It’s not much different than siding with a retired paleontologist (Dr. Bob Carter) instead of an expert climatologist when discussing the subject of climate change.
Monckton himself has since changed the portcullis emblem on his lecture slides since being warned by the House of Lords that he is not entitled to use their porticulus emblem. Why did he change his porticulus emblem and then not have the matter settled in court if his reputation means so much to him? Maybe because if that happened then Monckton would be placed under oath and have the opportunity to be cross-examined on many of his questionable claims? I highly suspect that is the last position in which Monckton would want to be. That is also the reason Monckton will never sue John Abraham for libel and is instead offering nothing but an empty threat, much like non-scientist John Coleman and his 32,000 scientists did when threatening to sue Al Gore. And before you start comparing Gore to Monckton, please note that neither of their opinions mean anything to me regarding climate change. Neither one of them is a climatologist.
Fred Hillson, it is an arcane point, as befits the illogical system of hereditary peerage, but Monckton is undoubtedly a peer of the realm, ie, a Lord, in virtue of his being a Viscount. That entitles him to a better seat at a dinner table if his hosts employs the standard English rules of ettiquette. It may entitle him to a personal consultation with the Queen at his request. (That is an archaic right of peers which many believe to have lapsed, but which has not been tested in the courts as yet, nor explicitly extinguished by Parliament.) It also gains him, although it does not entitle him, to a large measure of unearned credibility among the gullible.
What is also true (almost completely beyond doubt) is that Monckton is not a Peer of Parliament, ie, a Member of the House of Lords. The almost depends completely on the very remote possibility that the legislation ending the right of Hereditary Peers to sit by right in the House of Lords being declared unconstitutional. Failing that, the Act declares that the Clerk of Parliaments is the being able to conclusively declare whether or not a Peer of the Realm is or is not a Peer of Parliament. The Clerk of Parliament’s has so declared. It follows that in the absence of a successful court case by Monckton, he is not a Member of the House of Lords, contrary to his claims, and contrary to his (at least twice) implied claim to be not just a member by a technicality (as he now claims) but to be an actual member of the legislature.
Peter Hadfield says:
“…there is a convention that the right of reply means equal prominence as well as equal space.”
You’re kidding, right? Explain your ‘right of reply’ to alarmist pseudo-science blogs like tamino, climateprogress, and the rest of the blogs that don’t allow even the most polite, on-point comments if they contradict the demonization of “carbon”.
• • •
major9985,
It is telling that you still cannot dispute the hypothesis I posted. If it were not for strawman and red herring arguments, you wouldn’t have much to say.
One thing is clear, though: my hypothesis remains unfalsified. CO2 is harmless to the planet and beneficial to the biosphere… which pretty much destroys the alarmist arguments demonizing “carbon”. But thanx for playing, sport, and Vanna has some lovely parting gifts for you on your way out.
• • •
Hillson & Curtis,
You’re both still fixated on Lord Monckton! What’s it like living in your moms’ basement? Bleating about British royalty sure beats trying to defend debunked alarmist ‘science’, doesn’t it?
People in the debate over AGW don’t make so many mistakes trying to push their argument as Monckton has and not even have the tenacity to rectifier their mistakes. In light of all the evidence and Moncktons complete lack to answer the claims put to him, is WUWT just going to let this injustice be swept under the carpet? The world is watching, and I think you are going to have to give your readers a bit more credit when it comes to intelligence to see what is going on here.
Smokey, I have no fixation on Monckton, other than to note that great acclaim a conspiracy theorist receives among so called climate skeptics. I was merely pointing out to Hillson that he was in error with regard to his claims on Monckton.
major9985,
As usual your posts contain no verifiable facts. Scientific facts are all that matters, so you can forget your lame ad-homs. Instead, give us a few verifiable scientific “facts” that Lord Monckton is wrong about. Run along now to Pseudo-Skeptical Pseudo-Science if you need some talking points.
And don’t forget to try and refute my hypothesis. If it cannot be credibly falsified in a testable manner per the scientific method, all the alarmist arguments are deconstructed.
Smokey says:
January 17, 2012 at 6:15 pm
Just to make it clear Smokey, you seem to negate the fact CO2 is a greenhouse gas which has been shown increasing the amount of downward infrared radiation hitting the earth. “harmless” I take it you got that excellent debating stance from Michele Bachmann.
I have referenced the one of many science papers that shows how much warming is caused by man (http://thingsbreak.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/anthropogenic-and-natural-warming-inferred-from-changes-in-earths-energy-balance.pdf). But I will let you get the last word regarding your ramblings smokey, there is more pending issues.
major,
Thank you for allowing me the last word.
I note that your link states: “…In essence, it is based on a regression of the observations onto model simulated patterns.” Thus, it is model-based, and merely opinion. Such pal-reviewed nonsense is the central problem in climate science, since it ignores the scientific method [which would easily deconstruct model-based nonsense].
My view is that Co2 is a GHG – but its effect is minuscule, and it should be disregarded as such.
And I note once again that you seem incapable of falsifying my hypothesis stating that CO2 is harmless and beneficial to the biosphere. If you cannot falsify that hypothesis, your climate alarmism fails.